Rover 3500 (SD1)

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Fancy owning a motorsport legend? Paul Davies looks at true classics that made their names on rally stages and race tracks, and still provide fine drives today

Bad luck and Rover seem to go together, the latest degeneration of a once proud name into a seemingly mis-spelt ‘Roewe’ Chinese clone of the last British production model would seem to be proof of the fact. Things were not too much better in the 1980s either… It was good times, and bad times, all the way for the Rover 3500. After a TWR car won the 1983 British Touring Car Championship and was then disqualified for technical infringements, Andy Rouse took the title fair and square in ’84. The next year the combination of Tom Walkinshaw and Win Percy notched up six wins in the European Touring Car series but missed out on the championship by a whisker. In ‘86 Percy clinched the Euro title, but four weeks later was demoted when the organisers decided they had incorrectly applied their own rules! How unlucky can you get? There’s always Tony Pond, who brought his factory-entered Vitesse to the start line of the 1984 Lombard RAC Rally, only to crash out on the very first special stage! Rover’s SD1 was a great idea, a hatchback body with styling by David Bache and engineering by the legendary Spen King. The Buick aluminium 3.5 V8 gave a torquey 155bhp on carbs, but it was a pity it linked to a rigid rear axle with drum brakes. There were four and six pot versions as well, but no-one was interested when they could have that lovely small block V8 instead. In Group 1 modified production form the engine gave a healthy 250bhp and in 1980 a first win was recorded at Brands Hatch for a car driven by Jeff Allam and Motor staff writer Rex Greenslade. The appearance of the fuel injected Vitesse in 1982 upped race power to 290bhp, and by ’84 the TWR cars (with rear disc brakes) were pushing 340bhp, but the Volvos racing in Europe boasted even more horses. That missed title in ’86 was the last ditch effort for the SD1 before it was replaced by the Honda-bred Rover 800. Big cars don’t work well on rallies, and with the same V8 stuffed in the TR7 Austin Rover saw little point in preparing the Vitesse for the loose. It did consider the 1983 Paris-Dakar rally but - Rover’s luck again - the event was cancelled. The rally car’s finest hour was when TWR prepared a batch for a special TV Rallysprint at Donington, and a certain Nigel Mansell won the day. In fact the SD1 was a rally winner – privateer Ken Wood was Scottish champion in ‘84. Nowadays, it’s not likely to match the Tigers, Porsches or Escorts in the British Historic Rally Championship, but it’s still alive in Classic Touring Car Racing Club events: Stephen Keating was 2003 Classic Thunder champion.