With Rover SD1 production running at worryingly low levels and the Triumph TR8 having just gone out of production, the company were more than willing to supply TVR with the engines they needed. The search did not last long – and the company went knocking at BL’s door. Sports car potential: unlockedĪs a result, TVR searched around for an alternative that they could use. The reason for this was that the V6 models, which the company was producing at the time, were powered by the 2.8-litre Ford Granada/Capri engine – and the produce of Ford were very much unwelcome in Saudi Arabia during the early Eighties. In 1981, TVR in Blackpool had met problems with the export of its Tasminmodel to the Middle East. In an off-road vehicle, the stump-pulling torque produced by the ex-Buick engine had found perhaps its perfect role in life. Like the P5B, the V8 engine was the making of the Range Rover somehow it seems hard to imagine that car enjoying the success that it did without the smooth and powerful V8 engine under the bonnet. It did not end there though Spen King worked on a couple of projects, which were based around the new engine – one being the sadly stillborn Rover P6BS, the other being the Range Rover. The next recipient for the compact and powerful engine was the Rover P6 – and, in the process, a minor British legend was created. Within months, the production of the engine was transferred to Solihull and the creation of the P5B soon followed.
The deal was hammered out during the winter months of 1964 and, by the following January, the engine was the property of Rover.
The deal was certainly an audacious one because of the fact that it involved an outright payment to the American multi-national, thereby avoiding further royalty payments in the future. Knowing that the engine had recently been phased out by General Motors, he approached the company, offering to buy the rights to build it and all the tooling. It was Rover’s Managing Director, William Martin-Hurst, who secured the use of the 3.5-litre V8 engine, having cast far and wide for something suitable – and decided upon the Buick 215.
Because of this development blind alley and the now pressing need to upgrade its existing 3-litre engine, the company decided to look outwards to find something suitable. Various engines were tried with little success, not least the gas turbine, which managed to absorb much in the way of resources before finally being discarded.
Within two years the American steel industry fought back: in the American ‘system’, the steel industry wielded enormous influence within governmental circles and, thanks in part to this ‘unfair advantage’, along with improved casting technology and the emergence of thin wall casting techniques, many of the advantages of aluminium as a base material for engines were negated.Īs a result, General Motors reversed its policy of using aluminium in their new engines – returning to cast iron. Whether this was a good thing or a bad thing for GM in the USA was not paramount in the minds of Rover Executives and their Engineers in the mid-1960s.įor several years, Spen King and Gordon Bashford had been investigating alternative power units to power their top-of-the range cars the 3-litre straight-six engine found in the Rover P5 was, by this time, well past its sell-by date, being heavy and uneconomical. Of course, the late-1950s were not a time for the Americans to be countering profligacy, and this resulted in these benefits being largely overlooked by GM – that fact made them susceptible to persuasion. The engine displaced 3528cc and, because of its compact size and low weight, proved very easy to package. One of the manufacturers to embrace aluminium with both arms was General Motors (GM) which developed a compact V8 for their Buick range of cars.
The reasons for this have been well documented, but primarily it was the quest for lighter weight and greater efficiency that led the producers to choose this route. During the late 1950s, the US car industry turned to aluminium as a material to build their engines from. The Rover V8 engine had a very interesting life. The Rover V8 engine might have started life in the USA, but thanks to some creative thinking at Rover, it became a British institution, powering some of the country’s most iconic cars…