Things I miss, but shouldn’t – #1. The 1993 Rover Vitesse.
I bought this little wonder in 2004 as a stop-gap measure whilst commuting weekly to Oxford and waiting for the Primera to get fixed. It cost me a hundred and eighty quid, and came with a years’ MoT. Of course, I’d find out later that there’s no way it should’ve ever passed, but it had the enormous benefit of being big, comfy, able to hold a week’s worth of my crap, and – most importantly – working air conditioning. It also had an oh-so-manly boot spoiler, but we won’t talk about that.
This particular one was a 2-litre turbo that hadn’t really been mucked about with, but was shovelling out around 230bhp. Not a lot by most modern performance car standards, but if you could tolerate the gearbox whine it’d do 140mph without complaining. Supposedly.
It was one of the last things we sold before moving to the US in 2006, and I actually made twenty quid back on it in the process. I put 20k on it in that time, and it is sorely missed, at least partly because it left many any M3 owner open-mouthed at having been overtaken by something as common and rubbish as a Rover.
I’d love to have one again – but sadly the Sterling is about as close as I’m going to get, seeing as US sales stopped in 1991 – right as the mk2 was introduced. On the other hand, free imports start at 21 years old.. so only another two years to go. Will there be any left that haven’t rusted away by then?
Seems unlikely.
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