{"id":224,"date":"2013-09-06T12:44:17","date_gmt":"2013-09-06T19:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rustycars.net\/?p=224"},"modified":"2013-09-06T12:45:02","modified_gmt":"2013-09-06T19:45:02","slug":"and-the-rover-is-no-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rustycars.net\/?p=224","title":{"rendered":"…and the Rover is no more."},"content":{"rendered":"

The SD1 started its journey to its new owner in Georgia this morning. It’s been an interesting ride with this car – over the last three years I’ve learned more about Lucas EFI than I ever thought possible, as well as grown to appreciate just what Rover were trying to do with SD1. It’s a huge shame they were initially dogged with so many issues here in the US, as the straight-six versions doubtless would’ve sold very well into the 1980s.
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Much has been written about the SD1 in the USA, and why it failed. Rover was a one-model range at the time, and – in Europe – completed a gap in Triumph’s lineup after the withdrawal of the 2000\/2500. Had the planned Lynx ever actually been produced, it and the SD1 would’ve made a rather nice range.. together with the “new” Triumph 1500. Even the Rover 213\/216 would’ve probably sold well over here, as is evidenced by the visibility today of their Honda brethren.<\/p>\n

It was my daily driver for a while, and – as well as proving it’s possibly to run a thirty year old British car on a daily commute – it still managed to average nearly 30mpg. It’s been to a few shows, confused a lot of people (‘what kind of Chevy\/Pontiac\/Ferrari is that?’), and been surprisingly reliable. It only broke down on me once, which was a) in the driveway so it doesn’t really count, and b) is because I ran out of fuel ‘cuz the fuel sender didn’t initially work. The kids also loved the fact that it was a little bit special and – for a British car – pretty big and comfy inside. It even did the school run a few times, during which there were occasional complaints about its fundamental brown-ness.<\/p>\n

…but on it must go. It’s going to someone who knows exactly what it is, and will hopefully appreciate it as much as I do. It’s been replaced in the “fleet” here by a Rover P6, which is a whole different animal… but more on that another time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The SD1 started its journey to its new owner in Georgia this morning. It’s been an interesting ride with this car – over the last three years I’ve learned more about Lucas EFI than I ever thought possible, as well as grown to appreciate just what Rover were trying to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23,8,6,12,5,3,9,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rustycars.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rustycars.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rustycars.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rustycars.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rustycars.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rustycars.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227,"href":"https:\/\/www.rustycars.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions\/227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rustycars.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rustycars.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rustycars.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}