Yes,
I admit It,
Iv'e owned two of the things, {foolish sense of patriotism} and I learnt to drive in a Rover 213.
All 3 motors disintergrated.
Never again !!!!!!!!!!
Paul {Forest of Bowland}
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I've had a 1981 MG Metro (ok..I admit that was a bit dodgy), 1986 216 Vitesse...reliable and comfortable (almost an exec at the time!), 1995 216 Coupe...never let me down, 1998 414...never let me down, 2000 214 (my wifes), 2002 MG ZT (Fabulous car).
Never had a problem with any (bar the metro). They were looked after and serviced as they should be. They didn't fall apart..break...overheat..nothing!
Others may have had different experiences, but I'm a firm believer that if you look after your car, it'll look after you! (I'll probably regret saying that :-))
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The problem I always saw when people brought their overs in for a service was their lack of care - so many running low on oil for instance or using independants who didnt do the correct services.
On the other hand, I wouldnt buy a Rover now that they have been sitting around.
On the TF - I sold my sisters last of the line MGF to a guy who had tried a Z3 and an MX-5 and had been looking for 6 months - he thought he would try an MGF for size - he thought it was the dogs dangly bits compared to the MX5 as it was far more spacious both in teh cabin and the boot, plus it rode smoother and the VVC was far faster than the MX-5. He bought it that day. My sister also preferred the MG to her previous MX-5.
Im not saying he was all right because I rather like the MX-5, but the point is, looking at sales figures, the MGF/TF were liked by many and still are - whatever it had, people wanted it.
Ill never forget the day i drove across the south of england in a yellow Trophy 160 MGF. Just the best drive ive ever had and thats including Lotus, Rolls and Porsche. Its a working mans car which isnt that sophisticated, but it does what you ask and has a huge feelgood factor.
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Well Mid-Life
Lucky for you, that's all I can say.
All Rovers ever did for me was prove Murphy's Law.
If it can go wrong, it will go wrong.
And with my Rovers it did.
And re low on oil. {T' other post}
My last {ever !!} Rover was a Montego 2.Oi GSI Estate 7 seater.
It leaked oil from over gasket going.
5 liters of supermarket oil lasted me about 3 weeks - I was doing about 350 miles per week.
It was one of many 2 stroke Rovers??????????
The wheel arches, sills, bonnet and boot edges all rotted away and despite the oil leaks and 5 litres of wax oil, even the sump rotted through {nobody I speak to has ever know a sump to rot}, though oil consumption was the same with welded up sump.
The windscreen pillars rotted through due to leaks from sunroof channels.
The core plus blew out.
The head gasket went.
The fuel injection was erratic.
The alloy wheels were ugly.
The door locks were useless.
All of the wires in the tail gate wiring loom eventually swamped - no heated rear window, no boot number pate light, no HRW, no rear wash wipe.
When it rained the rear bumper collected water, so that the tail gate lip was always sat in a pool of water.
The front wheel bearings collapsed.
The radiator and water pump died.
The rear shocks leaked.
The indicator lenses fell off.
The electric mirrors stopped working.
The clutch cable snapped. The clutch went.
The master brake cylinder went {scary}.
The accelerator cable came off t' pulley, jamming the throttle on full, in't outside lane of t'motorway, lucky at a different time to the total brake failure.
So call me biased if you like. But as said.
Murphy's Law.
If it could go wrong, it did.
I got a fiver for it scrap.
Would have cost less to run a Beemer 5 series Estate?
Now I run Volvo Estates,
Big unstressed none turbo engines that last forever. Fully galvanized. Fantastic cars.
Paul {Forest of Bowland}
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I honestly believe that the "corpse twitched" in the early- to mid-90s and for about 3 years Rover looked to be making strides.
The second-generation 200 series (admittedly based on a Honda) looked good and seemed to sell well. Admittedly the Metro was already well-past its sell by date, but the 600 series didn't get too hammered by the critics I recall?
My first ever new car bought with my own pocket was a 1996 'P' reg Rover 220D. Good looking and a feisty performer in the days before common rail and VW TDI PDs started to show up. My old man was so impressed by it he bought a new Rover 414 six months later which was also faultless for 100k miles.
I guess these aren't Real Rovers, though, but Honda clones..?!
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I wouldn't buy one of these 3 year old ones, because i'd be worried about back up and spares
however i will stick up for Rover generally........
I bought a 1994 414SLi in 1995, had it for 2 years and it was fine. Nippy for a 1400cc car and bit more classy than the Escort or Astra equivalents.....o.k it was only 9 months old when i got it, but the 1st keeper was a hire company which worried me when i found out, but it wasn't a problem.
I bought a 1995 620SLi in 1997, had it for 5 years and it was the most reliable car i've ever had to date. The only thing wrong with it in 5 years was the radiator, which apparently if i'd cleaned with a hose more regularly to get rid of the winter salt.....not even that would have failed. Only got shot because the mileage was knocking up and i wanted a change. it's still going ,near me, with the same owner for the last 5 years.
I've chosen to forget the 1979 2.6 SD1, which I had for 9 months in 1985. It was so bad, i'm sure no one would believe me if i listed the faults. Went like hell though, which the 2.6s weren't supposed to do.
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The second-generation 200 series (admittedly based on a Honda) looked good and seemed to sell well.
We were discussing this down t'pub only last night. You still see stacks of these on G and H plates and most are still in reasonable nick. The 1.4 K doesn't seem to have the same degree of HGF issues as the 1.8, and the bigger 1.6 Honda engine is a peach.
I think the analogy of the twitching corpse is quite accurate. Many forget Rover was turning a profit in the final years of the Honda alliance.
heers
DP
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SWMBO had a 92 Rover 216 with the Honda engine, superb engine in a very good and well made chassis. It was a company car and was replaced by a Honda CIvic which seemed positively tinny by comaprison. It seems to have been the halcyon days of Rover though.
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Hope you've bought your lottery ticket MLC? The odds must be in your favour...
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The Montego was an Austin badged as a Rover.
Re rust - the vast majority of 1980's designs rusted like no tomorrow, esp the Sierra, a rival to the Montego. Cars of this age need regular cleaning and bodywork care to stop rust, its just common sense im afraid. If you couldnt be bothered and your car rusted away, whos fault is that, sorry but I had a Montego estate when I was 18 and it was near immaculate because the previous owner cared. Owners let their cars down as much as the cars let the owners down quite often.
As for the rest of it, fair enough, you were unlucky but should have got the diesel - tough as old boots and many keep going well beyond what people expect. We had some with 250k + coming in for regular services.
How though you attribute the issues you had with a Montego to cars built a few years ago is beyond me - with your logic, I shouldnt buy todays Skodas on account of the Favorit.
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Have you ever actually owned an MG/Rover....???>>
No, but my daughter had one of the very first 414s in late 1989 (I'd been on the launch a few weeks earlier and liked the Honda based range) and she had it for three years - it proved pretty reliable.
It replaced a secondhand 1982 Triumph Acclaim (the first British Leyland Honda based model) in which she went all over the country and which, in turn, was taken over by the youngest offspring. It finally left the family after some 13 years of solid use and, like so many others of this model, could still be doing duty somewhere; we live about 15 miles from Leyland where BL employees could buy Rover cars on a special rates scheme.
A neighbour across the road bought the same 414 model as my daughter secondhand about 12 years ago and, again, it's in use every day - only serious problem was a boot water ingress six or seven months ago which I traced to the bottom of the rear screen's decorative surround having come slightly adrift.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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We have owned three Land Rovers ,1961 series 2a swb,1973 series 3 LWB Safari and a 1984 series 3 swb diesel ,Three Range Rover (still have two of them, one of which was the press car used by Autocar magazine), Two SD1s a 2.3s and a Vanden Plas, i do not know wether a Motego estate and a Mini van counts but i have always tried to buy British.
All have been fun to own and all have had their faults but hey, whilst watching a wedding the other day the bride and groom got into a very old Rolls Royce and started at the third attempt to cheers from the crowd.
This is how motoring was and just shows what a lot of whingers there are, as Mr Clarkson pointed out ,people complain about the state of airline food totally ignore the fact of the marvel that they are whizzing through the air in an aluminum tube to far off shores something that only 100 years ago was just a distant dream.
Come the day of teleportation someone will winge about how many nanoseconds it takes and the effort required to push the button.
I still worry if we are going to make it on a journey, with the Bedford it is reasonable, but not the Escort, and breath a sigh of relief when we arrive.
The sad thing is that ,from my view, the last Rovers and MGs were nice looking cars and were killed off by public apathy, see what the French drive and the Japanese.
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.....were killed off by public apathy.....
nothing to do, of course, with some seriously outdated designs and engineering, in a phenomenally competitive market.
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An good test is to look at older vehicles first such as the 800 and the Metro, assess their second hand values (always the acid test) and then see if fundamental shortcomings have been rectified in later production. Woud you seriously want to own a car with a rusty non-galvanised bodyshell fitted with an engine which has inherent design defects causing cylinder head gasket failure?
Market forces had their way.
659.
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nothing to do, of course, with some seriously outdated designs and engineering, in a phenomenally competitive market.
lol.........the 75 and ZT were neither out of date on design nor engineering. Your comment reflects an uninformed and rather sad view where standards demanded of UK manufacturing are in the stratosphere compared to others that deliver poorer quality. To illustrate my point here's a quote from a small enthusiasts site set up to try and sustain a rather poor piece of modern European engineering where even the handbrake doesn't work if it rains:
'If you¹re expecting a cold night after a wet or slushy day, leave the handbrake off. Put the car into gear, turn the wheels into the kerb and put a brick under the tyre instead If your handbrake does freeze up, don¹t bother crawling under the car with a kettle of hot water, as it¹s hard to pour water upwards (believe it or not his has been attempted). A hair dryer on an extension lead is more likely to succeed, but don¹t leave the hair dryer where it can be run over again, this has been done!'
I'll leave it to you to reveal the car and maker in question.
lol
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As I didn't see the ad in the flesh is there a weblink?
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One of Rover's main problems was that it priced most of its models at prices that represented the next class level from other manufacturers.
Few private buyers were willing, for instance, to pay Mondeo prices for an Escort class sized Rover model.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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Fair enough regarding the 75. The 75/ZT were on the money at launch, but the 45 and 25? Come on. Even the rosiest rose-tinted spectacles can´t cover the fact that way before the end of their production lives they were a long way off the class standard - overpriced rubbish IMHO.
Remember that the later model 75/ZT were effectively de-contented towards the end of their production runs, the facelift of 2004 removing much of the clever stuff that had got them their good(ish) reputation in the first place:
......Sadly in the background, Longbridge production engineers were doing all they could to de-content the 75 range. This was little more than a cost-cutting measure, which ran under the name, 'Project Drive'. Although much of the cheapening of the 75 was not so evident to owners, the tell tale signs were there if you looked hard enough. The lavish wood dashboards of the early cars were replaced by plastic imitations, the door mirrors were replaced by those used in the 25 and 45 ranges, but most shocking of all was the deletion of the rear anti-roll bars from 1.8-litre and CDT versions to the detriment of the car's handling. Evidence of penny pinching could be found in every wheel arch and under every carpet......
That´s from austin-rover.co.uk BTW.
Rover 45 was based on the Honda Domani, circa 1990. Not exactly cutting edge.
Rover 25 designed around 1992 - so well past its sell-by-date.
Do some research R40 - you might be surprised ;-)
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