The Rover P6 2000 is a pretty interesting car. It was directly inspired by the revolutionary Citroën DS, translated through a lens of Britishness, and I mean that in a positive way. Compared to most British cars of the era, the P6 was quite a bold departure, and perhaps that’s what was being alluded to in this 1966 brochure for the car, which seems to show the car being driven and used by someone who just can’t be normal.
I mean, I get that lots of brochures like to put their cars in novel settings and situations; that makes sense, because regular roads and parking lots can be pretty boring. But if you look at these all together, in the space of one brochure, I think you’ll just come away with the conclusion that whoever owns these cars is an absolute loon who has no idea where the hell people are supposed to drive.
I mean, look at this:
Like, that’s a path, my dog. Like a footpath. You want to cross that bridge? That bridge built, for what, healthy people, toddlers, and dogs? Look at this:
You’re not getting on that bridge, dummy. What the hell are you doing out there, anyway? All those hikers and joggers are pissed, and some of them are old people who will definitely look up your number tag and make trouble.
I mean, how did you even get way out there in the forest? Weaving around trees like a slalom, scaring the local Dalmatians? And for what?
You’re fishing? In the forest? Is there a body of water somewhere behind you there? I can’t see one. I just see more grass and trees. My brother in Chrysler, I really think you’re trying to catch a trout in the forest.
Okay, here we see a P6 parked actually near water, but it looks like it’s right on the damn dock, and that captain’s hat left on the back seat suggests something like a crime scene. This feels like you just chucked a yacht owner, a real Thurston Howell-type, right out of the car and into the bay. Maybe they tripped over those ropes on the way down. You probably got them real drunk, too.
Now what are you doing? Have you ever used a sun visor before? You don’t have to seize them like you’re grabbing a wayward, escaped ferret. Just calm down, dude.
Oh, jeezis, now what? What are you buying at that antique store? You seem pretty happy with that helmet. But you’re not getting all that other crap in that trunk, ma’am. Look at it! How are you getting that creepy children’s sanitarium tricycle and that table and those huge scales in there? And, wait – are you buying produce at the antique store, too? That’s cauliflower, and those are shallots and some lettuce – what the hell? What antique store sells produce? And why are you buying it?
Ugh, you’re hopeless.
I do like the duplicated reflectors under the trunk lid, replacing the ones on the lower part of the lid itself. You know what other detail I like about the P6? This one:
“Easily recognizable switches.” That doesn’t sound like a big deal now, but the idea of actually labeling what each one of a dozen or so identical plastic switches does was a pretty novel idea back in the ’60s. So good on Rover for that.
I also like this use of the glove box as a little in-car library. What is that red book?
Anyway, these Rover buyers are loons.
Clearly that’s Thurston Howell’s hand desperately clutching the visor as his trophy wife throws him from the car into the Bay! And she is not buying antiques, she is gleefully selling the awful decor he insisted on keeping around the mansion.
Soon, a grizzled trench coat wearing British detective will appear. And use the visor and the books on murder left in the glove box to solve the case – but not before the femme fatale leaps laughing into a Jaguar and races off with a dashing young Michael Caine 🙂
We had a V8 one of these when I was a kid, it was great. Unfortunately some bellend ran a stop sign and wrote it off. Great car, I’d love an Estura Estate conversion.
The back seats look comfy
Brilliant stuff!
The photos are reminiscent of tableaux photography.
I looked at the pic of the lady* antique shopping far too long.
*(She gets the benefit of the doubt, just like you gentlemen.)
There’s a white-haired gent behind her, going back into Ye Olde Antique Shoppe. That’s the aforementioned “Thurston Howell type.” The redhead is his trophy wife. And she looks to me like she’s damn well worth it, too! It doesn’t matter to them that they’ll never get all those purchases into the boot of that Rover—there’s a line of peasants just out of frame to walk behind the car as he drives home. At 3 MPH—sorry, 5 kph. Wait, this is 1960’s Britain…3 MPH.
Why so slow? On the trip home, she’s working the stick shift for him. If you know what I mean.
I also notice a very large sack of some kind, waiting on the Kerb. The remains of the former Mrs. Howell? No, that’s too gruesome—even for me! Besides, by naming them so, I’m picturing the character from Gilligan’s Island in my head, and suddenly I don’t want such a fate to have befallen her. Let’s just say it’s one of the peasants.
Meanwhile, back at the dock. They parked in their exclusive car park, right next to the yacht, and poor Mr. Howell apparently tripped over those dock lines (not ropes, Jason! Dammit!) and into the harbor to his demise. Astoundingly, neither Mrs. Howell nor any of the peasants say they can swim, so no one jumped in to rescue him. The now-widow Howell is devastated—simply devastated—as she calculates the value of the estate in her head.
Alright, I’m off to take my meds and ride my sanitarium tricycle, now. You all do carry on. Ta!
One doesn’t insult a proper British gentleman by presuming they need to be rescued, especially by anyone not acceptable.
Of course. I forget myself. My apologies, do continue to splash away.
The shopper was quite comely.
I knew a family that lived a few blocks away back in the late 60s that had a more vividly yellow one of this generation of Rover. But I think theirs was a 3500.
That picture is really bugging me, because I’m sure I know where that shop is, because I’m 90% sure it’s in the Cotswolds. I grew up round that way so I’m sure I drove/walked past it more than once.
The shop is almost certainly still there, but it’s 50:50 either still an antiques shop (run by someone who looks like they owned it when the photo was taken), or it’s now a Bugens (I’m not sure what the US equivalent would be, but think C-rate 7-11).
Sadly, there’s a considerable swath of motor vehicles that I know little to nothing about, and among them are most Rovers.
So thank you Jason for this… it’s not unhandsome at all. Even almost a little bit sinister in some of those photos, a quality not unappreciated. What exactly makes it the British version of the Citroen DS I wonder? Surely, it hasn’t got anything like that crazy French suspension, right?
Oh, it has it’s OWN crazy, albeit steel-sprung suspension. You see, this car was designed around a gas turbine that never happened.
Here’s a great website that talks about some of the car’s neat design features:
https://www.britishv8.org/Articles/Rover-P6-Design.htm
Very cool cars indeed – especially when fitted with the ex-Buick aluminum V8.
Thank you Kevin, I will read that later (and enjoy it I’m sure) over my afternoon coffee. 🙂
“I also like this use of the glove box as a little in-car library. What is that red book?”
The red book is the owner’s manual. They show up surprisingly often in those little ‘take a book, leave a book’ libraries.
these pics are truly weird, but you know what was weird also? The P6B rally (rallye?) version of which one made its way to the world down under, only to get a Holden V8 and look like a very British manace:
https://club.shannons.com.au/library/images/news/TJ636T48M9YED04A/Mark0517P6Roverimage12.jpg
https://club.shannons.com.au/club/news/racing-garage/rover-p6-3500-the-uk-factory-prototype-that-died-down-under/
Some of those pictures look as if they could be stills from a Benny Hill skit.
My first car was a ’62 MG Midget and it definitely did not have “easily recognizable switches” on its dash.
He’s probably casting flies in a forest because he read “Trout Fishing in Britain: A Canal Runs Through It” by Norman MacRichard Trautigan
The reply of Trout Fishing in Britain: “I remember with particular amusement, people with deerstalker caps fishing in the dawn.”
Re the switches, it’s not about the labeling on them. It’s about the differing shapes that enable operation in the dark.
In order: round, double upper/lower wings, single lower wing, space for key (where you would feel the key), single lower wing, double upper/lower wings. There is little chance to mistake one for another. I’m going to guess that aircraft use something similar.
Older American cars were sometimes good at this. An uncle had one with large, very white switch handles that were very easy to see.
You know, at the beginning I was a bit disappointed. A Cold Start, and after getting through the first paragraph there was no mention of disturbed weasels, nor of food used in a non-food function.
But it gradually ramped up, following the source material, until — ferrets! Bravo on the slow build, Jason. Your literary style is ever developing. And thanks for the daily morning smile.
I used to have the owner’s manual for the V8 version of this car (Rover 3500 in the US) and it was a hardbound book. This was in an era when even the Mercedes 600 manual was a paperback. Given Rover reliability, a durable manual was probably a good idea because an owner would be referring to it constantly.
I’ve studied that pic of the red book, and I think the title is DIS SESAME, which I believe is a 60’s Britishism that today’s equivalent would be deez nuts.
My favorite feature is the central key/ignition.
So when I rear-end that big lorry, my knee won’t be lacerated by keys.
And the red book is clearly a Michelin guide.
Where would you keep yours?
The V-8 version of this car, the P6B (B for Buick because of the 215 V8) is a damn cooling looking automobile.
It has three!!! functional hood scoops.
You might be confusing it with the previous model, the P5B, sold as the Rover 3.5-Litre (it didn’t have hood scoops, but it did have the B for Buick in the factory type designation). The P6 3500 had the hood scoops, but only for the US market, as they believed the engine would need extra cooling in places that experience warmth and sunlight, like Florida, Texas, and California, however, when they abruptly pulled out of the US market, they did burn off the leftover inventory by installing the remaining US hoods on some UKDM cars until they were used up.
Yeah. I am not confusing anything.
Do a Google image search on NADA Rover P6B.
I’ve owned 9 Rovers here in Detroit, including my two latest, a 2000 75 and 1993 Rover 220.
I’ve never really heard the “B” applied to the P6 so much as the P5, but it was only the North American 3500s that had the scoops, the 4-cylinder 2000s didn’t and the rest of the world V8s didn’t either. And that was maybe a single digit percentage of all 3500s built
I think the B was probably not a nomenclature used by the factory. I think that probably came more from Rover fans over here in the states — all dozens of us!
In that picture of the antique store inexplicably selling fresh produce there’s something under a black cloth in the background. Creepy AF.
Maybe it’s the Ring wraith as seen here: https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/cs_lotus_story_1-1536×1079.jpg
https://www.theautopian.com/im-not-sure-lotus-really-knew-what-they-were-doing-with-brochures
What’s that under the bridge? Sure looks like a creek or stream to me.
Buyer: Are these buttons?
Rover: No, they’re switches! Bloody hell! Why can’t anyone recognize them?!?
I think these brochures pics are failed plot of a Disney movie about a car that has been inhabited with the consciousness of a dog à la Herbie or something along those lines. The dog “Rover” now wants to revisit all the spots he used to go when he wasn’t a car and typical shanigans ensue. That lady is not antique shopping, those are things that Rover has brought her. Tail wagging trunk open, happy with what he’s done. Squeezing the sun visors, that’s just playing with Rover’s big floppy ears. The pic with the dalmatian in the forest, they are just on a walk together. This pretty much writes itself!
So this failed Disney movie of Rover was the first generation of Cars Homunculus? Like a Prequel to the Cars world that showed the gruesome creation and disturbing nature of such a thing. Then the end credits show some apocalyptic event that wipes out all humans but Rover remains thus starting the Cars world?!? I’m in!
So…British?
Yes. Everything depicted is perfectly normal. In 1960s Great Britain. ‘Tis a silly place.
They still hadn’t even changed to decimal currency when that brochure came out.
They’re still reluctant to combine hot and cold water taps into a single faucet in some places to this day.
As a British I absolutely agree.
Picture location?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnham_Beeches
I was gonna say it looked like Glasgow haha, along the Kelvin past the bridge church.
It almost could be, the bridge is the giveaway!
I had no idea that Egypt was so close to Burnham!
If this is what AI is using to generate images, then I’m starting to realize why AI slop is so bad.