The Rover V8 engine history

American motor industry probably is the biggest market for V8 engines. Henry Ford brought the luxury V8 engined cars to many ordinairy Americans during the 1930s. The slogan, "you never be late, if it is a V8" was one of those days. During the 1950's Detroit the US car producing city produced large saloon cars with V8 engines, and it should be no supprise that the Rover V8 came from the US.

Rover was at that time experimeting with new 5 and 6 cylinder engines and altought the experiments proved succesfull the engines never used in production cars. Rover managing director, William Martin-Hurst visited a Mercury Marine at Wisconsin in 1963 and came accross the new power plant. He measured the unit and found that it would fit in both the P5 and P6 models.

The only question at that time was why General Motors, the designer of the engine discontinued the engine. The answer was easy, not that there was something wrong with the powerplant. The Americans where not to happy about the all alloy block, and after building 750.000 of them, they decided to replace it by a cheaper but larger cast-iron block, and so Americans stopped buying the smaller compact cars. GM stopped the production in 1963.

The Buick Special was intended by GM to be one of there new compact models, and was designed to compete with growing threat of European import. The Buick was not exactly small by British car standards, and was priced at $2500 to $3000 depending on the specs. That was about the same price you could buy a US Rover 2000, a car that was relatively economical by US car standards. It was quite lively reaching 60 mph in just under 11 seconds. It had drum brakes and worm and sector power steering, and it would have been quiet and comfortable to travel in on long journeys. But the Buick also had some disadvantages, over light steering and poor handling cause of under-damped suspension.

For William Martin-Hurst the 3500 cc unit had a number of attractions. It would fit in both the models, P5 and P6 and was more powerful than Rover's current engines. It was strong and lightweighted and reasonable easy and cheap to produce. By the end of 1964 Martin-Hurst could persuade teh GM people that he would buy the rights on the engine and he too the engine he found back to Solihull for examination by Rover engineers. Liscence to start producing the engine came in January 1965.

Rover managed to aquire the service of Joe Turley, chief engine designer at Buick. He was persuaded to come to Solihull, and as a consultant he helped during the developments of the V8 engine to sort out problems.

A number of modifications were done to the V8 engine, the Buick Rochester carburetors were replaced by the SU ones, and the Lucas ignition replaced that by AC-Delco. The automatic choke was replaced by a manual choke control.

The first Rover V8 engine appeared in the P5 model in 1967, and in the P6 model in 1968. The V8 engine that appeared in the Rover SD1 in 1976 had some changes compared to its predecessors. The output power was increased from 143 bhp to 155 bhp at 5250 rpm, torque was slightly lower at 198 pounds per foot at 2.500 rpm instead of 202 pound per feet at 2.700 rpm. The SD1 engine kept the 88.9 mm bore and 71.1 mm stroke and the capacity of 3.528 cc. Camshaft also remained the same, but changes to valves improved performance. The valving of the hydraulic tappets was changed to enable the engine to operate at slightly higher revs and both inlet and exhaust valves were increased. (34 mm instead of 33mm for the exhaust and 40 mm instead of 38 mm for the inlet valves.) But the main difference between the SD1 engine was the fact that it breathed more freely, airflow was improved behind the larger cylinder head valves. Compression was lowered to 9.35:1.

An other change in the engine design was the use of a better waterpump and oilpump with higher output at lower revs. Electronic contactless ignition from Lucas was uses in the new V8 SD1 engine. The Rover V8 engine stopped the producing after 35 years in 2004. Many cars, rannging from Rover P5, P6, SD1 as well as Land Rover, MG's, TVR used the engine. Its preformance has been developed and improved, not only by Rover but also by sports car manufactorers such as TVR.

The V8 showed to be a succesfull choise! Thanks to Mr. William Martin-Hurst for picking up...

Rover P5 model

Rover P6 model

The Rover SD1 model

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