US spec. Rover 3500 S

Look at it this way: we are all on a conveyor belt being slowly but surely transported into history. Today´s avant garde is tomorrow´s status quo and we have to move forward just to stand still.

Alonh with the rest of us, the Rover motor car is on history´s belt and its achievements as well as its failures are subject to the cruel judgements of time - along with ours. Thus we look at the 2000 sedan introduced in 1964 and the 2000 TC introduced in 1966 through the wrong end of the telescope as they dim into the past.

Early in its life span the unique mechanical personality of the Rover 2000 series made it a genuinely exceptional automobile for all of those enthusiasts who wanted something more than just transportation - for those who valued handling and braking and even acceleration (in the case of the 2000 TC) but weren´t prepared to sacrifice comfort for agility. With the 2000 TC you didn´t have to sacrifice anything. Never in our history had the staff of C/D encountered a single automobile that possessed so many of the qualities that we demanded and the result was a public love affair that we would happily do all over again if we find a car so universally virtuous.

But the belt has continued to move, faster it seems, and we expect even more from our cars today. Don´t misunderstand. Rover has moved forward too, but not uniformly and not in the qualities that we found so attractive before.

The 3500 S, subject of this test and of Rover´s current preoccupation, is essentially a 2000 - both mechanically and in appearance - except that an aluminium 3.5-liter V8 replaces the 2-liter four-in-line. It may seem strange considering the new engine, but the advancements in the 3500 S have not been significantly improve performance. Instead, the effort has been concentrated on providing automatic transmission, power steering, power brakes, air conditioning, electric windows - all in a package labeled luxury and aimed directly at that discriminating segment of the Buick/Oldsmobile/Chrysler market.

You see, the passage of time effects everyone differently. Rover has opted out - joining the cigar-smoking, comfort-seeking establishment - and left all of us who remain enthusiasts to forage for ourselves. Rover´s defection, which is a kind of self-Americanization, may not be in the direction we would have expected after we came to know the 2000 TC but it has some fascinating aspects nonetheless. And it is literally a self-Americanization too, since the engine is a reincarnation of the aluminium-V8 Buick used for the intermediate Special series from 1961 to 1963. Rover doesn´t die cast the block as Buick did - both the block and heads are sand cast now - but otherwise it is pretty much the same. Rover makes all the parts except for the hydraulic tappets which come from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Of course all English engines are expected to breathe through SU or equivalent carburetors and our old aluminium Buick hasn´t escaped this naturalization. Two SUs it is now, and Rover claims that they do such a jolly good job that the pair of them are equal to anybody alse´s 4-bbl. To back up that categorical imperative they are now rating the engine at 184 horsepower, 12 more than when it was a Buick.

Something Rove doesn´t say much about are the hood scoops, maybe because they are a little out of character in a luxury car. Anyway, there they are, three of them stuck on top of the hood. The outer two simply ventilate the engine compartment but the center one, in true ram-air tradition, ducts outside air through the air cleaner directly into the mouths of the SUs. In addition to all of this power staff there have been a few cosmetic touches put on the engine too, like cast aluminium valve corners and thite-painted exhaust manifolds.

The sad part is that all of this effort has done little to improve upon the performance level of the 2000 TC. Our ram-air test car would accelerate through the standing quarter-mile in 17.9 seconds with a terminal speed of 78 mph and never spin a wheel in process. The 2000 TC required 18.3 seconds to do the same task and finished at 76 mph. If this comparison makes you think that the passage of four years and the 75% increase in displacement have not done for Rover what you could have reasonably expected, then you see it the same way we do. Now there are some very solid reasons for the 3500 S´ poor performance. Even though the aluminium V8 weighs roughly the same as the single-overhead-cam Four it replaces, the car itself is about 330 lbs. heavier. All of this extra weight has gone into chassis strengthening to take the extra power, extra sound deadener, heavier bumpers and all the aforementioned luxury devices that are now standard equipment. In addition, the final drive has been lowered numerically from the 3.54-to-one in the 2000 TC to a more luxury car oriented 3.08 in the 3500 S. This misery is further compounded because you have no choice but the Borg Warner 3-speed automatic transmission - a device 1955-vintage in its operation and extremely reluctant to cooperate by being in the right gear at the right time. This is most important with the Rover V8. Even though it is American in heritage and is avowedly designed to be in harmony with the American conditions it is totally unlike our current luxury car engines which have the torque curves and peak at very low engine speeds - the kind of engines that work so well with long axle ratios and automatic transmissions. Instead, the Rover peaks power at 5.200 rpm, exactly at the red line, and the automatic transmission, which shifts at 4.300 in first and 4.700 in second, is calibrated so that, unless you manually shift it, you never get within 500 rpm of the power peak. If you leave the V8 car in Drive it has almost exactly the same level of performance in the quarter-mile as the 2000 TC. Obviously the new Rover´s powertrain offers little to those who are seeking an advancement in the world of sports sedans.

Regretfully, we must inform you that a similar dilemma - that of a genuinely superior system being hamstrung by a convenience device - also exists in the breaking department. We have always thought highly of the Rover´s brakes - a quarter of discs with the rears mounted inboard next to the differential - because they stopped the car quickly and in a straight line with no acrobatics. The same basic system has been continued on the 3500 S even though the rear discs have been enlarged and the calipers somewhat revised, but now the whole business has been power-assisted by one of the numbest boosters we´ve ever encountered. Not only is it non-linear in its operation but it is so slow in its reactions that it is still applying the brakes for a noticeable time interval after you´ve taken your foot off the pedal. In our braking test 285 feet (0.75g) were required to stop from 80 mph simply because we weren´t able to modulate the braking force well enough to do any better. In emergency situations this booster performs a distinct disservice and could hardly be considered a selling point to the enthusiast.

Progress has been  made in the area of handling to a far lesser extent, which is to say that handling is very much like it was in 1966. Suspension layout has been modified in the front only to make room for the wider engine and is still essentially the same no-camber-change independent set-up that it always was. Structural changes have been made at the rear and there has been some minor reshaping of components to clear the wider 185 HR 14 Pirellis but, in effect, it too is as before. The Rover is as surefooted on bumps as it always was but the real point to be made about the handling is that the body roll angle is so intimidating that you have no desire to indulge in sporting driving. The Rover is actually quite well balanced even though the lateral acceleration capability is only modest, but few will ever push it hard enough to find out.

But if you can put aside all of these thoughts about sports sedans and lift your mind to another plane, that of a well-to-do comfort seeker, the Rover´s image immediately grows taller. Our staff member remarked that it was the quietest car of its size he had ever driven and that brought unanimous agreement. This is true for several reasons but maybe the most surprising of them is that the 3500 S is almost exactly the same size as the Maverick. It is taller and narrower by about four inches in each direction but length and wheelbase are virtually identical. Don´t assume that we are throwing this size comparison in just to restrict the picture but don´t assume either that the Rover rides like a Buick or Cadillac. Instead the Rover rides like a very well developed European car with radial ply tires - which is to say that it has enough shock absorber control so that you know you are in a car and not a boat, it takes small bumps very, very smoothly and the larger ones you feel and hear only once, unlike the Detroit carriages which quiver and esciliate for several cycles after every major disturbance. For ride we like the Rover very much and we are amazed that it does so well with the factory recommended 30 psi in the tires.

We have already mentioned that today´s Rover is very concerned about being kind to its passengers. When we reminisce about the 2000 TC we recall winding out through the gears and just general light-hearted hairing around but already we have come to think of the 3500 S as an interior - a soft, quiet, leather appointed lounge. There are four deeply contoured bucket seats, one at each corner, and the fronts have infinitely adjustable reclining mechanisms. The seats are leather covered even though only on the areas that touch your backside. Everything else - the sides of the seats, the door panels and head liner - is done up in vinyl. Still, no matter how you execute the interior of a Maverick-size car there is never going to be an overabundance of space and that is a problem that forcibly puts the Rover into a class far different from American luxury cars - a very limited class when you consider the Rover´s $5398 base price. The simple truth is that the rear has too little head room for adult males - a 6-footer´s head hits the roof - and if the front seats are in a comfortable position for an average adult, the man in the rear is hard pressed for legroom. The usable interior space is very much like that of a Camaro even though the higher seats give a far different seating position. And the space problem extends to the trunk, where a greedy battery and spare tire put the squeeze on your picnic basket.

The driver´s territory is far more pleasant, however. All of his tools are tastefully presented; a hige 16-in. steering wheel that has not only a leather covered rim but spokes as well, a full set of instruments including a 140-mph speedometer and a 6000-rpm tachometer, and a push-button topped shift lever that sticks out of the vinyl covered console. Of course no Rover would be complete without its Ice-alert - a Rover exclusive of unquestionable value which blinks a warning light on the dash when the outside temperature drops below 35⁰F and glows solid yellow wherever the temperature is below freezing.

Draw your own conclusions about Ice-alerts but there is no doubt that the Rover´s interior is a nice place - nice enough to live in rather than just visit. Except for its modest dimensions we find it more satisfying than the Mercedes 250 or the Volvo 164 which are the logical competitors and it is with this feature that the 3500 S will make most of its new friends.

At this point it´s no secret that Rover is in need of new friends too. As a number of our readers who own past Rovers keep reminding us - and keep reminding Rover as well - the service record of the 2000 and the 2000 TC was none too good. This, combined with the problems of marrying the Triumph and Rover dealers after the British Leyland merger has caused a serious drop in sales - a drop that has reduced the current yearly volume to little more than 2000 cars. Rover representatives in this country admit that durability problems were far greater than they ever expected. The 2000, and particularly the 2000 TC, were developed with features that would appeal to the American market but they were never tested here and soon after they were put on the American market problems caused by corrosion, vast temperature variations not found in England, and the American driving style began to take a healthy whack at Rover´s new car warranty.

Mindful of its mistake, Rover has spent the last three years testing V8 models here because it knows that another series of unfaithful cars could sink the ship. We are not over-awed by the length of the test period because we know that finding solutions in a continent separated from the factory by the Atlantic can be a time consuming process. Still, there is every reason to be optimistic.

But Rover faces another problem, too. The 2000 TC is being continued and a new market has to be opened up for a visually similar car that sells for $1200 more while having a far less enthusiastic personality. The passage of time has brought us a Rover that wears  V8 emblems but the aging hasn´t heightened the flavor and aroma of a car to which we were once addicted. We liked our Rovers better when they were sports sedans.

0-60 mph 10.8 sec

top speed 120 mph (estimated)

Car & Driver / USA 11/1969

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