Design Origins of the P6

chrisyork

Active Member
Over the years I have seen numbers of references to the origin of the base unit type construction of the P6. Most assume it to have been heavily inspired by, or even a direct copy of, the Citroen DS of 1955. The Citroen is the only other car ever to have used this style of construction where the skin panels are non load bearing items of trim, attached after the car is complete and driveable.

Whilst going through my history files during unpacking after my house move I came across an article in The Motor from January '67 by their then technical editor Harold Hastings. This article considers the early stages of the P6 project with the evident benefit of access to the design department files. It appears that Rover were giving unusual access to normally secret resources at about this time - showing off the P6BS sports car being another example - perhaps the design team were sore about the Leyland and BMC mergers and were keen to get their heritage into the public domain before being subsumed by BL?

As is reasonably well known Hastings quotes the true start of P6 as the issue of the firm design brief on 1st January 1958. Less well known is that P6 nearly happened around five years earlier. A design brief issued on April 21 1953 is remarkably similar in all important respects, including size (22cwt) and the base unit style construction, to P6. Just that this brief suffered what we would now call mission creep and emerged in 1959 as P5! So the base unit intention predates the DS by at least two years. No doubt Rover's designers were suitably emboldened when they eventually saw DS though! In fact mention is made of an even earlier proposal in 1951 by Olaf Poppe, Rover's Swedish engine designer from pre war days.

The other interesting light shone on P6's early history is the intended production date and the reasons it wasn't met. Progress appears to have been more or less on track for a launch date of October 1961 when the government caused a 9 month suspension of development work by refusing to sanction the physical expansion required at Solihull. This was eventually resolved by building a new plant at Pengham in South Wales to build the gearboxes and transmissions and to relocate the spares department. Reading between the lines the car was ready for a launch date of October '62 after this delay, but the factories weren't. Indeed, even after the launch in October '63, it seems to have been well into 1964 before serious production was underway. There were only 7,235 cars built in '64 versus 27,814 in '65. This sequence is supported by the freedom to divert Talago prototype no 10 to be used as the base for T4, the gas turbine car, revealed to the press in November '61. The last prototype produced was P6/16 in August '62 which appears to have been almost 100% as per a production car; just that there wasn't a production line to build a pre-production prototype on! This car, I presume, is the one now owned by Ian Trapp and recently restored in Talago Grey. It had been used as a prototype fror the V8 installation gaining a Buick V8 and strengthened 2000 manual gearbox. According to Taylor it was also reshelled in 1970.

So if production didn't start until so far into 1964 why did Rover announce the P6 in October '63? We know that a major part of the reason Rover sought out Leyland trucks to take them over in 1967 was the financial hangover caused by the cost of the production fascilities for P6 and the lateness of its launch. I wonder if it is possible that Rover needed to demonstrate to their banks the demand that existed for the P6 in order to for the banks to release the finance to complete Solihull and Pengham?

Chris York
 
Hello Chris, I was looking through Thoroughbred and Classic Car magazine (June 2008) which has an article about the T4 with comments on what might have been by Spen King. By way of disclaimer I am not knowledgeable first hand on the history of Rovers other than what i have come across/read in books and magazines, so I will just quote from the article in the event it helps you with your enquiries or confirms the info you have.

The following is an extract from the above said article (unless you have read the said magazine, then my apologies for repeating, but hope it is of interest to forum participants) single quotation marks is Spen Kings comments as printed in the article (original words/article by Paul Hardman).

Quote 'The P6 is a complicated story in itself' says King. 'Development started around 1957 and there was a conviction among the younger people in the company that we needed to make a different sort of motor car to the old P5. In paralell we were thinking about a gas turbine motor car. They were very much born together, with people who worked together.'
The T4's 1961 launch gave motorists a glimpse of what the new P6 would look like two years before the arrival of the Rover 2000 - the turbine powered car was built on the tenth P6 prototype but with an extended snout to cover its futuristic powerplant. Beneath the sleek, bolt on panels was a King-devised skeleton structure, or 'base unit' in Rover speak, using the same principle as the Citroen DS, launched in 1955. End Quote,

Regards,
 
I hadn't spotted that article, I'll have to track it down for the collection.

You are very kind to my interest and depreciative of your own knowledge! My Rover underpinnings start from my Grandfather who was a carpenter and moved to the Humber Motor Co in Coventry in 1911(?) to make hood sticks. He soon transferred to the Rover and rose through the ranks to become foreman of the body shop pre war and to retire as foreman of the experimental shop post war. My Father followed in the family footsteps to do an apprenticeship in the service dep't pre war, before moving on to Dennis Brothers at Guildford and then into armaments at RAE Farnborough.

We always drove Rovers and I learnt to drive on our first P6, a '65 2000 going on to enjoy a '72 TC and a '73 3500S. Our ties via my Grandfather to the company remained strong, so that we were able to watch Roger Clark testing the Monte Carlo car on what is now the Land Rover test track. And for my father to have written in Autumn '64 to ask whether it would be possible for his newly ordered 2000 to have the new 7 dial instrument display. We had to wait another 7 years before that made production in the series 2 models! Although it did make a brief foray onto the line in '65 in the much lamented 2000S production run.

My career has been in specification and development of unusual vehicles, albeit in a rail plant environment, so I am keenly aware of what goes on behind the scenes in engineering offices. I am also experienced at board level investment decision making, so have a good background for forensic enquiry as to what - probably - happened in the creation of what we saw in the showroom. Alas most of my actual information is gained from second hand source material - like that T&CC article. But it is surprising how much information is out there if you have the wit to spot it and piece it together - and of course spot where the gaps and probabilities are!

My family interest in Rover is obvious, but I also think they were blessed in the mid fifties and sixties with an extremely rare combination of a spectacularely talented engineering team together with a supportive and risk taking senior management. One or the other is common, the combination of both is what gets you cars like P6, P8 and Range Rover!

Spen, of course is still involved with real Rovers (not the BL or Austin Rover variety) via JE Engineering in Coventry http://www.jeengineering.co.uk/index.htm. I'd love to have the money to ask him to put his 195hp stage 2 Discovery TD5 into a P6!

Chris
 
If you would like me to scan and send you a copy, let me know, if you have difficulty locating the article that is. My Rover associations only amount to starting an apprentiship (in 1979 age 16) as a motor mechanic (just for 3 months prior to emigrating to Australia) with Dutton Forshaw (Sunderland UK) and failing to fill an sd1 with new oil after an oil change (another mechanic realised this when the oil warning light was staying on a bit longer than normal) and watching a panal beater lead fill damage to the rear quarter of an sd1 after being reversed off a car transporter. Then a while later my dad owning a 72 Rover 2000SC and my ownership of an 85 sd1 3500 (series 2) and hence, once that V8 is in your blood, my latest 74 P6B, oh and 2 weeks use of a friends 93 Range Rover Vouge while on holiday in Scotland (in 93) and a desire to one day own (range rover), this, another of Spen Kings design masterpieces. After coming to Australia I started an apprentiship as a Mechanical fitter and am still in that role today but much better at oil changes!

Regards
 
Origin of species, seems appropriate with the connection to Darwin anniversary :) The history of Rover is about in basic form now and probably more depth than most of us know should we care to dig deeper. Is there any chance that people who were intimatly involved in it's conception inception and production are still alive and able to impart more in a coherent history of this car and the historical structures that surrounded it. I am sure a truely interesting (to me) documentary or book could be produced but I suspect time must be running short with those people now retired or at rest.

Few car to me stand out the way the P6 does, maybe the Austin 7 or the Model T cars that form the landscape of our youth (I have always wanted a 7 or a T)
I really would love to see a Docco made on the rover car company and especially the P5 and P6 cars.

Graeme
 
SirD66, thanks for the tip-off, great little film, terrific soundtrack, so few cars on the roads, wow, that made my evening! (I should get out more!)
 
This car, I presume, is the one now owned by Ian Trapp and recently restored in Talago Grey. It had been used as a prototype for the V8 installation gaining a Buick V8 and strengthened 2000 manual gearbox. According to Taylor it was also reshelled in 1970.

Chris York
I think this story of how the Buick V8 came to the UK is a real favourite of mine and it has been told many times - however I have just seen it told all over again by Iain of Tyrells as he goes into SD1 lore this video is a real treat for Buick V8 fans
 
I think this story of how the Buick V8 came to the UK is a real favourite of mine and it has been told many times - however I have just seen it told all over again by Iain of Tyrells as he goes into SD1 lore this video is a real treat for Buick V8 fans

Turned it off part-way through. If you actually want to know about the history of the Rover V8, then read James Taylor's book on it, not the 30-second 5/10 version on youtube.
 
The last prototype produced was P6/16 in August '62 which appears to have been almost 100% as per a production car; just that there wasn't a production line to build a pre-production prototype on! This car, I presume, is the one now owned by Ian Trapp and recently restored in Talago Grey. It had been used as a prototype fror the V8 installation gaining a Buick V8 and strengthened 2000 manual gearbox. According to Taylor it was also reshelled in 1970.

I'd forgotten about this quote. Talago Grey is still a bit of an old wives tales. The colours evolved over time. I really do think that there is only one panel to look at when talking about the version of grey used on the early development cars, and that's the panel currently in my shed that dates from 1962.
 
I was at the Enfield Pageant of Motoring the other week where I met a few P6ers. One friendly fellow owns an Estate Agent with their offices in an old Routemaster bus. Noticing his fading bus was in need of a fresh coat of paint, he enquired of London Transport what the correct shade of red is called. He was told there is a bus garage somewhere in the capitol with a wooden stick, kept under lock and key, with some of 'the correct shade of red!' at one end of it! He is welcome to visit, but the treasured stick cannot leave the premises. :):D
 
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