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
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