His initial drawings and models show something unfortunately akin to a Marina but, fortunately, a happy accident occurred.
#News rover v12 download series#
Construction was modelled on the Series Land Rover with a steel box frame hung with aluminium panels.ĭavid Bache, designer of the sleek Rover P6 saloon, was appointed with the task of designing the new car. The necessary power would be provided by a lightweight, all-alloy 3.5-litre V8 licensed from General Motors which, as an aside, was the first ever production engine to be turbocharged in the 1962 Oldsmobile Turbo Jetfire. It was to be coil sprung all-round with long travel to ensure both comfort on-road and wheel articulation off it, and would be the first car to offer permanent four-wheel-drive as it needed to better the by now almost 20-year-old Series Land Rover. Despite being Rover’s new vehicle engineering head, King was Land Rover through and through.Ī unique combination of comfort, style and abilityĪccording to King, “The idea was to combine the comfort and on-road ability of a Rover saloon with the off-road ability of a Land Rover. So in 1966 Rover engineers Charles Spencer King and Gordon Bashford began developing the Range Rover formula. Alas in those less status-obsessed times the Road Rover failed to persuade Rover’s management and was eventually shelved in 1958.įast forward just under a decade and Rover, mindful of the success of cars such as the Ford Bronco, International Harvester Scout and Jeep Wagoneer in the US, decided that the time was now right to resurrect the idea of a less tractor-like Land Rover model. The car was in continuous development for so long it was actually replaced with a second series prototype and was scheduled to go on sale in 1960. A high-riding estate car with long travel suspension and some limited off-road ability (but not as much as its looks suggested), you may recognise this as the formula for every single crossover ever. So in 1951 Rover decided to try and capture the rugged nature of the Series cars while basing it on the two-wheel-drive P4 chassis. The company’s first attempt, the 80-inch Station Wagon of 1949, was coachbuilt by Tickford and proved too expensive, with only a few hundred sold. The Range Rover had its genesis in the early 1950s when Rover, fearing that the popularity of the rough and ready Series Land Rover, introduced in 1948 (the company was founded that year by brothers Maurice and Spencer Wilks), was likely to be short-lived, sought to broaden its appeal.
0 kommentar(er)
