The Rover P6 was the must-have car for an ambitious generation. Six decades on, we recount the story of its development from styling sketch to national institution – and why it caught the opposition napping
It’s 9 October 1963 and Rover’s new saloon is sitting under the glare of carefully positioned spotlights. It’s launch day for the P6 2000 at the Earls Court motor show and the firm’s normally understated management is unusually effusive as it prepares to reveals its new baby to the world’s press for the first time. There are nerves, of course, as there are with the launch of any new car – especially one that has taken a full seven years to develop and is so radically and obviously different from what came before.
Fast-forward to today and being reminded that the P6 is now old enough to collect its bus pass will probably come as a bit of a shock to anyone who remembers its indomitable road presence as a police car or enjoyed its effortless cruising and gentleman’s club interior as a driver or passenger. Yes, that’s right. The UK’s favourite establishment motor of the Sixties and Seventies made its debut six decades ago, putting the Rover Company firmly on the map for a new generation of aspirational buyers.
DEVELOPMENT STORY
The P6 was viewed as a much-needed replacement for the successful P4 ‘Auntie’ Rover when development kicked off in 1956. The plan for a carmaker as conservative as Rover would ordinarily be to come up with more of the same – abeautifully-built, fine-driving saloon perfectly in tune with the bank manager types who typically bought these cars.
However the burgeoning executive car market was in a state of flux at this time with stolid six-cylinder cars typified by the P4 and big BMC Farinas going head-to-head with the rather flashier Ford Zephyr and Vauxhall Velox. There was a significant tax break for cars that cost less than £2000 and as such there was massive demand at this price point. Rover clearly wanted to own this market sector.
Its strategy saw much of the P4’s home counties tradition replaced by something much more radical. This fresh new thinking came on the crest of a wave of new engineering talent flooding into the company. The team was led by Peter Wilks, with Spen King and Gordon Bashford pushing the project forward. Bashford had already been working on a ‘baseframe’ style car, which would form the basis of the new car.
Rover’s management, led by the Wilks brothers, Maurice and Spencer, were keeping a steadying hand on the P6 project’s tiller, though, so the hydropneumatic suspension and flat-four engine that the engineers wanted were ruled out. However, a gas turbine power unit as used in the T3 and T4 prototypes soldiered on in the development labs for a little long
