Taken from www.aronline.co.uk
More information about the car.
Charterhouse Auctions is offering this 1975-registered Rover 3500 at its 16 February 2014 sale, held at at the Royal Bath & West Showground, Shepton Mallet in Somerset. And as the SD1 wasn’t introduced until 1976, that makes this one rather special.
The car<*** id="itxthook0icon" class="itxtrst itxtrstimg itxthookicon" style="padding: 0px 0px 0px 4px ! important; margin: 0px ! important; vertical-align: baseline ! important;" src="http://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png" alt="" />, which sports chassis number 005, is what Charterhouse describes as an, ‘important piece of British motoring heritage’, has an estimate of £7000-9000. The car has something of an interesting history, and many SD1 aficionado will tell you that it’s far from factory original – especially the interior, but the identity of the car is in no dispute.
Classic Car Buyer Editorial Director, Peter Simpson recalled, ‘I first saw that car in around 1987-’88 – it went through the infamous ‘pay out on the night if you’ve got a utility bill’ Maidstone Car Auction<*** id="itxthook1icon" class="itxtrst itxtrstimg itxthookicon" style="padding: 0px 0px 0px 4px ! important; margin: 0px ! important; vertical-align: baseline ! important;" src="http://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png" alt="" />. The auctioneer announced that it was a prototype, but in that environment I just didn’t believe them, and assumed it was a nicked car that had been ringed by someone who’d used the ID of an N-reg P6 3500. At that point it was running, MoT’d and didn’t look too bad. The sickening part, though, is that it seemed to sell for £250.’
Octane‘s Deputy Editor, Mark Dixon added: ‘I rescued this car from a field in the early 1990s. Sadly, the guy who restored it didn’t retain unique pre-production features like the boot floor, shaped for a straight exhaust pipe – he preferred to replace most of the repairable metal with new<*** id="itxthook2icon" class="itxtrst itxtrstimg itxthookicon" style="padding-top: 0px!important; padding-right: 0px!important; padding-bottom: 0px!important; padding-left: 4px!important; vertical-align: baseline!important; margin: 0px!important;" src="http://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png" alt="" /> panels from Rimmers.’
Mark added: ‘I paid about £250 for it. Or, more accurately I persuaded the mag I was working for, Popular Classics, to buy it and offer it as a competition prize. The winner didn’t want it, so we did a deal later on.’
In 2007, the car was offered again, now sporting a new interior, which had been been taken from a 1979-registered example, which had been sold by Keith Adams.
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