Background
It might require a significant leap of imagination today, but when the P6 was first launched at the Earls Court Motor Shown in 1963 its remit was to appeal to a racier, sportier, younger crowd than its forbear, the P5.
The Rover P5 'Auntie' was distinctly 1950s in outlook and was the car of choice for family doctors or grammar school headmasters. It was tweed, brogues and a briar pipe. The P6 was the domain of airline pilots or architects and was more leisure slacks, turtle-necks and 20 Rothmans.
Somehow, the P6’s lifespan bridged the chronologically and culturally enormous gap between post-war austerity and the coming of punk rock. At its launch, The Beatles were at No.1 with ‘She loves you’. When it ceased production in 1977, the Stranglers were walking on the beaches and looking at the peaches.
Available with either a 2.0-litre, a 2.2-litre or a 3.5-litre V8 under the bonnet, the car was badged as a 2000, 2200 or 3500 depending on the depth of the first owner’s pockets and his or her willingness to trust BL engineering at ever higher speeds and degrees of complexity.
Even though it was a contemporary of the P5 for many years, the P6 was a much more modern car – so much so that it won the inaugural European Car of the Year award in 1964 with just the base engine under the bonnet.
Sophisticated for the period, the P6 had de Dion rear suspension and four-wheel disc brakes (the P5 was launched only five years earlier with front drums). A unibody design, the panels were unstressed and bolted to a unitary frame, just like the Citroen DS, the car that loomed large in the inspiration of this and many other cars of the era.
The interior wasn’t just stylish: it was designed to be safer for the driver and passengers than almost anything that had come before. In this, as in so many ways, the P6 was a genuinely ground-breaking car.
Boot space was limited though, thanks to the highly effective but intrusive rear suspension.
The Series One cars had the two-litre engine and 104bhp, which was only barely adequate, especially given how well the P6 handled and stopped. A 3.5-litre, V8-powered version arrived in 1968 and endowed the P6 with the sort of alacrity and élan that allowed the car to really shine. The top speed rose to 114mph, and the 0-60mph time dropped to 10.5 seconds, making it quicker than almost anything in its price bracket.
The Series Two arrived in 1970 with a plastic rather than alloy front air intake, a new bonnet that featured V8 ‘blips’ no matter what engine lay underneath, and different rear lights. The interior was updated too, gaining new instrumentation that comprised circular gauges and rotary switches.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, the ‘S’ in the Rover P6S’s name doesn’t stand for Sport but Synchromesh, the car being introduced in 1971, a time when having synchromesh on all four gears was something worth boasting about.
Taxonomy aside, the V8-engined P6S was much quicker than the automatic, its manual gearing slashing the 0-60mph time from 10.1 seconds to nine seconds, and reducing its fuel consumption by around 10%.
