Rover P5 – Something to Rally Around

Now, this might just be us, but stick a roll cage in a car and we’re instantly interested. It turns the excitement up to eleven, it gives the car some bite and some purpose. A car with a roll cage, if you ask us, transcends all others. It’s hard, it’s proper. Plus, and this is the five-year old in us talking, it’s cool. 

Any of the usual suspects; a Mk1 Escort, an old Triumph, our very own Cortina, stick a load of scaffolding in them and we’re in the room, looking, smiling. And of course, we’re itching to put the car through the kind of paces in which that cage might have to earn its keep. After all, a cage is there to increase safety. The fact it’s also cool is merely a handy bonus.

Now we’re not being childish here. There is logic to the roll cage lust. A cage lifts the mundane and shows it as a competitor, as a fighter, as car not to be reckoned with. A car with a cage is a serious bit of kit. A 205 is hum-drum – a 205 with a cage? Steady on. Our Cortina – nice car, but just and old Ford, right? Fit a cage and you know we want to go hunting for apexes. So what happens, then, if you fill a Rover P5B with metal tubes? 

Well, as you can see here, you get a car that you look at in a way you never thought possible. And this Rover P5B has the minerals to back up the need for a cage. It started life as your typical bank manager’s car, but later in life, when most P5Bs are being polished in readiness for the local village fete, this one was sent to RPS, who you may remember from a recent feature. 

RPS makes its money by converting the classics into the competitors. This Rover, when it rolled up in 2017, was to be no exception. The owner wanted to use it for long-distance classic rallying, namely Peking to Paris. Just a short event, nothing too major. Ahem.

Old Rovers are tough, and the P5B with its Buick-derived V8 (hence the B) was one of the toughest. However, to take on the monumental task of driving on gruelling long distance rallies via the roads less travelled, some significant work had to be done. First of all, the interior had to go. In its place went that roll cage, a pair of Recaro racing seats, four-point TRS harnesses, a Monit trip meter for watching the miles, a fire extinguisher and a gaggle of VDO instrumentation. All standard clobber for a competition rally car, but when you shove it all into the gentleman’s club that is a P5B, it’s all a bit perverse, but in a good way. We applaud the owner for choosing such a car rather than something more conventional, and we relish in the odd sensation that comes from sitting in a rally-prepped Rover.

Under the skin, considerable work has been done as you might expect. There’s a huge, long-range fuel cell in the boot. The suspension has been uprated, featuring a seam-welded front subframe, Bilstein dampers, uprated springs and of course, a hefty sump guard. 

Engine wise, all is not as you might expect. The 3.5 V8 is present, but it’s not a snarling, modified animal. Instead it has been fitted with twin coils for improved reliability, it has free-flowing exhaust manifolds and there is electronic ignition. On the back of the engine lives a Rover 77mm five-speed manual ‘box. This then goes on to turn an uprated prop and beefier halfshafts.

This car doesn’t have a 500bhp engine because it doesn’t need one. Rallying is one of those things people instantly associate with speed and with pace notes and with huge air over jumps. And while that is indeed the case in, say, the WRC, it’s not the bread and butter of endurance rallying. The object here, for this Rover, is to survive and to make it to the finish line, not to cross it at 150mph. Backwards. On fire.

This car has been built to be tough, and it clearly worked, as its first outing was the 2017 Pan-America, a gruelling 1,900 event over rough terrain, roads and through wildly variable weather conditions. The Rover? Oh, it came first. A testament to not only how RPS builds a car, but also how tough the old girl is herself.

For us, classic cars are best when they’re used. And if that means they rolled out for regular shows, great. However, there is a delight and a sense of the spectacular when it comes to cars like this. It shouldn’t be a rally car. One might argue that it should be treated a little gentler. It almost certainly shouldn’t be able to complete a 1,900 mile endurance rally, let alone win the damn thing. But here we are, it is, it has and it did. And the classic car world is all the better for it.

Huge thanks to RPS for facilitating this shoot. The Rover P5B is currently for sale. But RPS won’t just supply the car. The team there will guide you and support you through the Rover’s next competitive event. It’s what they do, and it’s what they want to see this car doing.