Well I'm afraid Hardcastle is wrong! This came from the Rover engine team who did the V8 in the first place along with Rover senior engineering management via James Taylor. It was always considered by Rover that the bore on the 3.5 was the sensible maximum for that bore spacing, something borne out by the problems Rover had with liners when they eventually upped the bore for the 3.9/4.2/4.0/4.6. So the higher capacity version was always going to have stretched bore centers. The error made in installing the line was an inability to cope with this, the boring machines were fixed in such a way that they couldn't easily be spread.
Thus, at roughly the same time, the 4.4 set sail for Australia, where there was going to be a new engine line anyway, so it wasn't an issue to alter the bore spacings, and the 3.5 was developed into the 3.9 for the P8 and subsequently the Range Rover. Remember that the P8 styling bucks all read Rover 4000, not Rover 4400.
Some of the confusion undoubtedly stems from some of the P8 engineering prototypes running the Australian 4.4 as aprt of Rover's development of it. I'm still unclear exactly what Leyland Australia contributed to it that caused them to be so robust in describing it as an Austarlian developed engine. Clearly they did the development for production, but that shouldn't have affected the design and performance of the engine at all noticeably. The only thing I can think of that looks non Rover on it are the "mushroom" pillars suppotring the rockers - I can't imagine Rover ever sanctioning that.
Again at roughly the same time, the P10 was in preparation. This was a BL board initiated project, who were concerned that they were getting a top end heavy model line up and wanted something to tackle the Granada head on. You could argue that they should have asked for a new Austin Westminster, but BMC wasn't flavour of the month, they'd just proved decisevely that they couldn't manage the task care of the Land Crab based Austin 3 ltr! Anyway, Rover's response was to take a P8 floorpan and adapt it for much simplified suspension. Plus they set about a new Rover 4 cylinder. This carried the capacity and bore spacing of the old P6 2.2 engine but was slanted over and had DOHC and 16V which together with individual throttle body injection gave 160 bhp. When you look at SD1 today, which is P10 in bodyshell and suspension but not in trim or quality or engines, the strange Spen King pivoted axle and that DOHC engine are hardly what I would have envisaged as a Granada buster! More akin to a new entry level Rover.
The P10 2.2ltr stirkes me as a surprising choice of configuration for a Granada buster unless it was built with half an eye on turning it into a modern V8 for the P8 and Range Rover. So my interpretation of the P8 4.4ltr myth is either confusion over the Australian prototype engines or that they were referring to a stillborn V8 version of the P10 engine. Since all the leaks about P8 came from the very top of Rover in frustration at the cancellation of P8 and at the creation of the Specialist Division, along with very detailed press breifings with normally highly confidential photographs, I'm inclined to believe the latter. With the amount of senior management oversight of what was being said, I don't think they'd have let the press get confused over the Australian engine. And there were definitely very specific reports of the P8 being destined to have a 4.4.
So there you go - no proof that the P8 4.4 was the quad cam engine, but equally, good evidence that it wasn't the Australian engine.
Chris
