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Cambs123

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I have a Rover P6 V8 Auto and I am based in Cambridge. I bought the car "blind" from Ebay two years ago and completely trusted the sellers description. When I went to pick up the car, the sellers condition was pretty accurate, so I paid the balance and drove her back up to Cambridge. Over the past two years I have found out much of the car's history and I wrote to every single previous owner in the hope that they would still be around and that they could further me with more information. I had a few replies but the best one was when I discovered that when the car was first built (registered 1974) it was originally Tobacco Leaf with a brown interior, but an enthusiast changed her completely to a white body and installed black boxed leather seats. This was not a general respray, but a full body colour change. I have seen inside the panels and these are the same colour as the outside. The seats are gorgeous and very comfortable. She must have looked absolutely stunning when this work was done. Over the years, the car was exchanged by several owners and the milage had been kept down, with the bodywork and interior maintained. The engine, from the first day I bought her, however had a loud ticking noise and she was in need of a good service.
I have tried to put up some pics, but unfortunately at the moment the size of each image is too large to upload.
Her registration number is RXY 165M and she is nicknamed Roxy and proving to be an expensive lady to maintain!
 
Hi - welcome :O)

Do you have any pictures?

This is a great place to get great advice for your p6. It's certainly been invaluable to me already :O)

Rich.
 
Hi and thanks for you comments.
The first registered owner was British Leyland dated 30th January 1974. It stayed with them for just four months and then sold onwards. The second owner had the car for nineteen years! (I am the eighth owner since first registration). It was originally Tobacco Leaf with a brown interior. The car was then sold onwards and owned by another person for just one year.
The third owner resprayed it white on 21st May 1996 and changed the interior to black boxed leather seating. That owner kept the car for eleven years and completed just 5,000 miles during that time! The shortest distance he drove in one year was to get the car MOT'D and was just ten miles! The shortest period of ownership in the cars' history is just one month.
Currently the car stands at 52,405 miles, with seventeen MOT certificates.
I will try to put up more unformation and photo's very soon.
 
Welcome to the forum cambs123, sounds like an interesting car you've got there, nice that you've got a bit of history too. It sounds like a nice basis for a bit of detective work. If you're interested there's a meet fairly close to you in Whittlesford near Duxford, it's listed in the events and local meetings section under cambs/beds/herts meet invitation and if memory serves me correctly the next one's this weekend. Hopefully will get to meet you soon.
 
DaveHerns said:
Why would BL register it to themselves for 4 months ?
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My guess; Sold new through a Dealership that took an order + deposit, but the end-Users credit failed prior to delivery, and the manufacturer then offered the car at a discount when the same spec. and Color was ordered through another Dealer, 4 months later
Why 4 months? they probably had a clause in the purchase agreement that gave the buyer 90 days to settle after the 1st registration, ( they didn't ) and the last month was spent in tying up another deal to a buyer who got a 4 month old "Tobacco Leaf" Rover with a full factory warranty and no waiting time for delivery; an easy sell

GW
 
Our old Range Rover was registered by Land Rover initially. I've seen it happen quite often on various makes.
I think it could be to do with massaging sales figures/quota's more often than not.
 
I bought a new car ten years ago and it had been pre registered with the dealer, so I was the second owner. It had twelve miles on the clock and was owned less than a month by the dealership. I discovered that this was very common to get "end of month" sales up. The dealer knocked £4,000 off the list price, so we were both happy! This may explain the reason behind my own Rovers' early history??
 
Cambs123 said:
I bought a new car ten years ago and it had been pre registered with the dealer, so I was the second owner. It had twelve miles on the clock and was owned less than a month by the dealership. I discovered that this was very common to get "end of month" sales up. The dealer knocked £4,000 off the list price, so we were both happy! This may explain the reason behind my own Rovers' early history??
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Typically a game only played with base to midline models with little-no options in "unchallenging" colours. because to dealers its a numbers game; 31 cars this month instead of 30, but the 31st car will be a cheapy they can ditch quickly; not a relatively high value model in "Tobacco Leaf" but a shortwheel base LandRover in Grey with radio and heater delete. less outlay, less risk, higher chance of selling it "this month"
A new car buyer won't compromise on the color and options they want unless a car is deeply discounted and/or a "drive it away today" deal + the higher the price car, the more conservative the buyer. I would bet the Rover was a deal that went South ; that Color would've been too hard a sell for a dealer to want to stock it
In car dealer speak that's: "Doom Brown"

GW
 
Alternatively, it may have been used as a company car for that period and for some reason, not required and then sold onwards? (at a bargain price) What was the economy like at that time and how were Rover doing? Wasn't that a period of unemployment, strikes and high interest rates? All of the owners of this car have been based in Southern England, including me.
 
Cambs123 said:
Alternatively, it may have been used as a company car for that period and for some reason, not required and then sold onwards? (at a bargain price) What was the economy like at that time and how were Rover doing? Wasn't that a period of unemployment, strikes and high interest rates? All of the owners of this car have been based in Southern England, including me.
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How many miles had it done when the first owner bought it at 4 months ?
Probably very few ; Rover just stored it. Rover sold a shade under 330,000 P6's, and for every passenger car they were making 10 LandRovers. British Leyland would soon mess things up but not by 1974, they were still a success story. However Rover did get a "worst UK car" award from a magazine for a P6B that had some legion of documented mechanical failures repaired under warranty, and that may have caused some buyers to cancel deals around that time too

GW
 
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