Bank Manager’s Vehicle of Choice
Postwar, Rover cars were a delicious dichotomy. On the outside, they were smartly conservative — nothing too weird or flashy. But underneath, there were always some significant technical advancements that belied the stolid upper-middle-class style. Before the war, Rovers were utterly contemporary in their design and engineering; after WWII ended and Britain’s manufacturing base got going again, things got considerably more technically innovative.
The first of these really new Rovers (not just rehashed prewar models built to get the production lines moving again) was the short-lived P3 range of 1948-’49. The P3 generation consisted of two models—the four-cylinder 60, and the six-cylinder 75; the P3 designation simply meant that this generation of Rover sported the company’s third chassis in the postwar era. Those four-
