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Weekly Motor Fix: jet-age Rover

26 May, 2015

Although most will have heard of JET1 — the gas turbine–powered version of Rover’s venerable P4 — few are aware that Rover got involved with the Whittle jet engine as far back as the ’40s. Indeed, fitted to a twin-engined Wellington, the first Rover W2B turbo-jet engines took their maiden flight on August 9, 1942.

Following further tests, the British Ministry of Aircraft Production–sponsored jet project was taken over by Rolls-Royce in 1943. However, Rover persisted with their development of the gas-turbine engine with the aim of producing a series of road cars. Although that idea would ultimately prove to be unsuccessful, Rover Gas Turbines Ltd (established in 1953) continued to produce engines for many years — the group becoming part of British Leyland in 1967. Subsequently, Rover-developed gas-turbine engines would find a place in trucks and British Rail’s APT-E — an experimental train that ran four Rover-built gas turbines, and was first tested in 1972. The high-speed APT-E was able to reach speeds of around 250kph.

Perhaps Rover’s best-known jet-powered vehicle was the Rover-BRM cars that ran several times at the Le Mans 24 Hours race. With a chassis derived from a contemporary BRM F1 car, the Rover-BRM’s gas turbine ran on paraffin, idled at 28,000rpm and ran up to 55,000rpm at load. Fifty years ago, in June 1965, the Rover-BRM made its final appearance at Le Mans. Driven by Jackie Stewart and Graham Hill, the innovative jet-powered car lasted the entire 24 hours of the race, eventually finishing in tenth place overall, and also earning honours as the first British car to cross the finish line.

The Stewart/Hill was recently restored and will make an appearance at this year’s Goodwood Revival meeting in the UK. New Zealand Classic Car hopes to print a feature on Rover’s jet-age cars with the help of a New Zealand Classic Car reader who was actually part of the Rover Gas Turbine group from 1956 to 1967.

Almost mythical pony

25 July, 2024

The Shelby came to our shores in 2003. It went from the original New Zealand owner to an owner in Auckland. Malcolm just happened to be in the right place with the right amount of money in 2018 and a deal was done. Since then, plenty of people have tried to buy it off him. The odometer reads 92,300 miles. From the condition of the car that seems to be correct and only the first time around.
Malcolm’s car is an automatic. It has the 1966 dashboard, the back seat, the rear quarter windows and the scoops funnelling air to the rear brakes.
He even has the original bill of sale from October 1965 in California.

Becoming fond of Fords part two – happy times with Escorts

17 July, 2024

In part one of this Ford-flavoured trip down memory lane I recalled a sad and instructive episode when I learned my shortcomings as a car tuner, something that tainted my appreciation of Mk2 Ford Escort vans in particular. Prior to that I had a couple of other Ford entanglements of slightly more redeeming merit. There were two Mk1 Escorts I had got my hands on: a 1972 1300 XL belonging to my father and a later, end-of-line, English-assembled 1974 1100, which my partner and I bought from Panmure Motors Ford in Auckland in 1980. Both those cars were the high water mark of my relationship with the Ford Motor Co. I liked the Mk1 Escorts. They were nice, nippy, small cars, particularly the 1300, which handled really well, and had a very precise gearbox for the time.
Images of Jim Richards in the Carney Racing Williment-built Twin Cam Escort and Paul Fahey in the Alan Mann–built Escort FVA often loomed in my imagination when I was driving these Mk1 Escorts — not that I was under any illusion of comparable driving skills, but they had to be having just as much fun as I was steering the basic versions of these projectiles.