This site was created 16 September 2000
This site was last updated 5th December 2006
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About my Car Who's owned my car? Pictures of my car My Rover abroad A history of my car breaking down! Running an SD1 on LPG |
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Other Cars Pictures of other cars Roger the Rover (2300 manual) Ultimate Road Test - SD1 vs. MG ZT 260 Meeeshell the Metro Smart Car Comparison Staples2Naples banger rally in a £100 Jaguar |
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The SD1 Club Links and important dates Pictures from the Swindon Regional Meetings Pictures from the National Rally 2003 |
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What's new? Coming soon: Corgi Classics have immortalised Bob! Coming soon: Video footage of Bob. Hear the Sports Exhaust! See him in new media..! |
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Welcome to my Rover SD1 website. My name is Gareth Hopkins, and this is my space on the Internet! These pages are dedicated to my old car. I have owned "Bob", a 1982 Rover SD1 3500SE since 15th March 1996.
First
job when I bought the car was to put it through an MoT.
That way, I could find out what other horrors it had hidden from me when
I gave it a once over at the point of sale.
I knew about the rotten doors, the fact that it never started in Park,
always in Neutral, that the handbrake had the stopping power of a bullet out of
a rifle and that the spare tyre in the boot was, shall we say, “suspect”.
However, none of this made the car dangerous.
What did make the car a liability, for this is what the nice MoT man
said, was the shot suspension bushes, the headlights, the emissions and the rust
hole behind the off side rear wheel. Oh,
and the front brake pads were a tad thin. A
previous owner had thoughtfully cut the sensor wires in order to prevent future
owners from realising their brakes were just about to give up on them…
In
1998, following months of scrimping and saving, the car was sent tail between
legs so to speak, to the local crash repair centre for a body restoration.
Four replacement doors, a replacement sunroof panel, two brand new front
wings, a new bonnet, windscreen, bumper, and two repair sections for the rear
wheel arches were handed over with the car for what was to be six weeks work.
Four months later (just don’t get me started on that…), I
exchanged a cheque for £2500 for a re-sprayed, waxoyled and gleaming SD1.
I then fitted some new indicator lenses as the old ones seemed too dull
next to the shiny paint. I bought
some “V8” wing badges to replace the “3500” ones originally fitted the
car. And so the car rewarded my
efforts by promptly failing the MoT *AGAIN* a few days later.
Since then, the car has been converted to run on Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG - Autogas) and runs almost exclusively on it. When I converted, I was paying around £0.379 per litre (currently around £0.419 per litre) but the car has already repaid the conversion costs. Check out the link above to follow that story.
Bob and
I were making what we advanced drivers refer to as “good progress” along the
M40 in November 1997 when some drivers up ahead thought it a good idea to create
a bottleneck. Unfortunately,
“good progress” all too soon became “a bit of a mess”.
Bob smashed a headlight and dented his bonnet a bit.
I dented my pride. The car I
hit (a Golf GTi Mk1 for those keeping score) made up the “a bit of a mess”
side of things. The boot was now
the back seat, the back seat was now a raised viewing platform and the driver
was upset. Thankfully not a violent
upset, more a quiet, no colour to his cheeks kind of upset.
Recently, my neighbour reversed into and dented the front offside wing. An open and shut "sorry mate I've pranged your car" incident though so I'll not waste your time with it.
And then (yes there is more...) my dad managed to smash my rear bumper during our trip to Kevelaer, Germany in 2001. Click here for that gem!
14.20hrs 28/6/02. Some old gent decided to restyle the back end of my car with his Honda... Here's the end result... The car needs a new rear door skin, a new rear bumper, some panel work on the rear wing, some filler and some paint. Estimated cost is £800. Doesn't look it does it??? He pulled out of a slip road into the side of me. Initially he was claiming it was my fault (???) but his insurance company didn't think so and neither did I!
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