april 2016

Elsewhere on this website I pointed out what cars I liked during the long period that I did not have a car myself, having grown up without cars. In the end, I decided the Rover SD1 was my favourite. It was build from 1976 to 1986 and my first car was a 3500 Vanden Plas from 1985, so one of the latest. After ten years I added the Jaguar XJ40 to my 'stable', although in my list of favourite cars it did not occur, probably because it had always been rare and expensive and was out of reach for me, even second-hand.

When I was investigating the possibility that my wife and me would really buy our first car, the Rover SD1 in the end had had my preference. However, as described elsewhere on here, for a short period of time I was considering if the Rover 800 wasn't to be preferred above the SD1. As you can see from my favourites, I have a preference for a clean, clear and smooth design. And the design of the Rover 800 reflects these preferences in fact better than the Rover SD1.

However, in 1998 the Rover SD1 became our first car and I became a real enthusiast. After about ten years and 240,000 km of driving our Rover 3500 Vanden plas I bought the Daimler Double Six (the most luxurious specimen of the Jaguar XJ40 model), although I kept driving the SD1 as a daily driver. Later on, several other XJ40's were added to my 'collection', as you can read elsewhere on my website.

In the meantime, every now and then I spent (or should I say: spoilt) some time on the internet looking for interesting and affordable cars. Amongst them the … Rover 800. Without really intending to do so, in November 2014 this led to buying a 1987 Rover 825 Sterling! I thought that would be a good reason to devote some pages to the story on how I stumbled upon it and ended up buying it for ridiculous little money, about the styling and attractivity of the Rover 800 and how things developed …