Rover 214SLi aka The Grandad Mobile

[StevenRB45]

I had forgotten about about the box of tissues on the parcel shelf mod. It was so ubiquitous on these that you suspected there was a box given with every new one.

Also is the straw trilby only missing from the parcel shelf because you were wearing it to take the photos?

 

[ben]

I had forgotten about about the box of tissues on the parcel shelf mod. It was so ubiquitous on these that you suspected there was a box given with every new one.

Also is the straw trilby only missing from the parcel shelf because you were wearing it to take the photos?

Haha - this made me realise these photos must have been when I very first got it as the parcel shelf was later replaced with a solid wood one (with hinge) that my old Design & Technology teacher helped me make so it could hold the weight of the 6x9's I put in there.

We had to use the scrap wood that was laying around, which was about an inch thick - haha. I don't think I even carpeted over it.

Style wasn't really important with that car...

 

[StevenRB45]

Haha - this made me realise these photos must have been when I very first got it as the parcel shelf was later replaced with a solid wood one (with hinge) that my old Design & Technology teacher helped me make so it could hold the weight of the 6x9's I put in there.

We had to use the scrap wood that was laying around, which was about an inch thick - haha. I don't think I even carpeted over it.

Style wasn't really important with that car...

I can almost hear the sound of it as you go over a corrugated road and it bounces against the plastic either side.


Not that I had similar in a Punto...

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

During my years as a trainer - light vehicle repair and maintenance - when I became more senior I was often dispatched (at very short notice) to stand in for another instructor who had fallen ill or was otherwise unable to carry out his duties. The 214 was often the hire car I was assigned and I remember well bombing around the twisty windy Borders and Lothian country roads in one. My memory is that it was a good handling little car which I looked forward to driving.

 

[AndyRKett]

This is giving me Flashbacks to old episodes of Father Ted. There was one where they were given one of these exact cars to raffle off but Ted tried to "fix" a tiny dent in the bonnet with a happy cut to some time later and he had chased the dent all around the car so much that there wasn't a single inch of the car that now wasn't covered in golfball-esq dimples.

Loving the Grey plastics. I think they left the Rover Factory pre-faded.

I know these old Rovers got a lot of stick but they were much better cars than the ones that followed.

Found the clip

 

[FiatMatt94]

The one from Father Ted was the earlier 213/216 that was basically a rebadged Honda Ballade pretty much as the Triumph Acclaim before that was, they had a reputation for rot as well, my dad started his mechanic career in the 80's & remembers welding new sills on them at 3 years old, the newer 214/216 was a better car but only if you got one with the Honda engine as the K series was shall we say awful, originally an engine created by Alec Issigonis to replace the A series which even he himself gave up on as he thought it was rubbish & then Leyland proceeded to use it as a doorstop for years which was all it was fit for, as you might be able to tell I have a huge dislike for the K series lump