Ridiculously Rare? 1970 Rover 3500 S
Well, I don’t know about “Ridiculously” rare as the seller states, but I’m willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, at first. What makes this 1970 Rover 3500 rare, is its “S” designation. How rare? Hard to determine though it is known that about 81K 3500/3500Ss were built between 1968 and 1977. Let’s see what makes this example so special. Found in Hanahan, South Carolina by Anthony M, this Rover is available here on craigslist for $12,000.
One source, and one only, found states that the “S” is for synchromesh as British retained 3500 Ss were fitted with a four-speed manual, synchronized transmission while U.S. versions harbored a three-speed automatic gearbox courtesy of BMW. Both versions employed Buick’s former 3.5-liter aluminum V8 engine with a reported horsepower output of 184 for the S model and 181 for non-S endowed versions. The seller advises, “The car runs and drives very well, with no leaks“.
Note the hood scoops, besides looking like something from a Boy Racer mashup, they are unique to U.S. 3500 S and are intended to provide additional cooling to an already cramped engine compartment. Unfortunately, they just look tacked on. While the exterior of this Rover presents extremely well, I can’t get around the color. Yeah, I know, a silly matter but I don’t think bland brown does anything to bail out the slab-sided lines and the tall greenhouse of this 3500. I have to question the hood pins and lanyards too; on a Chevelle SS, sure, but on a Rover 3500 S? They seem out of place. Beyond these nits, however, this Rover appears to be in excellent condition.
I’d like to tell you about this Rover’s refined British interior but I can’t because this image of the back seat, replete with an obligatory box obscuring a complete view, is all that is revealed. What can be seen of the leather upholstery looks fine, but images of the front seats and dash are really required for a proper sales presentation.
The seller states, “I bought it on a whim in 2020 From BaT and just don’t have time to work on it“. OK, fair enough but I wonder what work is needed. He also mentions extra parts that have been acquired but doesn’t reveal what they are, or, if they’re needed for something specific. On the surface, all looks good but some questions, and hopefully answers, are going to be in order. So, rare? Maybe, but rareness is overrated, you either want a car like this Rover 3500 S or you don’t (bought it on a whim?). This begs the question, would you want this 1970 Rover?
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Comments
We had a lawyer in our neighborhood who bought one of these
brand new,it was even the same color.I thought that it was a pretty
cool car.
Being an original US-spec car with the extra hood scoops, sidemarker lights, all-red taillights and all-amber front turn/parking lights is probably what counts as “Ridiculously Rare”.
This car is very similar to the only car that I have smuggled across a country border. Back in 1984 I had been vacationing in England and realized I had to buy a car to make it back home to Sweden. I had happened to buy a 2-liter Alfa Romeo engine, a full set of 135-15 Michelins for a Renault Floride and a lot of other miscellaneous items that would have been too inconvenient to bring on a train. So I bought a Rover 3500S (the British stick shift version) in this color for 50 Pounds, loaded it up with all my stuff and headed for the ferry. The obvious problem was that I wasn’t going to get through customs as it would get prohibitively expensive to bring a car in to Sweden. When getting off from the ferry, I headed for the red line and declared all the parts in the car, paid customs fees for that and was let through. The inspector somehow never noticed that UK registered Rover that all parts were transported in! So I guess this brown color is indeed good for making the car quite invisible?
Beyfon,
I was shipping a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud 1 from the UK to America. It was in a container, and I asked the seller to add a line to the bill of sale: “Including various spare parts.”
I piled a huge number of boxes in and around the car, using many old bedding duvets as padding. On collecting the car at US Customs, they opened the container doors, allowed a dog to walk inside it to sniff for illegal drugs, and then stamped the paperwork as approved for entry.
Cars were charged 4% duty, spare parts coming in NOT as part of a vehicle were charged 25% duty. They never even looked at the parts, if they had, they would have seen many of the parts were for non-Rolls or Bentley vehicles!
Well… as an owner of a P5 – It’s an 8 cylinder Rover. When tuned and cared for the car was quick enough to not get noticed by police cars. Possibly because it’s what they used. Now add brown… and I’d guess nobody’ll see you sneaking down the highway significantly faster than you should…. In comfort.
The details on this car can be found here on BAT:
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1970-rover-3500-2/
(I remember the auction since I remember seeing one in the neighborhood).
Here is a brochure for the US spec 3500S (additional options and not a “standard transmission”):
https://roverp6australia.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/1970-Rover-3500S-Automatic-NADA-Brochure-PDF.pdf?msclkid=c31880dece8911ecab06515ec3ad4a47
The seller paid $4200 plus fees plus shipping. The seller is going to be lucky to recoup what they have into it. The $12K asking price is madness.
Note that the 3500S designation meaning it was a “standard” transmission was for the UK market version. All NADA versions were Borg Warner 3-speed automatics.
The BAT seller did post a running and driving video a few hours before the end of the auction. Neat car for the right person.
PRSNCAT is correct. All Rover 3500 vehicles imported into North America were 3500S cars. I’ve owned 4 of them, all identical except for body color. These were wicked-quick cars for their day, and a genuine joy to drive all day on high speed USA interstates. The only changes I did to all my 3500S cars [and those of most of my customer 3500S cars] was changing the carbs and manifold over to the Buick 215 4 barrel manifold and carb. That actually increased fuel savings!
If memory serves me, in the mid 60’s Car and Driver got busted accepting payola for swooning over this Rover model when in reality it wasn’t a very good car. Maybe this seller found out the expensive way.
Big fan of British cars, but these always looked like the styling was off. Kind of like if AMC made a British sedan.( a bigger Alliance?) Doesn’t seem like the “S” added much, I’m sure a fantastic car to drive, if it starts, that is,,,
Buick motor; why wouldn’t it start?
Oh aye, Lucas…
It beats me why Rover fitted the bonnet scoops only for the NA market. We were spared them in Australia, and it’s not like it doesn’t get hot here.
How about seriously ugly?
I know I told this story before but there was a Fiat dealer on the way to my grandparents house in PA back in the early 80’s. Of course this is after Fiat left America. There was this royal blue Rover 3500 parked on the lot. I think they were asking $1500 for it. As a young teenager I thought this thing was the coolest car having those 3 hood scopes. It must have sat on the lot for over a year because the highlight of my trip was to see if the Rover was still there. When dad was looking for a 3rd car for the family for the kids to share we stopped at the lot to look at a Fiat Strada. That car did nothing for me as I was drawn to the Rover. My dad refused to look at it. He said son we don’t need a Rover. He ended up buying a 72 Beetle which was a good choice given their rugged reliability. I would buy that Rover just based on the fact I liked it as a kid. However the hood pins are a turnoff. BaT is a premium auction site if the Rover only did $4200 in the best circumstances I doubt very much it would be worth that much more 2 years later.
Back in the mid 80s I bought a Rover 2000 tc that with a 4speed and 4 cylinder was a decent package. A nimble comfy sedan that you could easily cruise the highways or back roads with unnoticed by the constabulary. A unique front suspension and inboard disc brakes in the rear were a bit of a pain but the “ice alert” drew comments from whoever saw the front up close. I’d like another but owners who really don’t understand them are drawn by price point and try to make them out to be “ridiculously rare”.
Saw more than a few of these growing up in Canada. And most of them were this same color. I remember thinking one of the most striking features on them was that massive looking inverted triangle grille badge lol
Whenever I see one of these, I remember Princess Grace of Monaco being killed while driving one. Her green Rover 3500 was 11 years old when she lost control, and went over a cliff, and crashed back in September,1982. She was driving her daughter, Princess Stephanie to the train station. Princess Grace had decided to drive herself, instead of using her chauffeur, as the trunk and back seat was full of luggage.
Princess Stephanie amazingly survived, and later said she thought the brakes had failed, but engineers from Rover later inspected the wreck, and found the brakes to be in good condition. Post-mortem results indicated the initial loss-of-control may have been medical. Various conspiracy theories are still circulating about the circumstances of the crash.
It was comprehensively proved that Princes Grace suffered a brain hemorrhage or stroke while driving on the hill road, and that caused the accident. A later stroke the next day in hospital caused her death.
Sadly, various conspiracy theories now seem to abound about many cases of proven, actual facts nowadays, particularly in the USA.
Go back through Barn Finds to an earlier 3500S for sale for more information, these cars are rare but do come up quite regularly. A fuller description of the Monaco crash is in the comments section of this 3500S on Barn Finds
https://barnfinds.com/poor-mans-rolls-royce-1970-rover-3500s/
I have had several Rovers, never had problems.
built in roll cage, independent 4 wheel suspension, disc brakes, wool carpets vinyl seats (3500) 2000’s were leather. Adj. head rests, 3 pt. seatbelts (before they were required) independent brakes front and rear, De Dion rear floating suspension, front was mounted above front tires so that when you hit a bump, it pushed back instead of up/down. Flew like a BOH!! These were very expensive in their day, the problem was Americans didn’t want to maintain them.
Come on Barn Finds. 81 thousand of these made and that’s rare? I can’t find the production number for 1970. If we are going to throw the word ”rare” around, at least tell us what is rare about it.
Rare in the US, few imported in the first place and even fewer surviving.
C’mon 454RAT, I didn’t call it rare, the seller did. “Ridiculously Rare” if I’m not mistaken.
JO
My mistake. ”Rarely” do I make one of those.
I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken,,,
These were a fun car to drive being one of the 1st Sport Sedans and yes we had a few customers who had ditched the SU’s and put a 4 barrel Holley on that Buick :)
There is actually a good reason for those hood pins. British engineering used one bolt to hold the hood latch and safety latch :( When it came loose the hood flew up in front of you and broke the windshield also :( I was a parts manager for a dealer in Princeton and it happened enough that I kept one in stock.
I was 8 years old when this was built, but even at 16 I don’t think I ever saw one in my WV town, in fact I have never seen one of these except online.
cool looking little cars though
.
. ” S ” is for 4 speed manual ????
.
. This ad clearly says this car is an automatic
Rover 3500 cars for the North American Dealer Area, (NADA) were all automatic transmission equipped, and all badged 3500S, the S standing for ‘Sport’ These US cars also had the full Series 2 P6 interior as well as the other US specific things like side intrusion bars in the doors and various emissions controls and those hood scoops.
Very confusingly, later on, after Rover’s withdrawal from the US market, and after the Series 2 plastic grille P6 models were released, Rover launched the ‘rest of the world’ model 3500S which had a four speed manual gearbox, (based on the Rover 2000 gearbox.) The ‘S’ in this case stood for ‘syncromesh’ according to Rover P.R. at the time.
So two separate models based on the same car shared the same name.
More information on the excellent https://www.federalrovers.com/
My Scottish cousin had a dark green on of these in the early 1980s . His family came over for a vacation , and being both car guys, we went straight to one of our local junkyards to look around. Sitting up by the crush pile was a an old Buick Special with a 215 in it, which by the 1980s was a pretty rare sight in CT. . My cousin bought the intake and carb to bring back to Scotland; I found out later he caused all sorts of problems at the airport as the car parts looked like a bomb to the airport officials and they all got searched !
Don,
I understand what your cousin went thru at the airport. In the late 1980s I had purchased quite a collection of rare parts at the big Beaulieu Autojumble in the south of England. While most of the parts were either shipped by mail or packed as luggage on the plane, I did bring some parts in my briefcase as they were very valuable. Two of the parts in my briefcase was a pair of very expensive original ignition spark coils for my 1932 Rolls-Royce.
Back then I never even gave it a thought as to what a pair of spark coils would look like when run through an airport x-ray scanner. However on going thru security at Heathrow Airport outside London, I quickly learned what they appeared like, to people trained to spot items that would suggest a bomb!
I was briskly hustled into a secure room without windows, where I saw my briefcase sitting unopened on a desk, and one security official standing off to the side. I was asked about the contents in the case. I finally realized what he was hinting about and said I had a pair of valuable Rolls-Royce ignition spark coils. I was told to slowly open the briefcase and step back. He found the coils and after a few minutes of poking around with a wooden wand, he picked them up for a closer look.
I was told the coils would be put in a separate box and kept in a secure location on the airplane, and I would be able to retrieve them from US Customs after I landed at Dulles Airport. I was given no lecture on what had happened, and even given a motorized escort to the gate, as British Air was holding the plane for me at that point.
I live in Atlantic Canada and drive a 1971 3500S ..slightly more than 2000 of this model was imported into North America and shortly after the poor dealer network closed down..leaving owners to fend for themselves.
This was a big reason they have become so rare due to lack of proper maintainance.
My rover is only one of a handful that is currently liscenced and roadworks in Canada.