Rover P5 Series #Blogpost

The Rover P5 series was a group of large luxurious saloon cars that was produced by Rover from 1958 until 1973.
The car was marketed under different names, such as Rover 3 Litre, Rover 3.5 Litre and Rover 3½ Litre.
The P5 was noticeably bigger than its predecessor, the Rover P4. Which was a mid-size luxury saloon car of which more than 130,000 units have been sold from 1949 until 1964.
Only 69,000 P5’s have been build.

Mark I

The P5 Mark I, or Rover 3-Litre as it was also known first appeared in September 1958.
The car was powered by a 2.995 cubic centimeters straight 6 engine. The car produced 115bhp with its unusual overtake intake valve and side exhaust valve inherited from the P4. Its automatic gearbox was optional in the first two years of production but became standard from May 1960 onwards.

The car would originally use 280mm drums all around. But since it was a heavy car those brakes didn’t quite cut it, so before the car went into production they changed the brakes to disk brakes on the front.

In September 1961 the the Mark I-A line was introduced. The front quarter windows had been changed slightly. The car also has small modifications to the engine mountings and the automatic gearbox.

By 1962 the production of the Mark I was ended, just over 20,000 units were build.

Mark II

The Rover P5 Mark II was introduced in 1962. They changed little of the car’s appearance, they only added “quarterlight” windows on the front doors.
Most other changes were mechanical things, such as improving the suspension and boosting the horsepower to 129bhp.

The biggest change was that from that moment onwards they also sold a coupe variant of the P5. Unlike most other coupes from that time the P5 coupe still had four doors. The coupe was also just as long and wide as the normal version, the only difference was that the roofline was lowered by 6 cm at the back and the coupe had thinner B-pillars.
The production of the Mark II ended in 1965 by which just 5,482 coupes and 15,676 saloons were build.

Mark III

The Rover P5 Mark III was introduced in late 1965. The appearance of the car was untouched and it looked the same as the Mark II. The power of the car was again increased, this time to 134bhp. On the inside the rear bench had been removed and got replaced by two individual seats.
The production of the Mark III was ended after just two years, by then only 3,919 saloons and 2,501 coupe were build.

P5B

The P5B, the final generation of the Rover P5 was introduced in September 1967.
For this generation they ditched the old 3 Litre V8 and switched to the bigger and more powerful 3.5 Litre V8 they also used in the 3500. The car had a power output of 160bhp and 210 lb.ft of torque.
The “B” in the P5B name stands for Buick. Rover didn’t have the budget or the time to devolve such engines, so they asked Buick for help.

The exterior of the car was mostly unchanged. The only changes were some “3.5 Litrle” badges and a pair of fog lights below the headlights.

The production was ended in 1973. 9099 coupes and 11,501 saloons were build.

The P5B was a popular car of high-ranking Government Ministers. Queen Elizabeth II still owns a P5B

Please tell me if I should do more of these kinds of blogposts, or if I should just stick with the F1 related ones.

Tips and feedback would be appreciated

Thanks for reading

Marijn M