Thread: A visit to the gentler side.

Today Patsy and I ventured over to the mystical East of Brisbane to have a gander at the Rover Owner Association of Queensland's gathering held in the picturesque grounds of Ormiston House, in Ormiston of course.
We went along in "the Fraud", not quite knowing quite what to expect, and immediately on arrival we saw that in actual fact we should have taken "Sweetpea" or "Onslow", either would have been acceptable.
Rover cars suffered the same indignities under the hand of Leyland as did the Land Rover side of the coin, suffering cut backs in metal quality, penny pinching and use of cheap materials and manufacturing techniques as well as a sad lacking of quality control, so the conversation amongst the members of this club was very similar to that often heard when a group of Series Landy owners get together.
Recently I have been toying with the idea of picking up a Rover "SD1 Van Der Plas," so the conversations regarding the year models to watch out for was very interesting and enlightening, especially the details re the differences in proofing of the body parts prior to painting between the products from the Solihull (Leyland) factory and the Cowley (ex Morris) factory.
Anyway, to cut a long story short we had a most enjoyable day and it was interesting to note that the two prize winning cars were both from a similar vintage, around the very late 40s to early 50s.
The best show sedan was a beautifully restored P3 sedan:


I found it interesting to note the commonality of the centre mounted dip switch the same as the early Landies had.




Not to be outdone, the winner of the 4x4 section was this 1950 80" model belonging to Aulro member 1950landy. Congratulations Wayne.
Wayne had gone to quite a lot of trouble mounting a water pump running off the PTO of this lovely little 50 model, and it was indeed good to see the versatility of these little machines on display.

I found Wayne's vehicle to be particularly interesting in that although it shares the same year as my Sweetpea, it was manufactured at the "other end" of the financial year and as a result is different in may aspects. I must add that some of the competition that this great little restoration was up against included Rangies and a D4 or two!!!
Some of the other great examples of Rover's handiwork were also on display and following are a few or them:


















A good display, a very friendly group, a pleasant venue and all round a day well spent.
Regards
Glen

Quite a few years ago I owned a Rover 2000TC with wire spoked wheels, spare tyre carrier on the boot lid, it was only a 4cyl engine but it would run happily up to n over 100mph, my first wife sold it while I was away wasn't happy to say the least, I was always on the lookout for a Rover P6B "S" the 5 speed manual, what a pocket rocket, sadly I never got to own one, cheers Dennis
ps thanks for the pix Glen/Patsy,,.