One-off car, one-off model (#3)

Building another gap-filler (for anyone interested).

ROVER 75 COUPE PROTOTYPE

The once proud Rover car company was in dire straits. After a brief flirtation with building what were essentially badge-engineered Hondas under licence, they were taken over by BMW. The Germans approved the design and the development funding for Rover’s new 75 sedan, which I thought was quite a handsome beast. Some criticised it for having too much of a “retro English” air, rather than being more adventurously styled, but it's pretty smooth and you certainly couldn’t call it old-fashioned in appearance.

Unfortunately, BMW then apparently had a change of heart about financing a high-quality rival to their own mid-range cars, and in a very strange move their CEO chose the very day of the new car’s launch to declare that long-term funding of Rover could be “a big problem.” Not the way to inspire confidence amongst potential customers. Sales weren't up to expectations, BMW got restless about the return on their investment and a couple of years later they sold Rover to a consortium who turned out to be asset-strippers. They walked away with millions and Rover went down the tubes (although the 75 design was eventually taken over by a Chinese automotive group and re-launched as the Roewe 75).

Before that happened, Rover’s stylists made one last effort to show they could come up with something tasty by revealing the 75 coupe prototype. Very handsome, and well-engineered, and in other circumstances it might have done very well, but it never got the chance.

I found it attractive enough to try my hand at a 1:43, based on the Vanguards version of the sedan.

Since the prototype had blacked-out windows my first lazy thought was to just cut off most of the roof and glue on a lump of shaped balsa or body filler which could be painted body colour with black cut-out windows pasted on. But I felt a bit ashamed of that idea and instead built a proper new roof structure by installing four shaped metal rods

which were then “tiled” with pieces of thin brass.

Filler was then applied for sculpting to the final roof shape. The nose of the car also had to be severely gouged out to accommodate the new grille.

The next image shows a test fitting of the balsa mould for the rear window. That was then push-moulded into a heated piece of dark acrylic sheet.

I made a brass template for cutting two more pieces of dark acrylic for the side glazing. (It actually fitted equally well without gaps on both sides of my new roof, which was quite gratifying!)

On the semi-painted model you can just see the small plastic tabs added to the body to support the side glazing pieces.

The coupe had a much deeper grille, based on that used on the 75-based MG-ZT sedan, so I cobbled one together from brass, plastic and fine wire mesh, then added some Bare Metal Foil and a black wash.

I was lucky enough to find some 5-spoke Ferrari-style wheels which were a fair approximation of the prototype wheels. I also managed to compose tiny Rover badges for the wheel centres and for the grille in PowerPoint and print them in colour, but I don’t know why I bothered because they are almost invisible. Just one of those little things you feel needs to be done even if nobody is going to notice.

I was reasonably satisfied with the finished product apart from a touch of orange peel in the paintwork which I really should have remedied with cutting compound but by the time I saw the problem I had added the glazing and chrome trim and didn’t want to risk damaging them, so I left it alone.

Another “nice to have” one-off model of a car that sadly never made it to the marketplace.