Rover moves from pioneer to pillar of the establishment

By ALASTAIR SLOANE

Several hundred Rover cars will meet near Stratford-upon-Avon this Sunday to celebrate the British marque's centenary.

The get-together comes 100 years and 10 days after Rover showed off its first prototype car, on July 1, 1904.

Five months later, on December 1, the vehicle and its single-cylinder 6kW (8bhp) engine went on sale.

It became Britain's best-selling car until the introduction of the Austin Seven in 1922.

The centenary knees-up will showcase examples of all Rover cars and Land Rover four-wheel-drives produced over 100 years, with displays also including bicycles and motorcycles bearing the Rover badge.

The story of the Rover name began with a tricycle in 1884. It was built by inventor and sewing machine manufacturer James Starley, who patented the three-wheel pushbike in his Coventry workshop in 1876.

The tricycle immediately became popular in Victorian Britain and Starley set out on the next step in personal transport, the bicycle.

He formed a partnership with William Hillman (who later started his own business building cycles and cars).

In the early 1880s, Starley's nephew John Kemp Starley joined his uncle and Hillman. They worked together for a couple of years building bicycles they called the Ariel before John Starley started a new business with a Coventry cycling enthusiast, William Sutton.

Around 1884, several cycle-makers - Humber, McCammon, BSA, and J.K. Starley and Sutton - produced bicycles with a longer, lower profile and a continuous chain drive to the rear wheel.

These bicycles were the precursors of what became known as the "safety bicycle".

Manufacturers seemed to recognise that they were on the right track and began to build a new series of models.

It was about this time that John Starley talked about the new form of personal transport allowing the British to "rove" around the country. From then on he named his cycles Rover.

In 1885, Starley built the Rover Safety Bicycle. It was an immediate success and was exported worldwide. It became the model for bicycles as we know them now.

The Rover label was by then so well known that the company changed its name to the Rover Cycle Company Limited.

John Starley continued to experiment with wheeled forms of transport (including an electric car) before turning to motorcycle prototypes towards the end of the 1890s.

But he died suddenly in 1901, about a year before his successor, Harry Smyth, unveiled the company's first motorbike, the Imperial Rover.

Smyth also unveiled the 1904 car.

Rover's first four-cylinder car won the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy race in 1907. Rover won the trophy a second time in 1977 with the SD1, its V8 saloon.

Rover was considered a middle-of-the-road carmaker until a moderately shameless stunt in January 1930 changed its fortunes.

British motoring identity Dudley Noble came up with the idea to race the famous Blue Train across France to publicise a new Rover sedan, the 2-litre Light Six.

Noble figured out that the average speed of the express was no more than about 65km/h, once all its stops and detours were taken into account.

He had to drive more or less non-stop from Calais to the French Riviera to win, but he beat the train and his crew became celebrities.

Noble's bright idea furthered Rover's success. A vigorous new management turned the carmaker from a pioneer into a pillar of the British establishment.