Oil leaked from everywhere.
Head gasket blew twice.
Overheated in traffic.
Jumped out of 2nd gear.
Various instrument failures.
Rust (at 7 years old!).
As a fan of the A series engine, having owned two Mini's, I can honestly say that bolting a turbo on to it was a complete mistake. Used as much oil as petrol, overheated at the slightest sign of traffic, and blew two head gaskets in a year.
The car was quite lively, but had the mechanical integrity of a lump of blu-tac!
Handling was go-kart like with really nice steering, but the driving position was awful, and the interior would have held together better if it was made out of paper mache. It was also rusting to nothing by its 7th birthday.
I was actually pleased when it got stolen and rammed into a bollard in a car park at about 40 mph, as it saved me the conscience testing prospect of having to sell the heap to some other poor unsuspecting mug. As a final insult, it kicked me in the privates with a trade value at 7 years old and 60,000 FSH'd miles of just £500.
Never again will a Rover product pollute my driveway. Unless it's another Mini of course...
How can you write off Rovers? There cars are great! They make the K-series and that's a fantastic engine! No wonder its won awards! Yeah OK the old Austin-Rovers weren't that great but from the very late eighties to present they have been making great cars! Rover is leading the way in car manufacturing. The only reason Rover had problems with BMW was because BMW tried to overprice Rovers cars! But now look at Rover doing extremely well and with more new cars on the horizon, I think they are fantastic, they deserve the respect they now have.
I have to say I am a great fan of the Metro and I am currently in the middle of modifying a 1989 1275cc Austin A+ engine model. Although I have to agree that the turbos were poor cars. There was not enough time and effort put into these cars and it paid the price, poor reliability.
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