Working on the proviso that prevention is better than the cure, Mike Humble spends some quality time with the 75 while also putting right some of the wrongs… she’s looking good! Say what you will about the MG Rover cost cutting plan (Project Drive) which came into effect from 2002, but for a company where [...]

Mike Humble has now been a Rover 75 owner for 72 hours, has the honeymoon period ended or does it still look promising? As I draw the living room curtains each morning before leaving for work, the early morning sunshine glances off the chrome grille and bumper insert of the 75, it’s a nice sight [...]

Words and pictures: Mike Humble After selling on for a small profit, the SAAB has gone to live in deepest Kent – So not being a person to think for too long, a surprise replacement now resides at Swiss Towers. Well, the SAAB has moved on to pastures new and yes, I do kind of [...]

Work commitments had slowed down the pace for Mike Humble and his dead Saab 9-3. Patience, luck and plenty of hot tea seems to have paid off and now it’s time to enjoy! When I took delivery of my Saab 9-3 last month, it didn’t look good to be honest; it was in pieces, a [...]

Richard Kilpatrick The handful of people I know from car-related activities will probably have twigged that new things generally put me off. Heavier, cost-reduced, simplified or over-complex, if I like something in the first place, I don’t want it to be messed with. So it’s probably unsurprising that my first SD1 was something of a [...]

Mike Humble: My Rover 420iL went to a good home with no fuss to nice chap called Mr Foy, he was the second person to view the car after the first viewing turned out to be nothing more than the dreaded Sunday morning tyre kicker. After knocking £25 from the asking price, I`m quids in [...]

It`s not all my fault! I partly blame Keith Adams for my change of mindset, I babysat and carried out some minor work on his Alfa 156 while he visited Southern France recently, and I fell in love with it. Following an enjoyable two weeks burning an offensive amount of petrol driving around West Sussex [...]

Mike Humble bags a Rover 620ti shaped bargain, and loves the experience… …but now he wants another one. Words and pictures: Mike Humble A turbocharged bargain BACK in the days when I had some disposable income, I was flicking through the pages of the local paper motors section when I spotted a friend-of-a-friend’s garage selling [...]

Keith Adams The Rover SD1 that’s featured so prominently in these pages since 2006 is now going up for sale. For those who have not been following the story, here are some highlights. It’s a 3500, five-speed manual model, registered in August 1976, and currently has 50,000 miles on the odometer. It’s MoT’d until April [...]

IT started off as a no strings attached bit of fun looking after Keith Adams Alfa, but it’s  now blossomed into a fully fledged love affair – so is it all over for Mike’s Rover? Parole ed immagini: Mike Humble In the past, I have often been heard be it  in an Indian restaurant or a [...]

Here’s a precious one – produced at the Proto-Build Shop at Canley in 1987, our MG Maestro Turbo is a one of a kind… Does that mean we’ve got trouble in store, or will our hand build AR pocket rocket be a lesson in hot hatch nirvana? Big boy’s toy IT came like a bolt [...]

Given a budget of well under a thousand pounds, what would you buy to deliver a ride to driving happiness; a nice, sensible ten-year-old Rover 214, Renault Clio or Toyota Corolla… or perhaps a fire-breathing, 210bhp Rover Vitesse? QED. I GUESS it was karma really. I’ve been a reader of AUTOCAR magazine since 1978, and [...]

We all know that the TR7 and TR8 had years of development potential ahead of them, and yet, due to the company’s continual retrenchment, the car was put out to pasture far too early in 1981. Richard Truett, AROnline’s man in the USA, feels the same, and to prove the point, has created an EFi [...]

IT started out as an idle thought, and soon became a mad-cap plan… Back in 2005, we bought a £200 Rover SD1 as a project, in order to save it from a fate involving kit-car owners and the scrapyard… in the subsequent months, nothing happened, and the home restoration never happened. However an unusual plan [...]

IT started out as an idle thought, and soon became a mad-cap plan… Back in 2005, we bought a £200 Rover SD1 as a project, in order to save it from a fate involving kit-car owners and the scrapyard… in the subsequent months, nothing happened, and the home restoration never happened. However an unusual plan [...]

Keith Adams Enjoyed a nice catch-up with SD1-owning, AROnline reading, Nissan engineering man Chris Wood last night. We caught up at the Earls Barton Classic Car and Bike Meet, after briefly meeting at the AROnline 10th anniversary bash a couple of weeks ago. That time he brought a Nissan Leaf with him – but this [...]

Keith Adams When I brought my Rover SD1 back from Poland back in October 2009, I promised myself that I’d leave it a few months before I set about making the paintwork perfect, and really making it shine. Chucking on wax and keeping it clean is one thing, and fine while the paint hardens up [...]

Keith Adams Well it’s been a few weeks since I managed to prise the keys for my Rover SD1 from the hands of my mate Scott Brownlee, and all I can say is that it’s running like a train. Mike Humble has done a truly magnificent job turning this good looking but mechanically glitchy classic [...]

All the bugs have been banished on the bargain Project HHR 420 following a delivery of a large bent metal pipe. Summer is here - time to enjoy! Words and Photographs: Mike Humble Funny isn’t it when the Postman knocks on your door? Your heart skips a beat in anticipation of a letter from a long [...]

The run out 420 iL has behaved impeccably so far, with many of the initial foibles now banished to history. Here’s the story so far… Words and Photographs: Mike Humble I will be the first to admit that the later HHR-shape 400 was never a car I would have normally considered buying owing to my deep [...]