My Best Upgrades

Mark Bright’s Rover is the culmination of a childhood ambition that started with the cover of a car magazine. Here’s how he transformed a barn find project into an homage to a P6 racer

Rover P6

MARK BRIGHT ‘I was nuts about the Rover P6 as a small boy. In 1984 I picked an edition of Sporting Cars off a newsagent’s shelf – the cover was titled ‘Wild Rare Rovers’ and the cover picture was a P6 on steroids – I was smitten.

‘Decades later in 2016 and a chance discussion with friends led to the discovery of a P6 in a barn a mile from my house. It had been in there since 1984. The next day, the car was bought and the plan was to build a replica of one of the two works racers that I had read about years previously. This was to be road-legal, but with added bite.

‘The hunt was on for a motor and a 4.6-litre V8 was located that had been fi tted with top hat liners, plus some other tweaks. In it went, along with some two-inch SUs and fettled V8S exhaust manifolds and although these are quite restrictive, the motor yielded 240bhp on the rollers, 20bhp up on a stock 4.6 with fuel injection and a better exhaust.

‘During my toiling, word reached a chap just up the road from me; it turned out that his boss had worked on one of the original cars as a lad. He invited me over and I came away with period pictures, which I based the paint on – Leyland Blue and Old English White, replicating car number two that ran at the Nürburgring in an 84-hour endurance race in 1970. It led a team of works Porsches by three laps before it broke!

‘The car was shown at a local show and later I got a call from one of the judges who had tracked me down. The gentleman was Bill Price, who was in charge of the team that took car number two to Germany in 1970!

‘The car is quick on the road, although care is needed to look after the stock differential unit, which is not really up to the job – I might consider a Jaguar limitedslip differential in the future, but one has not been fitted for now so the car complies with originality requirements.

‘It is a bit of a handful and hates tramlines. Some more suspension tuning is needed and plans for a four barrel induction setup are advanced as well. All the requirements for MoT exemption are met, but I prefer to keep the car properly tested with a certifi cate.’