The Rover Company had a long established reputation as a luxury car in the United Kingdom and Europe, demonstrated with the Rover P6, and Honda wanted to introduce a luxury car for both domestic Japanese and the United States markets.
With the switch from a senior compact to an intermediate-sized platform, most of these "innovative" features were discontinued such as the Tempest's four-cylinder engine and transaxle, the aluminum block V8 (whose tooling was sold to Rover of England who improved the design enjoying considerable success with it as the Rover V8 in models such as the Rover P5B and Range Rover) and the Olds Jetfire's turbocharged version of that V8.
The Vanden Plas name was also dropped at this time in the UK market, due to Jaguar being sold by BL and the designation being used on top-of-the-range Rover-branded cars in the home UK market.
Two were run by Rover: one, at Acocks Green, Birmingham, started operation in 1937, and a second, larger one, at Solihull, started in 1940.
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The Land Rover became a runaway success (despite Rover's reputation for making upmarket saloons, the utilitarian Land Rover was actually the company's biggest seller throughout the 1950s, '60s, and '70s), as well as the P5 and P6 saloons equipped with a 3.5L (215ci) aluminium V8 (the design and tooling of which was purchased from Buick) and pioneering research into gas turbine-fueled vehicles.
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In March 1930, during the Blue Train Races, Woolf Barnato raised the stakes on Rover and its Rover Light Six having raced and beat Le Train Bleu for the first time, to better that record with his 6½ Litre Bentley Speed Six on a bet of GBP100.
He also spent two years working with Britain's top stunt driver, Russ Swift, to create a driving display promoting Rover cars on dealer forecourts all over the country.