History of the Rover V8. British Leyland's LS Engine #Blogpost

The rover V8 started out in life as an experimental engine made by GM in the early 1950s. The new engine was developed for mid-sized Sedans/wagons. The Buick Small-Block 215 was an all aluminium engine that was lightweight and Powerful (For the the 1960s). A Buick 215 fitted with a Garrett T5 Turbocharger was Installed in the 1962-1963 Oldsmobile Cutlass. It produced 215 bhp and 301 lbf·ft of torque. The cutlass had a 0-60 time of 9.2 seconds and a top speed of 110 mph. GM used a very early experimental version of the 215 in the 1951 Le Sabre concept car, which also had a supercharger as Turbochargers were only fitted to planes at the time.

In 1964 Rover started talks to buy the rights to build the Buick 215 for Rover vehicles. The 215 was perfect for the smaller British cars as it was lighter that the Inline-four cylinders that were being used at the time. A full year later GM sold the right to build the Buick 215 and the tolling to do so in 1965. British Leyland was formed just three years later which meant Land Rover, Leyland and MG were going to get a Rover V8 installed in their cars.

The first car to be launched with a Rover V8 was the Rover P5B in 1967. The 3.5 litre Rover V8 produced 158 bhp @ 5,200 rpm and 210 lb·ft of torque at 2,600 rpm.

The 1979 energy crisis affected the sales of V8 petrol cars around the globe. British Leyland and Perkins started to develop naturally aspirated and turbo diesel versions of the Rover V8. This was the start of Project Iceberg. The N/A engine managed to produce 100 bhp and the TDV8 produced 150 bhp, but the two engines had cooling issues and the cylinder heads failed. The engines were meant to be fitted to the Range Rover, Rover SD1 and the Jaguar XJ, but the development was never finished due to British Leyland’s financial issues.

A turbocharged "Project Iceberg" development engine

The Rover V8 was used in vehicles made by Rover, Morgan, Land Rover, MG, Triumph, TVR, Sisu, Ginetta, Leyland, Lichfield Land Rover, Honda and Bowler in engine sizes ranging form 3.5 litres producing 158 bhp to 5 litres in the TVR Griffith and Chimaera which produced 340 bhp.

Triumph were told to use the Rover V8 in the Stag, which at that point had already proven to be reliable. Triumph didn’t seen to think so and the they decided to build a new V8 by sticking two Dolomite Sprint engines together, but they also had to modify it to meet the emissions regulation in North America. Jaguar were also told to use the Rover V8 during the development of the XJ40. The engineers didn’t like the sound of that so they purposely made the engine bay too narrow to fit an engine with a V layout, but then somehow fitted a 6.0 litre V12 into the XJ40 when they left British Leyland.

The Land Rover Discovery 2 was the last mass produced car to be built with the Rover V8. It was sold with the 4 and 4.6 Litre engines. It ended production in 2005, 38 years after the Rover P5B was launched in 1967. The Rover V8 was the only engine that Top Gear (2002-2015) did a film about. It was replaced by the Ford Modular V8 in Rovers and MGs, BMW V8 and the Jaguar AJ-V8 replaced it in Land Rovers and TVR started to build their own engine, the TVR AJP8.