2025 Rover EV Saloon

We’re about to get some new Chinese brands in Europe in 2023, but why not resurrect great old names too? Revivalist staff argue their cases.

Tweed-and-pipe approach didn’t work, so how about modernist techno chic?

It strikes me as ironic that when BMW sold Rover in 2000 after an unsuccessful six-year ownership, platoons of British pundits (including safely superannuated car executives) queued up to accuse the Germans of "not doing their homework” and of "taking the whole task too lightly”. When you look at the previous hashes that various Brit bosses had made, and the even bigger mess that the all-British Phoenix Four would soon make, the words ‘brass neck’ spring to mind. And yet...

If BMW had found a way to see its Rover exploit through, it might by now be bringing benefits on both sides of the Channel. The advent of the EV era might now mean Rover outfits could be used to clad BMW chassis, especially now that it hardly matters any more whether an EV has front- or rear-wheel drive. Rover might by now be profiled as an electric-only marque, providing much-needed justification for the British battery gigafactories that today mysteriously aren’t being built.

I like the idea of a three-level Rover range: a 25X crossover, a 45X crossover and especially a 75X crossover that could still carry the strong design traditions of the sainted 75 saloon of 1999 (surely the best Rover ever built) and make them modern and relevant. You might even call this an opportunity lost.

The advent of the EV era might mean Rover outfits could clad BMW chassis