Price: £3500
Mileage: 20,486
Condition: A verifiable museum piece
Advert: eBay
Is there currently a more usable and accessible choice of unexceptional wheels than the second-generation Rover 400?
We’re struggling to think of one; three decades on from launch, it’s still relatively easy to find fairly clean examples of the Escort-sized family hatch and saloon for not a whole lot of money. For their reassuring, nostalgic 1990s Rover charm, they’re deeply sensible vehicles at their core, cars you could still use every day if you didn’t mind being towered over by today’s family SUVs.
That they’re sensible is no great surprise, being closely related to the Honda Domani sold in Japan, which in turn made its way here as a five-door version of the Honda Civic. This is a rabbit hole on its own, given the different variants this platform eventually spawned – Rover gave you a hatch and a saloon, which eventually housed a V6 in Rover 45 and MG ZS form, while Honda got a hatch and an estate and one of the firm’s crazy near-100bhp/litre VTEC engines. An enterprising individual could surely give us, say, a V6-engined MG ZS estate, or a hilariously high-revving grandpa-spec maroon 400 saloon sleeper, by combining the right bits.
We digress. The 400 was a perfectly good car in standard form, even if arrivals later in the decade such as the Renault Megane, Ford Focus, Mk4 Volkswagen Golf and others started to make its cabin look a little pokey, its chassis a little soft, or its styling a little bland. For quality, the likes of BMW and Audi piling into the family car class moved the game beyond Rover’s already impressive standards, too.
Among the Rover’s strengths were its K-series engines, which were peppy and fuel-efficient, and its excellent ride, which fit the premium feel the brand was (whether it could quite justify it or not) aiming for. In common with its Concerto-related predecessor, it also felt more special than the Honda equivalent – it seems Rovers don’t make particularly good Hondas, but Hondas do just fine as Rovers.
The Rover 416 Si we’ve found for sale on eBay through seller dayno21 is particularly special though, because it is chassis 001. That’s number one.
According to the listing, being the first car off the line, it was retained by Rover for the first eight years of its life, and kept on display in the British Motor Museum in Gaydon. Perhaps some of you out there have pictures of it while it was there?
Since then, it has presumably bounced around a bit between regular owners – after MG Rover folded, one imagines it didn’t stay on their books for very long as the receivers began selling off assets – but it’s still covered under 21,000 miles, and it looks in appropriate condition for that low mileage. The only demerits mentioned are some seat imperfections and a saggy headliner.
The Kingfisher Blue paint looks fantastic – surely one of the best colours on the 400 – and the rest of the interior is smart. Reassuringly, it’s on Goodyear rubber all round, and you can see a 2019 date stamp on the sidewalls; good, relatively recent tyres suggest it’s been well looked-after. We’d whip off the tow bar post-haste though, as it clutters up the back end, and this car deserves better than a life of dragging stuff around.
Despite its historical significance, a price tag of £3500 seems perfectly reasonable too. You can find 400s for less, and in higher specifications too, but few have a story like this one. Act fast, though – bidding ends tomorrow.
This is now a classified ad – no end date.