Rare Rides: A 1981 Triumph TR8 That's Both Beige and Brand New

You read the title correctly. There’s a Triumph TR8 for sale in the urbane and international city of Tampa, which is in Florida. Miraculously, the sporty convertible has traveled just 90 miles since 1981.

It’s beige, malaise, and showroom fresh, so let’s have a look.

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Rare Rides: South of the Border Waits an MG TF From 2003

MG marked a return to its roadster roots after a long slumber with its 1990s F model. Wanting more, they developed it into today’s Rare Ride, a TF from 2003.

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Book Review: End of the Road: BMW and Rover- A Brand Too Far

Sometimes, the automotive marques we all know and love have to go bust. Such was the case of Duesenberg, Oldsmobile, Hispano-Suiza, and Talbot-Lago despite their heritage and today’s strong collector-car market for those brands. Unfortunately, in the 2000s, Rover had to join them. However, it wasn’t without a fight, as detailed in End of the Road: BMW and Rover- A Brand Too Far. The book explores BMW’s massive investment in the Rover Group throughout the 1990s and how it became disastrous for all parties involved. Through piecing together news reports about BMW and Rover during the period and conducting interviews with people involved in the sale, the book gives a hard look at the relationship between the Rover Group and BMW during the 1990s and why BMW ended up paying a large amount of money to get rid of Rover in 2000.

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A Look At Western Europe's Most Popular Brands From 25 Years Ago
Junkyard Find: 1989 Sterling 827 SLi Fastback

When you find a Jensen Interceptor in one row and a Maserati Biturbo Spyder in the next row at a Los Angeles self-service wrecking yard, you can count on finding another weird import not far away. Sure enough, here’s a Sterling, a rare reminder of the short-lived Austin-Rover-Honda experiment of the late 1980s.

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What Happens When The Chinese Buy An Iconic British Brand

Lotus may not have been sold to the Chinese (yet) but someone else was. And they’ve been making cars for over a year. Supposedly, they’re not bad to drive either.

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Junkyard Find: 1990 Sterling 827 SL

The first thing we need to make clear when talking about the Sterling 827 is that it is not a Honda. It’s a Rover. Rover!

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Capsule Review: 1997 Rover Metro

No story should ever start, as this one does, with “my First Rover Metro.” The implication that there are more Metros to come is all too obvious, and could probably be best categorized as a “cry for help.” In any case, my first Rover Metro was a teal 1995 1.1L Kensington edition, purchased for £60 from a friend in Bishop-Stortford. The Kensington edition meant I got shards of carpet over the door panels, and the kind of pizzazz that only an engineer from Coventry would be able to come up with. The Metro lasted only 19 hours in my hands before a brake failure led to its demise into the back of a yellow Hyundai. My second Rover Metro was a 1997 Tahiti Blue 1.1L Ascot edition*, which meant I got full wheel covers and blue piping in the velour. This only accelerated my descent into the world of English motoring, where I found joy and fulfillment in the death rattle of a Rover K-series engine.

*astute readers will recall that both vehicles are technically Rover 100’s, but are always remembered in pop culture as the Metro.

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  • GrumpyOldMan All modern road vehicles have tachometers in RPM X 1000. I've often wondered if that is a nanny-state regulation to prevent drivers from confusing it with the speedometer. If so, the Ford retro gauges would appear to be illegal.
  • Theflyersfan Matthew...read my mind. Those old Probe digital gauges were the best 80s digital gauges out there! (Maybe the first C4 Corvettes would match it...and then the strange Subaru XT ones - OK, the 80s had some interesting digital clusters!) I understand the "why simulate real gauges instead of installing real ones?" argument and it makes sense. On the other hand, with the total onslaught of driver's aid and information now, these screens make sense as all of that info isn't crammed into a small digital cluster between the speedo and tach. If only automakers found a way to get over the fallen over Monolith stuck on the dash design motif. Ultra low effort there guys. And I would have loved to have seen a retro-Mustang, especially Fox body, have an engine that could rev out to 8,000 rpms! You'd likely be picking out metal fragments from pretty much everywhere all weekend long.
  • Analoggrotto What the hell kind of news is this?
  • MaintenanceCosts Also reminiscent of the S197 cluster.I'd rather have some original new designs than retro ones, though.
  • Fahrvergnugen That is SO lame. Now if they were willing to split the upmarketing price, different story.