[KA]

Originally Posted by MG Rover Sport

Thanks for raising the subject of the Ken Wood Rover, Hugh.

It did indeed start life as a 3500 on carbs as it dates back to the 1980 Pace Petroleum Rallysprint at Esgair Daffyd in Wales, Reg Nº GJW584W I think. Driven by Tony Pond, this car must have been prepared at Abingdon as the BL Motorsport department didn't move to Cowley till 1981.

I understand that BL weren't too keen to see Ken Wood still rallying the Triumph TR7 V8 into the early 1980s, so they literally gave him the Rover 3500 for the 1982 season. Ken re-registered it OOC272X. I'm pretty sure it continued in 3500 configuration until being updated to Vitesse spec for the 1984 rally season.

And yes KA, the early development rally Rover did become the Ken Wood car as you suggested, and that I have mentioned above. An interesting article - must try and find an original copy for the files..

Funnily enough, that was the next question I was going to throw out- I've got an old magazine article somewhere with a pic of 'GJW584W' at the Pace Rallysprint, and I was wondering how many of these early 3500 rallycars there were- I hadn't realised 'GJW' and 'OOC' were the same car...

Originally Posted by MG Rover Sport

And yes KA - top marks for a cracking find - that photo of Tom & John in Belgium. Note the single centre locking wheel nuts I mentioned earlier.

That turned up by pure fluke, thanks to Google image search- I was actually looking for a pic of the Golden Wonder car and spotted a pic of a Rover in colours I didn't recognise....