THE ROVER CAR COLLECTION
Celebrating Rover Cars In The USA For Over 20 Years
RoverAmerica (RA) is not a club, it is more of a meeting point for North American Rover car owners. That said, WE do strongly recommend you join as many Rover clubs both here and abroad. The owning and restoration of a Rover really says more about what you feel is import in life than it is about a classic car. So, supporting the Marquee is naturally part of the mission of RA.
ROVER HISTORY
In The Beginning
The first Rover was a tricycle manufactured by Starley & Sutton Co. of Coventry, England in 1883. The company was founded by John Kemp Starley and William Sutton in 1878. Starley had formerly worked with his uncle James Starley (father of the cycle trade) who began in manufacturing sewing machines and switched to bicycle...
Early Rover & Pre War Cars
In 1889 the company became J. K. Starley & Co. Ltd and in the late 1890s, the Rover Cycle Company Ltd. Three years after Starley’s death in 1901, the Rover company began producing automobiles with the two-seater Rover Eight to the designs of Edmund Lewis who came from Daimler. During the first World War, they made ...
WWII & Gas Turbines
In the late 1930s, in anticipation of potential hostilities which would become World War II, the British government started a re-armament program and as part of this “Shadow Factories” were built. These were paid for by the government but staffed and run by private companies. Two of the were run by Rover...
Post War Cars
After the Second World War, the company abandoned Helen Street and bought the two Shadow Factories. Acocks Green carried on for a while making Meteor engines for tanks and Solihull became the new centre for vehicles with production resuming in 1947 and would become the home of the Land Rover...
British Leyland Years
In 1967, Rover became part of the Leyland Motor Corporation (LMC), which already owned Triumph. The next year, LMC merged with the British Motor Holdings (BMH) to become the British Leyland Motor Corporation. This was the beginning of the end for the traditional Rover as the Solihull based company's heritage...