I traveled to England recently, on a mission to document interesting discarded vehicles found in that nation’s scrapyards. Most of the cars you’ll find on the street there in winter are fairly new and only interesting in that many of them aren’t available on our side of the Atlantic, but I managed to find this well-preserved Rover P4 saloon parked in York.
I had taken a break from scrapyard crawling to visit the York Cold War Bunker, a not-very-blast-proof facility built to monitor fallout and locate nearby explosions in the event of a nuclear confrontation with the Warsaw Pact. The idea was that a network of these bunkers around Britain would enable leaders to know exactly where the nukes were landing and how bad the contamination was.
Every bunker needs a Bomb Power Indicator.
Outside, I found one of the very last vehicles ever built with Talbot badging: a Fiat-built Talbot Express Camper Van.
Then, just a block away, this Rover was parked among some very ordinary machinery.
The Rover P4 was built from 1949 through 1964 and was considered a prestigious luxury saloon in its time. The 100 is powered by a 2.6-liter F-head straight-six engine.
The owner showed up while I was photographing his car and explained that he had several additional vintage Rovers. As one does.