Currently reading: Throwback Thursday - Rover's sleek CCV concept, 26 April 1986

In the mid-1980s, the Austin Rover Group set its sights on America , and the CCV concept was envisaged as a halo model to draw in customers

Buoyed by the positive reaction to the MG EX-E concept car at the 1985 Frankfurt motor show, the Austin Rover Group was encouraged to follow it up with the similarly forward-looking Rover CCV just six months later.

Whereas the EX-E was a design exercise, the CCV was much more likely to make production as part of the car group’s plans to crack the US market with the Sterling brand. Sterling’s first offering was to be a rebadged Rover 800 saloon, raising the possibility of a production version of the CCV coupé being built off the same floorpan.

In Autocar’s sister publication, Motor, Daniel Ward wrote: “Americans don’t like hatchbacks, so the five-door 800 won’t be going across the Atlantic a year after the saloon, yet the new dealers – no matter how enthusiastic about the 800 – will want other Sterling models in the showroom. What better than a classy, elegant coupé to reinforce the image for combining modern design and traditional British car luxury?”

To emphasise Austin Rover’s developing confidence in its designs, the CCV was unveiled at the Turin motor show, in the heartland of styling studios such as Pininfarina and Bertone.

The concept – created under Roy Axe, Austin Rover’s director of design – was well advanced, as Ward explained: “The coupé is no hurried lash-up job, as it was clearly the sleek shape I saw hidden under wraps at Austin Rover’s Canley design centre more than two years ago.”

The CCV retained the normal-length floorpan of the 800, giving it a relatively long wheelbase. In spite of the coupé styling, the design team was adamant that normal-height adults should be able to sit in the rear in comfort.

A drag coefficient of 0.27 would have been, Rover’s designers argued, perfectly achievable when the glassfibre design prototype was made in production steel with all its mechanical parts and cooling systems.

The prototype’s large glazed roof was made from ceramic-coated polycarbonate and helped to keep the airflow smooth. “Such an uncompromising design is a favourite with designers – Giugiaro’s Lotus 
Etna has a similar cabin section – but 
no one has put one into production,” Ward explained.

The headlights – super-slim by the standards of the day – were another highlight. “Their advantage is that the designer is not forced to compromise the low profile of the car’s nose in order to accommodate the lamps but the considerable cost and complication of pop-up lamps is avoided,” said Ward.

Disappointingly, the CCV didn’t make production in the shape of anything as exciting as the sleek concept. Instead, it whimpered out as the comparatively conservative Rover 800 Coupé in 1992, by which point Austin Rover had withdrawn from the US market.

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Previous Throwback Thursdays

15 March 1986 - Renault builds a Porsche rival

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bowsersheepdog 26 January 2016

The Great British Sleek-off

The CCV was a fantastic looking car and really should have gone into production. Subaru tried to do something similar with the SVX a few years later but didn't quite pull it off so well. The 800 coupe which did get made was still a good looking car but the 800 hatchback was always my preferred choice for its family likeness (side on at least) to the SD1. The Ex-E, with its 6R4 mechanicals was the one I really would have liked to have seen on the road. It would have been one gorgeous beast. It's tragic for the nation that such wonderful cars didn't get built. Sadly investment funds were lacking due to too much money having been bled away by years of strikes because gullible workers fell for the lies of the Kremlin-controlled unions.
typos1 21 January 2016

Yeah I remember them, they

Yeah I remember them, they were based in Worthign and when they went t*ts up Daewoo bought them.
Daniel Joseph 21 January 2016

Another "might have been".

Another car in AR's long line of "might have beens". The company's history is fascinating, not least for the massive effort and money invested over many years in developing, then dropping some potentially great concepts. The ARonline website is well worth a look for anyone interested in the company's tortuous (and sometimes plain tortured!) history. Actually, this one is not one of my favourites. It's a bit too much of an 80's Mitsubishi / Honda mash-up for my taste.