The original Rover V8 engine is known for being one of the longest-lasting, most widely used, and most beloved engines in the history of the British car industry, but fewer people realise that this success came when two wrongs shockingly made a right.

The first wrong in question was the engine itself, originally known as the Buick 215, a lightweight and highly ambitious aluminium engine originally made for the Buick Skylark, Pontiac Tempest and Oldsmobile Jetfire.

At the time, the US motor industry was not interested in small block lightweight engines, opting instead to simply have huge cars with bigger engines and bigger fuel consumption.

This, combined with oil leak issues and issues with quality control, led to the entire project being scrapped by 1963.

The following year, J. Bruce McWilliams explored buying an American V8 engine for use in high-end Rover saloons and fell in love with the Buick 215.

Every single issue that made it less useful in big American cars made it perfect for use in Rover’s cars, which, like other British cars, were far smaller and lighter on average. They bought the tooling, and the rest is history.

The other mistake came with the car that made the Rover V8 as huge a success as it was.

Whilst the Rover P5B was the first Rover car to use the engine, and it would be the top-of-the-range engine in Rover’s saloon cars up until the discontinuation of the SD1 in 1987, the car that made it legendary was also the result of an initially wrongheaded decision.

Rover had tried to make a “Road Rover” car for a while, adapting the popular offroader for use as a saloon car or an extremely early version of a crossover, but multiple prototypes over two decades had led nowhere.

However, the idea had a lot of potential, and would lead to the Range Rover being at one point the best car on the road, as well as off of it.