One of the most popular and successful engines used in the UK over 45 years, the Rover V8 engine has been used in a surprisingly varied range of cars.

Whilst primarily known as a Land Rover V8 engine, the motor formerly known as the Buick 215 has made its way into some of the most heralded and beloved vehicles made in the British isles, including most of the TVR line as well as the revised MG RV8.

However, some of the cars it ended up in ended up being rather odd choices and became notable for either very interesting or very bad reasons.

Here are some of the most interesting cars to use the Rover V8 engine.

Rover SD1

The car of your dreams when you were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, the Rover SD1 was the last Rover produced at their Solihull plant before British Leyland started to merge everything together, and represented everything great and terrible about the British motoring industry pre-1986.

First of all, what made it unique was that it was styled like a Ferrari Daytona, which made it potentially the ultimate oxymoron: a Rover supercar.

It got huge praise for its style and handling, but industrial action led to many unreliable and shoddy cars coming off the factory floor, giving the car a possibly unfair reputation for being unreliable.

Leyland P76

Produced by British Leyland’s Australian subsidiary, the large car was intended to compete with the ever-dominant Ford Falcon and Holden Kingswood, but due to rushed assembly, poor reliability and a looming fuel crisis, the car was dead on arrival, only producing just over 18,000 models.

Bowler Wildcat

Based somewhat loosely on the Land Rover Defender and using one of the last ever versions of the Rover V8 before it left the market in 2006, the Wildcat is an incredibly unique and alarmingly fast off-road car designed for rally raids.