The Rover V8 engine most famously used in the Range Rover is amongst the greatest single engine blocks ever made, and it had an astonishingly long and varied life.

Even discounting its previous life as the Buick 215 and the continued production and rebuilding of the engines by specialists and enthusiasts, the Rover V8 lasted from the 1967 Rover P5B until its last uses in the 2006 LDV Convoy and Bowler Wildcat.

During nearly half a century, it was not only used to power the Range Rover and many Land Rovers from the the Series III to the Land Rover Discovery, it was also used as the primary engine for a wide range of unusual cars besides.

Land Rover 101 Forward Control

Designed for the Ministry of Defence in 1975, the Land Rover 101 Forward Control was a remarkably capable gun tractor designed to tow a howitzer and one tonne of ammunition.

The 3.5-litre Rover V8 was unusually positioned underneath and to the back of the substantial fab to maximise space in transport aircraft, and it ended up becoming oddly popular with civilians as well as the MoD.

Whilst only produced between 1975 and 1978, they would not be decommissioned until the 1990s and managed to develop an owner’s club around them.

TVR Tasmin

Whilst the reputation of the Rover V8 as a popular engine for kit cars and small-volume sports car manufacturers is well-established, perhaps the largest of these small manufacturers was TVR.

Whilst the Griffith and the Chimaera were amongst the longest-running models to use the Rover V8 outside of the Rover Group itself, the Tasmin was the first of the manufacturer’s models to make the switch from Ford power.

It took a while for the first of TVR’s fabled “wedge” cars to take off, but thanks to an unusually tuned Rover V8, it became popular enough to keep TVR going all the way into the 21st century.