The legendary Rover V8 engine found a home in a wide variety of cars, even if the combination of it and either the Range Rover Classic or the early Land Rover Discovery would turn out to be its finest use for a generation.

Whilst the Rover V8’s contribution to the burgeoning off-road market cannot be understated, it was also the beating heart that powered much of the British sports car industry from the late 1960s right up until the TVRs of the early 2000s.

However, perhaps the greatest illustration of the brilliance of the Rover V8 can be found in one sports car that did not actually use it, at least not officially, and how drivers paid the price every day for this mistake.

The Triumph Stag is the perfect encapsulation of everything right and everything wrong with the British car industry in the 1970s, but of its many build quality issues, by far its worst feature was its infamous one-off V8 engine.

By the time the Stag came out, it was part of the monolithic British Leyland Motor Corporation, and both Triumph and Rover (as well as Land Rover) were part of the same production division, meaning it had access to a Rover V8 engine that enthusiasts would later prove worked far better.

Exactly why it was not used in favour of two Dolomite four-cylinder engines stitched together has been the subject of spirited debate, speculation and rather loud arguments for over half a century, but the urban legend is that Triumph were told to use it but claimed it did not fit.

Chief Engineer Spen King, more famous as the father of the Range Rover, claimed it was a mix of an in-house rivalry between them and Rover, believing at face value the claims that it did not fit, capacity issues with supplying what was a new engine and the need for redevelopment of a car already behind schedule.

Rover did not have a manual gearbox at the time, and Triumph would have had to develop workarounds.

This decision proved to be disastrous, as the reliability issues essentially destroyed the reputation of Triumph in the UK and the United States and created the impression that British cars of the era were destined to break down.

In hindsight, this could have been different with the Rover V8, and some Stag owners opted to convert the engine themselves before the originality of a working Triumph V8 became more highly prized.

Triumph eventually fixed this mistake with the TR8, which used the Rover V8 to great success.