A Perkins peculiarity - the Automatic Diesel Montego

I seem to have neglected this blog for rather too long due to other circumstances. Did anyone miss me? Anyway, I'm back now with another example of my favourite subject, an obscure and unknown car that few know ever existed - I certainly didn't, even after I had seen it with my own eyes!

A scruffy old Montego that hides an interesting secret.

Among the many interesting vehicles in the car park at last year's Festival of the Unexceptional was a rather scruffy looking maroon Rover Montego estate that was just the sort of car that looked right at home at this event but didn't seem that remarkable in this context. I photographed it and then thought no more about it until I came to upload the photo to my Flickr site the next day and checked the vehicle details on the DVLA website. Imagine my puzzlement when it reported "fuel type: diesel, transmission: automatic". I was intrigued but knowing the DVLA data is riddled with silly errors and finding no evidence of such a combination ever existing, I put this down as nothing more than a mistake in the vehicle record but queried it anyway in my Flickr caption. A couple of days later, along came its owner with a very informative comment confirming not only that it is indeed a diesel automatic Montego but it was also an official factory-backed project and not an aftermarket conversion. Even AROnline, the encyclopaedia of all things Austin-Rover that is filled with all sorts of fascinating prototypes, makes no mention of this vehicle, so this may be the only place on the internet where you can read about it. Hard facts are in short supply so I admit this piece includes a lot of speculation and assumptions in the absence of anything definite.

The diesel engine used in the Maestro and Montego wasn't an in-house product but the familiar and respected 2-litre Perkins Prima made by the renowned diesel experts at Perkins Engines in Peterborough, and so it was this firm who were contracted to do the development work. Why Rover felt the need to experiment with pairing an automatic gearbox to this engine has been lost in the sands of time, but in 1990 four petrol automatic Montegos were supplied to Perkins, who ripped out their original engines in favour of Primas. It may have been easier to start with manual diesels and change the gearboxes, but with Perkins being specialists in engines and not gearboxes this way possibly made more sense, although full details of the programme and what it hoped to achieve remain a mystery.

This car, an SLX-spec estate registered H475 PDA, is the only known survivor of the four, but how it survived and what happened to the other three is unknown. Rather than being crushed like so many prototypes when its usefulness came to an end, it obviously escaped from the factory into private ownership with its unusual drivetrain intact and somehow managed to remain roadworthy from then on. Its condition suggests that for the majority of its life it wasn't enthusiast-owned and was used simply as unloved everyday transport, so its survival is all the more remarkable given the one-off nature of the mechanical parts.

Under the bonnet, the car is apparently a real Heath Robinson-style lash-up and very much a development mule that would have required far more work to get it to a production-ready state. The engine is a non-turbo spec Prima MDI with a turbo grafted on using an intercooler from the petrol MG Montego Turbo, there are missing breather pipes and the wiring is a mess with all sorts of non-standard extra wires spliced in throughout, a typical prototype that was subject to ongoing experimentation and improvement. It even still has a complete petrol injection system that appears to be largely redundant except to drive the rev counter, something never fitted to any production diesel Montego but no doubt necessary here to monitor the autobox's shift patterns.

The existence of this car raises many interesting but unanswered questions. Why was the project started in the first place? Why was it cancelled? Why is it not better known? Would the car have been a success if it went into production? It is only in very recent years that the combination of a diesel engine and an automatic gearbox has become commonplace. Back in the 1990s hardly any such vehicles existed (Mercedes and Citroen are the only examples that spring to mind) and they occupied a very small niche market, the accepted wisdom of the industry being that diesel cars should have manual gearboxes, despite the torquey characteristics of the turbo diesel seemingly being an ideal match for a self-shifter.

The fact that development work went as far as building four running prototypes suggests Rover did take the idea seriously and believed there would be a market for such a car, so the diesel automatic Montego may be another addition to the long list of Austin-Rover prototypes that were ahead of their time but never saw the light of day for whatever reason. The Prima built a formidable reputation for reliability and fuel economy, and although it wasn't the most refined of engines it had a sizeable following that the option of an autobox may have increased still further. By 1990 however the Montego was an ageing design that was coming to the end of its intended life (although it actually clung on for another five years, much to BMW's surprise), so this may have been one of the reasons why the project didn't progress, but a diesel automatic Rover 600 or 800 could have been an interesting prospect.   

Sadly, the Festival of the Unexceptional has so far been the car's only public appearance in the hands of current owner Sam Skelton, who bought it the day before the event. It overheated shortly afterwards and is now a non-runner, and given its hand-built prototype nature and the fact it never officially existed, diagnosis and repair is likely to be a challenge. I'm sure its enthusiastic owner will rise to that challenge though and in the near future this unique piece of history will return to the roads and allow others to sample a driving experience that is said to be interesting, glacially slow but with a surprisingly well-matched combination of engine and gearbox. 

So when you're at a show, keep an eye out for H475 PDA. It may look like nothing more than a scruffy old Montego, something that was a common sight not so long ago, but it hides a rather interesting secret. Many thanks to Sam Skelton for telling me all about it and good luck to him in getting it back on the road.