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| 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.