A smaller 6hp model followed in 1905, with a conventional chassis but an early example of rack-and-pinion steering. Four-cylinder models, the 10/12 and 16/20hp were next, and in 1907, a 16/20 won the Tourist Trophy race in the Isle of Man. Two all-new models, a 3.3-litre 18hp and 2.3-litre 12hp, replaced all of these versions in 1912, and production of motorcycles continued into the mid-1920s. During the First World War, Rover built Sunbeam cars and Maudslay trucks to government order, but supplied its own motorcycles to the British and Russian armies.
After the war, Rover revised its '12' to become the '14', and relaunched its range, augmented by a new and very different model, the Eight, based on a design by Jack Sangster of the Ariel Motorcycle Company. Rover built a new factory at Tyseley, Birmingham, to manufacture this small car, which had a bike-style air-cooled flat-twin engine and sold for as little as £145.
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| 1929 Meteor 20 shared its name with a tank |
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However, a larger four-cylinder version, the Nine, was launched in 1924, marking the company's desire to move back upmarket and away from direct competition with Austin and Morris. Next up was the 14/45, with a new overhead camshaft engine, which won the RAC Dewar Trophy for ascending the steep Bwlch-y-Groes hill in Wales 50 times, despite being heavy and underpowered; it was later uprated to become the 16/50. Other models of the 1920s were the 10.25, the replacement for the Nine, and the six-cylinder 2-litre, offered in Tourer form or as the short-wheelbase, sporty Light Six (1930). The latter was promoted in a headline-grabbing campaign, the brainchild of former motorcycle tester and pioneer publicist Dudley Noble, in which a Light Six 'raced' the famous Blue Train across France from Calais to St Raphael on the Riviera. 1930 also saw the launch of a longer-wheelbase version with a 2.5-litre six-cylinder engine, known as the Meteor, a name used later for Rover-powered tanks. However, sales were flagging and the 10.25, a core model, failed to capture mainstream buyers' imaginations.
