As a letter from the Rover Sports Register confirms, this P1 Tourer was built in the Spring of 1936 and the BPX registration number would have been first issued in West Sussex. It has been in the current family ownership for over 60 years, the vendor’s father buying it from a gentleman in Rowlands Castle, East Hampshire, in around 1957. It was then used regularly for the next few years, including several European trips, before being laid up in the late 1960s. Now ripe for restoration it appears to be basically sound and complete (including the headlamps) and the engine still turns although it appears that the block is cracked.

Supplied with a V5C, dating letter, four Rover books and a b/w photo of the car as it looked in 1959, it is on offer here at no reserve and will keep someone gainfully employed over the coming winter months. This is only the fifth Rover 12 Tourer that we have offered in 14 years of hosting these sales, and only the second P1, so they don’t come up very often. Nice ones fetch over £25k which leaves plenty of scope for the remedial works now required to get this quality car back on the road where it belongs.