Hidden Rovers and Roadside Dreams on Route 66
Route 66 at Life in Classic
Two new books invite readers into very different but equally compelling corners of automotive culture: the ambitious, unrealized Rover projects that might have changed British motoring, and the enduring romance of America’s Mother Road as seen through a photographer’s lens.
Secret Rovers, by James Taylor and D.J. Cooke, turns a clear, steady light on an era often obscured by rumor. Published by The Crowood Press (ISBN 9780719844898, $42.00), this 144-page hardback is subtitled “The missing history of the P8 and P9,” a promise it more than fulfills. It recounts how Rover, newly bundled into the sprawling British Leyland conglomerate, found itself squeezed between Jaguar and Triumph as corporate edicts demanded shared resources and uneasy collaboration. In that environment, two bold Rover programs—one a luxury sedan, the other a mid-engine sports car—advanced far enough to prove their potential, only to be halted just before the point of no return.
The proposed P8 was a V8-powered flagship sedan conceived to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Jaguar’s XJ6. It promised Rover’s signature refinement with new ambition, aiming squarely at the executive class. The P9, even more provocative, was a mid-engine sports car built around Rover’s all-alloy V8 derived from Buick—a configuration that hinted at a world-class performance halo. Both cars reached an advanced stage of development. The P9 was tentatively slated for 1972 production, while the P8 moved toward full-scale readiness before fate intervened.
Taylor and Cooke trace how manufacturing bottlenecks and corporate turf wars under British Leyland undermined both efforts. Pressed Steel Fisher, the group’s body-building arm, was boxed into a lack of tooling capacity at a critical moment. The P8 was abruptly canceled in 1971; the P9, though tantalizingly close, never made it past the brink. The authors argue persuasively that writing off these significant investments did more than end two programs: it cut Rover off at the knees. By 1972, with Rover folded into a shared “Specialist Division” alongside Triumph, the company’s identity and autonomy were effectively dissolved.
Secret Rovers is not a lament so much as a careful reconstruction. The book methodically sets aside well-worn myths, replacing them with a richer, more nuanced narrative of internal dynamics and missed timing. It also situates Rover’s ambitions within the wider landscape of post-merger British carmaking, where big dreams often met hard limits. For enthusiasts and historians alike, it offers a bracing reminder of how close the industry came to a different outcome—and how the vehicles that never reached showrooms can be as revealing as those that did. It’s a clear-eyed, absorbing read that earns its strong recommendation.
If Secret Rovers looks inward, Route 66 Roadscapes by Jay Farrell looks outward, down the length of America’s most fabled highway. Published by American Publishers (ISBN 9798350986396, $59.95), this 218-page, large-format volume carries the subtitle “Stories Through the Lens,” and it lives up to that promise with more than 190 captioned photographs in color and black-and-white. Farrell’s work is organized by state, each chapter introduced with context about the places and conditions that shaped the images, many made with his trusty Leica during seven road trips between 2022 and 2024.
Route 66 began in the 1920s and ultimately ran about 2,450 miles from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California. It became the “Main Street of America” in the 1930s through the 1950s, buoying small-town diners, motor courts, neon-lit theaters, and mom-and-pop attractions. The rise of high-speed interstate highways, completed by 1985, siphoned traffic from the older route and left many of those businesses to fade, falter, or be forgotten. Farrell steps into this landscape not as a preservationist or polemicist, but as a quiet chronicler of what remains: a mosaic of decay, careful maintenance, and heartfelt restoration that reflects both the optimism of an earlier era and the resilience of communities that still embrace it.
Farrell has built a reputation for seeking out abandoned or overlooked spaces, and he brings that instinct here without romanticizing ruin for its own sake. His night scenes are particularly striking, using “light painting” techniques to pull a glowing thread of life through the frame—an old motel sign, a gas pump, a storefront—so that each image becomes a dialogue between past and present. Weather, terrain, and architecture share the stage with iconography: cracked parking lots, scoured skies, and the mercurial hues of prairie dusk. Yet this isn’t a melancholy book.
