British non-sales

Sir,

I have recently been in Singapore for a few days where I found, to my pleasure, a copy of Motor Sport of fairly recent date. This renewal of the acquaintance of a very old friend went well until I got to page 816 (July issue) to the description and road-impressions of the new Rover 3500, with the sub-head “Auntie’s Sporting Great-Nephew Makes Buy British a Must”.

Wishing to replace my 1975 Mercedes when I leave this post in mid-1977 L have very recently written to the Rover Company, or British Leyland as it is now, God help it, and was advised that they had no intention of selling these motor cars on the personal export plan and what is more declined to give any indication when I could expect them to become available. The fact that I pay in either Swiss francs or US dollars for my cars, which I understood was the main pre-occupation of our one surviving large car manufacturer, did nothing to soften the playing “hard to get”, even for an enquiry designed to cover the usual time lag to overseas markets.

To improve their image somewhat they did enclose a brochure; it was possibly an error that it was the identical brochure I got six years ago when I bought my previous Rover 3500!

Bangkok JOHN T. WARBURTON

[We have had several such protests from overseas readers. In fairness to Leyland, they do not propose to release the currently UK market-only Rover for personal export until overseas sales and service facilities are created when the model is released for direct export. To allow a car to be personally exported to a country where no such facilities exist would be likely to do Leyland more harm than good. —Ed.]