What does ownership of a Rover speak of these days? The same things it has spoken of since time immemorial, probably. If you covet a Rover, it is extremely unlikely that you are under 45 or currently making your living in rap. There is every chance, on the other hand, that you own a place with a gravel drive.
You are possibly a commercial pilot or a member of the military with a desk job. It could be, also, that you had high hopes for poor William Hague.
And you are pretty much without question a member of a golf club. The car parks of Britain's golf clubs are virtually paved with Rovers. Given the way golf clubs are, there is probably a club somewhere that won't let you in unless you own one.
The wild Rover? They never built one. Instead they built the Rover 75 saloon, which is a kind of middle-class motoring icon. With typical naff suavity, the entry level Rover 75 is known as "Classic". The one a notch above, in an overt appeal to the snobbery encouraged by airlines, is called "Club". The top level model is known, wince-inducingly, as "Connoisseur", which could equally well be the title of a slightly eerie "gentleman's" magazine.
The "Tourer" version of the Rover 75 is, in some ways, a totally new departure. It's the first new car issued by the newly configured MG-Rover company, the first ever large Rover estate, and the biggest car Rover has ever produced, with a boot you could practically store another car in.
It also comes with satin-finish roof rails (and personally I wouldn't want my roof rails finished any other way) and with what Rover movingly refers to as "innovative flush fitting load-space side securing push-push hooks". (Don't ask. It's basically something in the boot to hang shopping bags on.)
And yet, for all this bold forging ahead, when push comes to push, the new Tourer's messages are thoroughly, reassuringly Rover.
Rover chose to send the Guardian a Connoisseur, which was very flattering of it. It had a 2.5 litre engine, which was more than capable of getting what is, essentially, a horse-box up to cruising speeds in an amusingly short time. (Incidentally, when it comes to putting livestock in the back, the window in the tailgate opens separately - very convenient for pushing in those smaller, hand-held animals, such as pigs or sheep.)
Yet, in a clever and very Rovery way, the car's abundant power is somehow harnessed in such a manner as to function smoothly, quietly and unstartlingly, no matter how hard or abruptly you stamp on the accelerator and no matter how impatiently you wrench the gearstick about. It's as if the car comes with its own set of impeccable manners, which will not be compromised in any circumstance. I guess this is what is known as "breeding".
Still, the Tourer's interior bore witness to the perpetual struggle luxury motoring has with the twin demons of style and good taste. The seats were swathed in cream leather with brown piping. The dashboard appeared to be in rosewood, or some uncannily stained wood hybrid, and was buffed to a mirror-like sheen.
However old you are, this is an interior that will put a further 10 years on you. Either that, or it will peel 30 years away and spin you back to the 70s, when men were Roger Moore and women simply smiled prettily and listened. Actually not even Roger Moore in his bachelor pomp could have sat quite at ease in this decor - not with the cream leather having such an interesting argument with the "Moonstone Green" exterior.
While summoning the nerve to climb in and drive the car, I spent a good four hours with a tool kit, removing door panels, windows and, finally, the engine, in search of the CD-player, only to discover that, staggeringly, across the range, only the Special Edition Connoisseur comes fitted with a changer as standard.
But then, in the context of a Rover, even this anachronistic omission makes sense. There is a high likelihood that, as a Rover owner, you have never quite got round to making the transition to CD and would be perfectly content with a selection of tapes - or, as you probably quite happily refer to them, "cassette tapes".
Still, my Connoisseur did have some other optional extras fitted, including a £400 "Driver's Intelligence Pack" - and let's face it, we could all do with one of those from time to time. Reading about this in advance, I had hoped for something which, at the very least, would involve me sticking pieces of wire to my forehead with plasters, but actually the "Intelligence Pack" turned out to consist of your standard trip computer, plus a rain sensor and a parking aid.
The latter in particular I was grateful for. Primed to beep urgently whenever you reversed in the vicinity of a solid object, it proved a valuable companion in a car whose tail-end was so far away I would have had trouble reaching it by phone.
You wouldn't want to hit anything, after all. Terribly impolite, not to mention embarrassing.
