Faults:

Nothing major went wrong in the time I owned it - until I wrote it off that is...

General Comments:

A real old man's car - mine was even the same colour as most hearing aids...

Very susceptible to rust, especially underneath.

Adequate performance and handling.

Faults:

I had this car a short space of time so:

Water pump went.

...which was followed by a bad repair job which bent all the valves!! Pity.

General Comments:

I'll get one thing out of the way and say the Rover 213 wasn't a great car when it came to performance. It struggled, it really did. The car was pretty heavy, I felt that the 1.3 really didn't do it any favours.

But I didn't buy it for track days...

The interior was pretty awesome. 100% cloth trim (not leather), with HUGE, soft sofa-like seats, and MASSIVE headrests. There was carpetting everywhere. One thing I'll remember about the old Rover's is that they kept the driver in comfort.

My model was pretty basic in gadgets, just a heater, but it was a second hand, cheap runaround. It had silly mpg, £5 for 100 miles or thereabouts, and they were built to last. You just had to open the bonnet (which I did when I got it, there were cobwebs in there!!) to feel the build quality. You could drive it through a wall and come out the other side with a few scratches on the paint!!

I have owned an exact one of these before, and the Honda engine outlived the body.

Unfortunately, it was the other way around this time. A simple water-pump failure was repaired and the cambelt was put on incorrectly and bent the valves on start-up. : (

Faults:

Apart from usual exhaust and tyres at usual intervals; head gasket at 110 k, clutch at 115k and a few oil leaks have been the only problems. 2 alternators but not bad on a 136k car.

General Comments:

Good car, very reliable. Cheap to run if you avoid dealers who rip you off. Get a good independent mechanic to do the work if you can't do it yourself.