Rover 200 SDi Review

Overall Rating

Incredibly torquey engine in a lightweight car, good fuel economy, bulletproof engine if looked after, precise handling and excellent road holding, looks good, one of the largest boots for the class, very cheap second hand buy, the list goes on!

Not a refined engine, quite noisy at speed, interior not up to modern best, can be slightly smoky if you boot it from low speed at low revs (competition air filter alleviates this problem), I suppose there is an image problem if you care about that sort of thing, coloured bumpers expensive to replace and a relatively small knock can put the chassis out of alignment

I've had my Rover 200 Di since January 2004, picked up for a baragin £1,100 at a car auction and have since driven 20,000 miles in it over all sorts of roads. I can honestly say I've never looked back. The Rover 200 DI, despite some faults, is a wonderful and sadly underrated car.
The first thing I noticed was the performance, the L series turbodiesel puts out 105bhp and 153 lb/ft of torque. In such a small hatch, that means impressive performance, so long as you keep the turbo on it pulls like a train from 30 right the way up to 110+. On the motorway this means ease of driving in 5th gear, and on b-roads it means excellent overtaking power, the 30-50 and 50-70 times are only a few tenths of a second off an MG ZR 160!!! The strength of the diesel is in gear acceleration, once you are at 30mph the acceleration is like a 2-3 litre petrol car, very impressive, I have pulled with 1.8T Audis, focus st 170s, Pug 205 GTIs etc etc. Obviously, it's not in the same league as my dads Impreza, but the performance can be quite startling if you're not prepared for the bags of torque in a car that weighs barely over a ton
It also holds the road like glue, and the steering is precise and gives a lot of feedback, in fact the suspension is a bit too hard for some. I regularly drive to and from wales, and round the twisties I feel safe and secure in the road holding of this car. Anyone expecting a soft wooly ride will be surprised by the sporty undertones to the Rover 200. All this, while returning on average 53 mpg (I have had 60+mpg out of it while cruising on the motorway).
The engine is also very reliable, as long as servicing is kept up (I service mine at 4,000 rather than 6,000 miles to ensure reliability). It is not as refined as the modern generation of common injection turbo diesels, it is noticeably noisier than the 16v turbodiesel astra that I owned previously, and is quite rattly at low revs, but is competitive in terms of economy and performance.
I have never had a problem with the bodywork, although apparently some of the early production models did suffer from rust problems. In fact, my car has never given my any reliability issues, it starts well in the cold, and apart from standard parts (cam belt, alternator belt etc) I have not had to replace anything as of yet, apart from tyres. The engine is very simple to take apart and rebuild if anything does go wrong (my dad is an engineer and we reconditioned mine at the time of purchase to make sure it was ok, it was perfectly fine, no work needed doing) and parts for rovers are relatively cheap (apart from new coloured body panels - especially bumpers - these are very expensive and one would be better off getting panels from the breakers).
The interior is a down point, it doesn't do anything badly but it certainly doesn't do anything well. Function over form, but it looks a little dated compared to modern Peugeots, VWs and indeed newer Rovers.
Although some people have an issue with Rovers in general, I can't help but think it's a stupid consensus brought about by programmes like Top Gear. Judge the product, not the badge.
This isn't the car to buy if you're looking for a refined, trendy and chic car, it simply does not appeal to that market. Somebody looking for a car with a high quality interior, a refined engine or one with bags of street cred should look elsewhere. Similarly, it is noted in a lot of reviews that the rear seat space is quite limited, I have never had any complaints from passengers but if you have a family then it may be something you should look into before purchase. My opinion is that if you bought a small hatchback, why complain about the interior space, buy an estate or saloon instead, but that's just me.
However, if you're looking for a car with strong performance, good fuel economy, a lot of boot space, reliability, superb handling, good safety record and at an extremely low price and aren't too fussed about a noisyish engine then I would strongly recommend this car.
Also, with a strong modding scene (usually based around emulating the later MG ZR) and an engine that just cries out to be tuned (Superchips remap the engine to 130bhp and 210lb/ft of torque with no impact on the fuel economy), it is also a viable choice for the boy racer who wants something a little different to (and can wipe the floor with!) the standard VTR
Hope this helps