Rover 25 1.6 iL Review

Overall Rating

It looked nice.

Everything!

I bought an S Reg Rover 25 in 2001. Unfortunately I had a very bad experience.
Keep in mind that this car only had 26,000 on the clock when I bought it and had a full service, full service history and checks before I picked it up.
I test drove the car, as you do and pointed out to the salesman that I could hear a slight tapping from the engine. He assured me that the car had been stood and it was simply that the oil was low, I checked this story with my father in-law who knows about cars and he said that was quite a valid explanation and that taking into account the mileage he thought that the car would be fine.
So I said that I would buy the car, as long as when I picked it up the noise was gone.
When I picked the car up I couldn't hear the tapping noise and so I drove off quite happy.
By the time I had got home (6 miles away) the tapping noise was back! As it was now past closing time I had to wait until the morning to call the garage and as I started work at 7am this meant that I needed to drive the car 16miles to work.
By the time I got to work, the car was making a louder tapping sound - not good - so I called the garage who told me that they couldn't look at the car until next week and that it was probably something or nothing.
So with my appointment booked for the following week I drove the car home. On the motorway the tapping got louder and louder and so when I got home I called Green Flag - they came to my house and said that the car was extremely dangerous and so towed me back to the garage from which I had purchased it - they took the car back, after the Green Flag man had shouted at them and gave me one of the sales reps cars to drive around in.
They then called me the next day to tell me that the car needed a new engine!?! Obviously at this news I was furious - not only had they let me buy and drive a car that was not fit for the road but they then had the nerve to ring me the day after I had bought it to tell me this and try to tell me that I could not get my money back!
I did indeed get my money back and went and purchased a fantastic P Reg Honda Civic!
The garage in question has now closed down, I do not know if they made a habit of churning out rubbish cars or if mine was a one off but it put me off Rover and their garage for life.

Members' Comments onAndreaG's Review

• chaze88 on 5th Jun 2007

  This is one separate incident - surely you can't rate this car 0/10 because the dealer you bought it from was dodgy? That really doesn't do this car justice.

• AndreaG on 6th Jun 2007

  I'm afraid that I can only write a review on my experience, and in my experience I found that car was 0/10. When all said and done the car had very low mileage and really should not have been in such a poor condition that the only way to fix it would be to replace it's entire engine! So my rating still stands 0/10 as what use is a car without an engine?
  I may be a girl but I am not going to rate it 2/10 because I like the colour?!?