Confusion over a Rover

Although two Rovers (No.13: entrant H. Smith/driver Courtis and No.21: entrant R. L. Jefferson/driver Starley) were entered for the September 1906 TT both were reportedly disqualified under the strict R.A.C. committee rules for arriving a few minutes late at the R.A.C. enclosure on the Sunday before the race; a rule intended to stop practice upsetting church-goers. Others reported they were late at a gear test or the pre-race enclosure.

In practicing for the race, J. K. Starley (Works Manager and son of Rover’s founder) had a high-speed skid between Snaefell and Douglas, throwing out and seriously injuring his works foreman William Riley. Not really what a works manager should do to his staff and perhaps why in 1907 Courtis drove the Starley-entered No.22 car, after Rover Managing Director Harry Smith, who entered Folker’s 1907 No.25 car, banned “keen amateur driver” Starley from competing in the TT saying; “You have something beyond motors to consider.”

Folker’s Rover No.25, DU1027 definitely broke its wheel in dry weather practice, as 1907 race day reports said: “Weather conditions were as bad as could be imagined. Heavy rain all day and on the mountains a thick fog which, according to the stories of the competitors, made it impossible sometimes to see a foot beyond the end of the car” and although Folker did not finish he had only “a series of slight mechanical troubles, followed by tyre delays, resulting in the expiration of the time limit for starting on the final lap, five having been duly completed.”

After what was already a contentiously organised race with many cars permitted which were arguably not touring cars, it seems some discontent was voiced about 1907’s winning “tortoise” Rover because the T. C. Pullinger-entered, much faster, second-placed Beeston-Humber No.13, driven by J. Reid, was leading on time up to the last lap but had to stop to clear a mud-clogged magneto and lost by just a few minutes after more than eight hours driving. The No.12 Coventry-Humber (entrant Walter Phillips/driver W. G. Tuck) had earlier been leading when it skidded and broke a wheel on lap five. The Rover win “was acclaimed as the termination of a long drawn out agony.”

Agony was short for Pullinger; in the separately car-numbered but concurrently run five-lap Heavy Touring Car Race he had entered two 20-30-H.P. Beeston-Humbers, No.10, driven by C. H. Cooper and No.14, driven by G. P. Mills, which won.

The mystery is not that complicated. The Rover with no.13 participated in the 1906 Tourist Trophy. It was a 16hp model driven by Mr. Ernest Courtis and has the 1906 type of radiator. The other Rover with no.25 participated in the 1907 TT. In this 20hp car the driver was Mr. Edgar R. Folker. Courtis, who would drive a similar Rover with no.22, would win the race. These 1907 Rovers have a kind of intermediate type of radiator: the outline of the next generation of Rover radiator shapes is already visible inside the older type.