In 1963, then Managing director of Rover literally stumbled over the all-aluminium V8 Buick engine which had recently gone out of production. William Martin-Hurst gained the licence to reproduce the engine as a solution to improve the performance of their existing 3-litre car.
After the merge of MG and Rover and 10 years later with many changes and alterations, the Rover V8 engine was being mass produced for the MGB GT V8.
The cylinder block was sand-cast aluminium with cast-iron dry cylinder liners. The cylinder heads were die-cast aluminium with iron valve guides and valve seat insets. It had 88.9mm bore and 71.1mm stroke for a capacity of 3528cc. The engine weighed in at 320lbs, 40lbs less than the four-cylinder cast iron MGB engine.
Following the Rover numbering system, all MGB GT V8 engines have eight-digit numbers without any letter prefix, starting with 4860. (Note there are many other different Rover V8 engine numbers that can be found on engines fitted under MGB GTV8 bonnets, but only the 4860 numbered engines are original to the car.)