Also known as: pg1, pg-1, r65, rover 5-speed manual
Rover's PG1 five-speed manual transaxle — and the gearbox in the Lotus Elise S1.
⚑ That fitment is the reason to know its real name. An Elise owner searching Lotus finds chassis and suspension material and very little about the gearbox; searching PG1 finds Rover's own service documentation and a parts supply that still exists, because the same unit was in the 200, the 400 and the MGF in very large numbers.
In the Elise it sits behind a Rover K-series and the whole powertrain is Rover's — which is also why the K-series head gasket reputation follows the car.
Its known weakness is the differential and the input shaft bearing under the loads a mid-engined car puts through it, heard as a rumble that tracks road speed. In a Rover saloon the same gearbox lasts indefinitely, which is a statement about the application rather than the design.
Rover ceased in 2005 and the marque's material is scattered, but the enthusiast supply for this gearbox is unusually good.
Cars fitted with this gearbox
1 generation. Only where a source names the model and the generation together — a gearbox is documented as a product far more often than as a fitment, so this list is deliberately shorter than the truth.
Lotus
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
Community experience
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What makes one worth reading:
- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
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