Rover Group E-Book

Mike Gould

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

The Rover Group - Company and Cars is a comprehensive history of the company and a guide to its products. Centring on the period of the official existence of the Rover Group, the book also examines the events leading up to its formation in 1986 and its controversial aftermath, following its dismemberment in 2000. The book is backed by first-hand accounts from Rover employees, as well as a foreword by Jon Moulton, the man behind several bids to acquire elements of the company. Including production histories and full specification guides to its cars, The Rover Group is a compelling insider's account of one of the most controversial periods in the British motor industry. The book covers: the beginnings of Rover and its place in British Leyland; Land Rover's expansion in the 1980s and how it led to the foundation of the Rover Group; Rover under British Aerospace and the sell-off to BMW; Rover's struggle under German management and BMW's disposal of the Group and finally, the aftermath of Rover's collapse - MG Rover, Land Rover and MINI. Fully illustrated with 270 historical and original colour photographs.

Leseprobe

THE ROVER GROUP

COMPANY AND CARS

1986–2000

MIKE GOULD

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2015 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2015

© Mike Gould 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,

recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84797 940 7

Disclaimer

Data for the specification sheets has been derived from published brochures supplemented by internet resources where necessary. While every effort has been made to verify figures, no liability can be accepted for any omissions and errors. Readers are advised to consult other sources such as official workshop manuals before working on vehicles. The publication of performance and capability figures does not imply that they will be achieved in practice. Caution must be exercised in all driving activities.

Units are expressed in the relevant international (SI) or in recognized national standards. Where appropriate the relevant conversion factors have been applied to published figures.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Timeline

PART ONE: COMPANY

CHAPTER 1 THE ROCKY ROAD – ROVER’S EVOLUTION

CHAPTER 2 THE HONDA CONNECTION

CHAPTER 3 LAND ROVER BLAZES A TRAIL

CHAPTER 4 COME FLY WITH ME – THE BAE YEARS

CHAPTER 5 THE MEN FROM MUNICH

CHAPTER 6 AFTERMATH: MG ROVER

CHAPTER 7 AFTERMATH: LAND ROVER

CHAPTER 8 AFTERMATH: MINI

PART TWO: CARS

CHAPTER 9 THE LEYLAND LEGACY

CHAPTER 10 THE HONDA YEARS

CHAPTER 11 HOME-GROWN

CHAPTER 12 LAND ROVER EXPANSION TO SUCCESS

CHAPTER 13 POSTSCRIPT

Appendix I: Rover Group Model Line-Up 1986–2000

Appendix II: Rover Group Production Figures 1986–2000

Index

FOREWORD

Names like Rover, Austin, Austin Healey, Morris, Wolseley, Triumph and Riley that made the British motor industry great are all now consigned to history. Others like Jaguar, Land Rover, MG and Mini continue but under foreign ownership. The Rover Group – Company and Cars gives a very coherent and compelling account of the decline and fall of the iconic British companies within the Group, explains why it all went so horribly wrong and describes the fate of what was left after the company fell apart.

I am now in my mid-sixties and in common with most Britishers in that age bracket can firmly remember the excitement of the launch of the original Mini (the gear stick was not designed for comfortable romantic action in the front and the rear seat totally insufficient too, but it was our dream to have one – preferably a Cooper…). Your position in the UK hierarchy of the 1960s was very much defined by the car you owned and an MGB had more status than you could imagine today.

Hatchback cars like the Maxi and the A40 before it, front-wheel drive with constant-velocity joints, rubber and hydrolastic suspensions, were all technological innovations introduced by the British Leyland Motor Corporation and its forebears. But the products were spoilt by ghastly design and manufacturing blunders. Early Minis and 1100s were findable in the dark by following the odour of roting carpets generated by their inadequately sealed floors, while the Maxi had a gear change so bad that you often came to a halt trying to find a gear. Reliability was often very, even amusingly, poor – I remember the necessity to take a selection of spares on any journey to make running repairs.

British Leyland and its successor, the Rover Group, also attracted poor managers who took ludicrous decisions on models, markets and brand image. One example I recall was the engaging MGB advertising campaign ‘You can do it in an MG.’ Then they jacked up the suspension, ruining its road-holding and handling completely and giving rise to the derisive slogan ‘Now you can do it under an MG.’

Of course politicians meddled in the Rover Group a lot. Seeking to protect jobs and wrecking the economic model of the company, they caused irreparable damage by propping up hopeless businesses or giving way to extreme trade unionists like the infamous ‘Red Robbo’. These policies and the calibre of the people the politicians appointed accelerated the company’s decay.

The decline was so swift that the Rover story bears a passing resemblance to some of Britain’s less-than-successful military campaigns, although as with Dunkirk, enough survived in the shape of Jaguar Land Rover and MINI to stage a spectacular comeback.

Mike Gould’s book covers the story of the Rover Group extremely well. He has thoroughly researched the complex story and separated the myths from the often uncomfortable reality of terminal decay. For most of his career in the motor industry he worked in Land Rover, one of the best bits of this empire, and his personal experience shows through in his understanding of the issues while his enthusiasm for cars leaps from the page.

Most of Rover has now passed into memory, but if you can find a quiet place to sit down and enjoy this book, you may find your fond memories of a time when Britain’s own car industry was the best in Europe come flooding back. You may also ponder on what might have been if things had been managed differently…

Jon Moulton

2014

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is an old adage, but it is said that to write good history, you need to go back to original sources – which is what I have done as far as possible in the research for this book. There’s another good saying: ‘Success has many fathers but failure is an orphan’, which is remarkably apposite when chronicling the Rover Group. I have spoken to many people claiming to be the creator of the Land Rover Discovery but few who would include anything to do with the Austin Allegro on their résumé. And, in case you’re wondering, I know the truth on both.

My former colleagues at the Rover Group have been very helpful in talking to me about projects they were involved with and events where they were present, as well as correcting my memory on occasions. These include, among others, Roger Crathorne, Alan Edis, Nick Fell, Richard Gaul, Richard Hudson, Michael Kennedy, Ian Pogson and Alex Stephenson. My old friends in Rover Group Public Affairs, Denis Chick and Kevin Jones, were very helpful at reviewing some areas of text while Denis also supplied me with a copy of the wonderful BBC TV series When Rover Met BMW. The unfailingly cheerful Kevin, who was the ‘Product Spokesman’ in BMW-speak for cars while I did the same task for Land Rover, and who stuck with MG Rover until the bitter end, gave an invaluable view of the company’s story from another, more optimistic, perspective. Special thanks also go to Bill Parkin, a transplant from the North-East who came south to work at Cowley when the British ship-building industry was shut down or sold off by Graham Day, who then followed him to Rover to do much the same thing there. An indomitable collector of Rover Group cars, he owns some of the vehicles photographed for this book as well as being happy to lend part of his collection of brochures and memorabilia including a pristine set of the much despised ‘workwear’.

The best source of material on the collapse of MG Rover is the official Government report, which may have cost millions but which is free for the asking. Hansard, the official Government source of record for Parliamentary debates, was also invaluable in tracking the history of the Government’s relationship with British Leyland and the Rover Group.

The University of Warwick holds the Board Minutes of the Rover Company, which were used to record the early history of the company as well as the takeover by Leyland Motors – described as a ‘merger’ in the minutes. It proved impossible to track down other official records – those of British Leyland are believed to be deep in Government archives while British Aerospace didn’t even reply to our request for information. BMW also keep things close to their chest. George Orwell is buried but a few miles from me – his ‘hero’ of 1984, Winston Smith, would now feel very much at home.

There are surprisingly few books about the British car industry – most concentrate on individual products. Most of those that exist have been around for some time and have been overtaken by events. Michael Edwardes’ book, Back From The Brink, chronicles his time at British Leyland. Much of it is taken up with his troubles with the unions and his brinkmanship policy, which perhaps illustrates his preoccupation with industrial relations rather than forward strategy. Another perspective is given by David Buckles’s Turbulent Times In The Car Industry. David was initially a line worker at Cowley then a full-time union official. His insight into the struggle against the widely differing objectives of Edwardes and the militant left in the unions is revealing.

Edwardes instigated the relationship with Honda but the book When Rover Met Honda by my former colleagues Mike Carver, Nick Seale and Anne Youngson; who were intimately involved with the various models, covers the cooperation in more detail. End Of The Road by Chris Brady and Andrew Lorenz covers the BMW period and was reissued in 2005 to cover the collapse of MG Rover, but before some of the facts surrounding the company’s demise were properly understood. The aftermath is covered by Ian Pogson’s Carry On Car Making, which relates his time in China installing the former MG Rover production facilities. At the other end of the story, Christopher Cowin’s Chronicle of a Car Crash was very helpful in reliving the early years of British Leyland. I am also very grateful to Dr Carl Chinn, the professor at the University of Birmingham (like me, educated at Moseley Grammar School) who played a major role in the protests that followed BMW’s sale of MG Rover. Carl kindly sent me copies of his book We Ain’t Going Away that outlined the struggle that resulted in the takeover of the company by the Phoenix Consortium.

Land Rover is better covered. I should of course mention my own Land Rover Scrapbook and Range Rover – The Anniversary Guide which cover the history of the company and products in general and the Range Rover in particular. Both are sadly out of print but an internet search may prove fruitful. I also contributed to the original Land Rover File by Eric Dymock which has now been updated – this again is a useful source for details of the range. Crowood offers a plethora of books covering various British Leyland and Rover Group models in detail including the Austin Allegro, Triumphs, Jaguars, MGs and Rovers including the Rover 75. There are also a number of titles covering the Land Rover model range.

Aside from traditionally published material, the websites of various car clubs provided a great deal of detail while Carfolio filled in a number of gaps in the specification charts. Special mention must be made of that wonderful resource, AR Online. Created and run by Keith Adams, this website offers a wealth of detail on the history of the company and the development of its models. While it is always worth double-checking some of the facts, Wikipedia is a very useful resource.

I am also grateful for the help given by Blueprint Imaging in Witney in sourcing some of the images that appear in this book. The British Motor Industry Heritage Trust (BMIHT), particularly in the shape of Tim Bryan, Richard Bacchus and Lisa Stevens, were especially helpful in allowing me to access their resources. Their Heritage Motor Centre at Gaydon houses examples of many of the cars produced by the Rover Group and is a mandatory destination for anyone interested in the British motor industry.

Special thanks to Nigel Macaulay of Littleman Printing for his help in compiling the index.

Special thanks also go to Jon Moulton, formerly of Alchemy Partners and now heading up Better Capital LLP. Jon also worked for Schroders, leading the management buy-out bid for Land Rover in the 1980s and is almost certainly unique in being involved with three separate bids to buy elements of the Rover Group. Jon gave an unrivalled insight into the workings of the company during an engaging interview in October 2014. I am very grateful for his time and interest in the subject, and for contributing the Foreword to this book.

In memory of Terry Whitmore 1945–2009 John Connor 1938–2014

Terry joined Rover at the same time as me, albeit in a more senior position. He went on to be CEO of the Mayflower Group and died suddenly in 2009, probably as a result of the strain brought on by its collapse.

John was a press officer at Austin before entering journalism. He became a leading figure in Midland newspapers and his career included a stint as editor of Land Rover’s local paper, The Solihull News. John died in a tragic car accident on his way back from a launch event.

IMAGE CREDITS

The author, Better Capital LLP, BHP Billiton, BMW Group, British Motor Industry Heritage Trust, Nick Dimbleby, the Ford Motor Company, Getty Images, the Honda Motor Co. Ltd, Jaguar Land Rover, Automobiles Peugeot, MG Motor UK Ltd, MINI UK, Renault UK Ltd.

Every effort has been made to identify the copyright holders of images used in this book. If you are the owner of an image that has not been credited, please contact the publishers for this to be rectified in subsequent editions.

TIMELINE

1883

The first Rover vehicle – a tricycle – is launched by the Starley and Sutton Company.

1896

The company changes its name to The Rover Company Limited.

1904

The Rover Eight – the company’s first production car – is launched.

1914

Rover switches its output to war production making Maudslay lorries and its own motorcycles, some of which are supplied to the Russian Army.

1918

At the end of the war Rover returns to car production but is not successful and faces collapse in the Great Recession of the 1920s.

1929

Rover recruits Spencer Wilks and appoints him to the board. He is later joined by his brother Maurice and they become managing director and technical director of the company.

1930

Valuable publicity is gained by the company when one of its cars races the famous ‘Blue Train’.

1938

Rover is approached to run two ‘Shadow Factories’ near Birmingham, one at Acocks Green, the other at Solihull. When hostilities begin in 1939, the factories are activated to produce aero engines.

1940

The company is requested to involve itself in the development of the jet engine being developed by Frank Whittle. In November Rover’s Coventry factory is destroyed.

1946

At the end of the war, Rover moves into the Solihull site and looks for a vehicle to sustain it in the period of austerity.

1947

On holiday in Wales, Spencer and Maurice Wilks scope out the Land-Rover.

1948

The Land-Rover is launched at the Amsterdam motor show. Its output soon exceeds that of the company’s cars.

1963

The Rover 2000 is launched. Of advanced design, it is produced in a new facility at Solihull.

1966

Rover accepts a merger with Leyland Motors.

1968

Leyland Motors merges with the British Motor Corporation to become British Leyland.

1974

With the company on the verge of collapse, the Government takes over the majority shareholding in British Leyland.

1977

With British Leyland once more in dire financial straits, the Government brings in Michael Edwardes from the National Enterprise Board.

1978

Edwardes’ reorganization includes the establishment of Land Rover as a separately managed entity. Following the failure of a proposed merger with Chrysler UK, talks with Renault also break down.

1979

Margaret Thatcher is elected as Conservative Prime Minister; her monetarist views will impact severely on British Leyland. The company agrees with Honda on the licence manufacture of the Ballade as the Triumph Acclaim.

1986

After various elements of British Leyland are sold off, negotiations with Ford and General Motors fail. A bid by Land Rover managers to acquire the company is rejected by Thatcher, who brings in Graham Day as Chairman. British Leyland is officially renamed as ‘The Rover Group’. Production of the Rover SD1 range ceases.

1988

The Rover Group is sold to British Aerospace.

1989

In the last of the Honda deals, Rover agrees with Honda to develop the Honda Accord as the Rover 600. George Simpson increasingly takes over more responsibility as managing director. Slighted by the move, Tony Gilroy, leader of the Land Rover buy-out bid, leaves the company. The Land Rover Discovery is launched in September. The Rover 200 range, based on the Honda Concerto, is launched in October.

1990

The Concerto-based Rover 400 is launched. The Land Rover is relaunched as the Defender.

1991

The facelifted version of the Rover 800 is launched.

1993

The Rover 600 is launched.

1994

In March the Rover Group is sold to BMW. In October the Second-Generation Range Rover is launched.

1995

The MGF is launched followed by the new Rover 200, the company’s first own saloon design since the Montego.

1997

The Land Rover Freelander, stemming from an earlier Rover Cars concept, is launched.

1998

The Rover 75 and Land Rover Discovery Series II are launched.

1999

Following the dramatic failure of the Rover 75’s launch, sales are disappointing. With BMW becoming financially vulnerable due to the problems in Rover, there is a boardroom shake-up, with BMW now taking a more direct interest in the company.

2000

Following failed negotiations with Alchemy, MG Rover is eventually sold to the Phoenix Consortium for £10. Land Rover is sold to Ford. BMW retains the Cowley factory, renaming it Plant Oxford as a home for the MINI brand.

2005

MG Rover goes into administration.

2007

Following a string of model launches including a third generation of the Range Rover, a third Discovery model, the Range Rover Sport and new Freelander, Ford announces that it is retrenching on its core business and that Jaguar and Land Rover are up for sale.

2008

The sale of Jaguar Land Rover to Tata Motors is agreed. The world recession impacts heavily on the company, which considers shutting one of its plants. The Government declines to intervene but funding is obtained from finance companies who see the company’s potential.

2014

Jaguar Land Rover emerges from its crisis as one of Britain’s most successful manufacturing companies. The Queen formally opens its new engine facility in Wolverhampton. New models include the Range Rover Evoque and new generations of the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, while the Discovery Sport debuts at the Paris Motor Show. In Oxford, the MINI brand goes from strength to strength with new generations of its core model being produced.

PART ONE

COMPANY

CHAPTER ONE

THE ROCKY ROAD – ROVER’S EVOLUTION

WATCH-MAKING TO CYCLING

The Midlands city of Coventry, replete with its fine cathedral, emerged during the eighteenth century as a centre of watch-making in England. No one is really sure why, but it was probably due to its position at the crossroads of several trade routes through the country and to the efforts of prominent locals, who introduced some significant timekeeping innovations. The business prospered and by the mid-1860s over 2000 people were recorded as being employed in watch-making. However, in the second half of the nineteenth century factory-produced watches from America began to be imported, alongside quality timepieces from Switzerland, and the industry in Coventry fell into decline.

Many workers were taken up by a new emerging business making sewing machines, which required a similar skill set. One major firm was the Coventry Sewing Machine Company, founded in 1861 by James Starley. Eight years later Starley decided to cash in on the growing fashion for cycling, and in 1883 he launched a tricycle with two large chain-driven front wheels and a vestigial rear wheel. He called it ‘The Rover’.

Like other cycles of its time, The Rover was extremely unwieldy owing to its tricycle layout. It was James Starley’s nephew, John Kemp Starley, who took the radical step of designing a machine with two equal wheels attached to an angled frame. The front wheel was attached by a fork arrangement steered by a handlebar, at first indirectly then by a solid attachment. Drive was achieved by linking pedals on an axle running through the bottom of the frame to the rear wheel using a chain. The front cog was larger than the rear, to confer mechanical advantage. With two smaller and equal wheels, many of the perils of the ‘ordinary’ or ‘Penny Farthing’ bicycle were largely avoided, so it became known as the ‘Safety Bicycle’. However, with braking achieved by a simple leveroperated friction device acting on the solid front tyre, riding it was not without its hazards.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the danger, cycling became a favourite pastime in the late Victorian era. The invention of the pneumatic tyre made riding more comfortable and the introduction by Starley’s of the Rover Ladies’ Bicycle, which featured a shaft drive arrangement to prevent skirts becoming tangled in the chain, broadened its appeal. Now, men and women had equal opportunity to take to the road and find freedom. With the introduction of The Rover the modern bicycle was born and, thanks to the Starley family, the world would never be quite the same again.

STREAK OF LIGHT

From the earliest days of J. K. Starley’s bicycle manufacture, the factory was known as the ‘Meteor Works’. As the company expanded, it moved into larger premises, ending up in the ‘New Meteor Works’ in Helen Street, Coventry. The plant appeared on Luftwaffe reconnaissance photographs marked as ‘Rover Werke, Flugmotoren’ and was a prime target for the devastating air raids of 14–15 November 1940. It was reported to The Rover Company board that it had been severely damaged, with the ‘Long Shop’ completely destroyed and beyond repair. There was no production taking place but sadly two employees were killed and three injured. Showing it was still at heart a family firm, a £500 grant from the company was made to relatives and the injured, and board members also made a personal contribution. Administrative staff were moved to Chesford Grange, a nearby country house, while machine tools (which generally survived) were moved to Shadow Factory Number 1 at Acocks Green, in accordance with pre-war planning. Other production was moved to another Shadow Factory at Barnoldswick in Lancashire. When Rover started making the automotive version of the Rolls-Royce ‘Merlin’ aero engine, it was called the ‘Meteor’ and when Rover moved permanently to Solihull, that factory took the name.

EARLY MOTORIZED VEHICLES

Following a slump in bicycle sales at the end of the nineteenth century, Starley began to work on a motorized version. The first motorbike with the Rover name was launched in 1902, but John Starley did not live to see it, dying at the untimely age of 46 the year before.

The Rover Company’s first car was an eight-horsepower model in 1904.

The company had also been dabbling in car production. An electric-powered vehicle was made in 1888. Because of British regulations of the time, it was tested in France, where it achieved the remarkable speed of 8 miles per hour! It was not deemed worthy of further development and in the end the first Rover car was the Rover Eight, launched in 1904. The design was remarkable, with the driveline forming a backbone structure for the vehicle. As this included the rear axle, there was no suspension other than the compliance of the tyres, although the body was spring-mounted to give an element of comfort for the occupants. This arrangement was soon dropped in favour of a more conventional chassis and in this form the car was driven across Europe to Istanbul, the first to achieve this feat.

By 1912, Rover’s cars had grown in both size and power.

Clearly, Rover was never afraid of pursuing new technology – in 1913 a representative was sent to Harwich to meet innovative thermal engineer Rudolph Diesel, who was due to arrive on the overnight ferry from Antwerp. While Diesel certainly boarded the boat, he never made it to the end of the journey and was assumed to have drowned en route. Opinion was divided as to whether his disappearance was a result of suicide, or murder connected with his work on German U-boats, but what is certain is that it would be some time before Rovers were running on compression ignition engines.

The company built Maudslay trucks and Sunbeam staff cars during the First World War and also supplied motorbikes of their own design to the Russian Army. When peace arrived, Rover was quick to launch the Rover Eight, made at a factory in Tyseley, Birmingham. The Eight featured an air-cooled flat twin engine with the cylinder heads poking out of the bonnet, protected by scoops that also served to shield the eyes of the driver as the cylinders glowed red in the dark.

TURNING ROVER AROUND

While the Rover Eight enjoyed initial success, the company was forced progressively to lower its price to meet the threat of new competition from vehicles such as the Austin 7, which had a more conventional water-cooled engine. The economic recession of the 1920s combined with the success of other manufacturers saw a fall in Rover sales and the company was soon running at a loss. On the verge of bankruptcy, Rover’s main creditors installed a new managing director, Frank Searle, who had been a tank corps commander in the First World War before gaining industrial experience with Daimler and Imperial Airways. Searle recruited Spencer Wilks, who had left Hillman when it was taken over by Rootes, as general manager. Wilks was soon joined by his brother, Maurice, who took the post of chief engineer.

Together the team began to transform the model range. This period also saw the development of the shield badge of the Rover bicycles into the famous Viking longship badge that was to become the brand’s emblem for seventy-five years.

While it was taking time to turn Rover around, the company was confident enough to try a publicity stunt using one of its Light Six models. The idea was that the Light Six would race the Blue Train, a French express train that whisked eager (and rich) British holidaymakers from Calais to the south of France and back. The man behind the enterprise was Rover’s publicity director, Dudley Noble, the same man who had waited in vain for a meeting with Rudolph Diesel. The first attempt was beaten by fog that made driving impossible. Undeterred, the Rover team, accompanied by a Daily Express reporter, made their way to the south of France determined to beat the train on the return trip to Calais. However, shortly after leaving St Raphael, Noble’s co-driver drove the car into a ditch. They struck lucky on the third attempt, arriving at Calais just twenty minutes ahead of the train. Driving non-stop, they had covered the 750-mile route at an average speed of just under 40mph. It was enough of a margin to be convincing and it made the name of Rover, with the men in the team becoming heroes in the British press.

Rover’s recovery under the Wilks brothers resulted in classics like the Rover 14 of 1936.

The tiny Scarab broke the mould of Rover’s ‘doctors’ cars’ of the 1930s. It never went into production but showed the company was prepared to innovate.

During the remainder of the 1930s, the Rover Company produced a succession of solid saloons, including the first of the ‘P’ series, the P1. With the one exception of the Scarab, which did not make it past the prototype stage, its products were aimed squarely at middle-class professionals and established the company as a paragon of British engineering. By the mid-1930s the company was generating significant profits.

WAR EFFORT

Solihull was ‘Shadow Factory Number 2’, managed for the Ministry of Aircraft Production by Rover and making radial aircraft engines. This model, made by Solihull’s carpenters, shows the original camouflage, some of which can still be glimpsed on the original buildings.

There is a popular perception that Britain was unprepared for the Second World War, but this is only partly true. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s meetings with the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler may have sacrificed Czechoslovakia but they bought some time for Britain to get ready for the gathering storm. One measure was the creation of ‘Shadow Factories’ that would build war materials away from urban areas, which it was felt would be heavily bombed once the war started. ‘Shadow Factory Number 1’ was built in Acocks Green, a suburb of Birmingham, and the Rover Company was invited by the Air Ministry to run it. This was followed by ‘Shadow Factory Number 2’, constructed in farmland at Solihull in the Warwickshire countryside although it was only a few miles from Acocks Green. The Solihull factory was designed to produce radial aero engines from parts machined both there and at Acocks Green, and was distinguished by several H-shaped test houses for them.

Both factories were complete by 1938 but it was not until the outbreak of war in the following year that Rover’s war work really swung into action, producing the Bristol Hercules aircraft engine (which was more powerful than the famous Rolls-Royce Merlin).

Early in 1940 Rover was contacted by the Air Ministry about an ‘entirely new form of aircraft propulsion’. This was the jet engine being developed by Squadron Leader Frank Whittle. It had first run in 1937 but the patent had been allowed to lapse. Whittle had formed the Power Jets company with some retired RAF officers and Rover was invited to consider taking it over. Board minutes show that Rover directors did not think much of this idea. However, there was sufficient interest for the company to participate in the jet engine programme, later described as the ‘supercharger’ in the minutes, in a sudden realization that security might be an issue.

Rover was expected to make Whittle’s design suitable for mass production but while a prototype aircraft, the Gloster E28/39, took to the air with an engine cobbled together by Whittle, Rover was secretly developing its own, simpler straight-through design. When this broke cover, the strained relationship between Whittle and Rover collapsed completely and Rover decided to quit the programme. It handed its design over to Rolls-Royce in exchange for a contract to build the Meteor engine, a version of the Merlin designed for tanks and other vehicles. While early versions of the Gloster Meteor, Britain’s first operational jet fighter, used the Whittle engine, it was soon replaced by the Rover design, now known as the Rolls-Royce Derwent.

In the meantime Rover’s Coventry factory had been destroyed, and several workers killed, in the infamous raid on the city, which razed most of the medieval centre, including the cathedral, to the ground. This left Rover effectively homeless. Once the war was over, it leased the Acocks Green and Solihull factories from the Government and restarted car production using pre-war designs. As the main assembly plant, Solihull took the name of ‘Meteor Works’, following a tradition that went back to the age of the Rover bicycle. With considerable foresight the company also bought some surrounding farmland and several houses in the area as accommodation for its executives.

While Rover had been anticipating the resumption of car production during the war, the loss of military contracts was a severe shock to the company’s finances. While Britain was on the winning side of the conflict, the country was effectively bankrupt and reliant on an American loan negotiated at commercial rates. Worse, most of this was squandered in a vain attempt to support sterling. This resulted in a period of austerity that was as bad as, if not worse than, that suffered during the war. Following a bad harvest in 1946, bread was rationed, which had not been the case during the war. The bad winter of 1946/7 also caused potatoes to be rationed. Affecting Rover more directly, the basic petrol ration was stopped in 1947 after a dock workers’ strike and, although this was soon restored at a much lower level than previously, petrol was not freely available until 1950. Adding to the misery was a restriction on the amount of steel available for car manufacturing.

This difficult situation led Rover to look once more at a small car, and the result was the M-type, a small coupé powered by a 700cc engine and featuring an advanced coil-spring suspension system. However, the M-Type did not find favour with the Rover board and also contravened the Government’s one-model policy imposed on car manufacturers. Another solution to ensure Rover’s future had to be found.

LINES IN THE SAND

Red Wharf Bay in Anglesey, the legendary location where Maurice Wilks scoped out the design of the Land-Rover. The first production vehicle is seen flanked by the Willys Jeep that was the foundation of the prototype, and a modern Defender, during filming for BBC TV’s ‘Coast’ programme.

Spencer and Maurice Wilks, who effectively ran the Rover Company as managing and technical director, spent their summer holidays at a home they owned in Anglesey, where they used a war surplus Jeep for trips to the beach at Red Wharf Bay. It was there that Maurice Wilks had a brainwave. Worried that the supply of Jeeps was running out, he had been looking around for a replacement utility vehicle. Why not get Rover to build one? Sketching his design in the sand for the benefit of his brother, he soon won approval for the idea.

The Land-Rover was primarily intended for the agricultural market. The prototype, which for a while featured a central steering position, was suitably posed for a photo shoot at the farm on the Solihull site.

There was no time to lose – the company’s survival was at stake. Using a Jeep chassis and components, a prototype was constructed at Solihull using aluminium – the supply of which was unrestricted – for a simple utility body. Power came from a Rover car engine while the transmission employed a car gearbox and rear axle. Four-wheel drive was achieved using a newly designed transfer box with two ratios and a freewheel to give permanent four-wheel drive as opposed to the selectable system of the Jeep. The front axle was simply the rear axle turned upside down, cropped and fitted with joints to allow drive while being steered. A centre steer configuration was tried and swiftly abandoned. To appeal to the agricultural market, the vehicle was fitted with power takeoffs to drive machinery. The chassis used the same 80-inch wheelbase as the Jeep but, unable to afford the massive tools used to stamp the Jeep’s chassis side members, they were fabricated from four pieces to form a box. Being reasonably thin and straight they could be stamped from steel off-cuts avoiding the restrictions on use of the material.

The development of the Land-Rover was carried out with incredible speed, much of it on the first fifty ‘pre-production’ vehicles, like this lefthand-drive, restored by Ken Wheelwright.

The Rover board was impressed and sanctioned the purchase of materials for fifty pre-production vehicles, which would be saleable but also used to refine the design. The vehicle was very quickly called the ‘Land-Rover’.

Work proceeded amazingly quickly, especially considering the conditions of austerity and rationing under which the team was working, and the board was soon inspecting the first of the vehicles built on a new production line at the Solihull factory.

The Land-Rover was intended for a launch at the 1948 Geneva motor show but the display vehicle was not ready in time so its debut was at the lesser Amsterdam show in April. It was an instant hit. Journalists at Motor magazine were impressed by their road test: ‘In launching this new vehicle, the Rover Co. has displayed an enterprise which should be well rewarded and there is no doubt that a big market, both at home and abroad, exists for such a machine as the Land-Rover.’ Customers agreed and by the time of the next Annual General Meeting of the Rover Company, its Chairman was able to deliver a favourable report:

We gave careful consideration to many alternatives and finally decided to put the Land-Rover into production – a decision which events have subsequently proved to be a very satisfactory one. In the Land-Rover we have a vehicle, the engineering quality of which is just as exciting as it is for our cars, in which we maintain very high standards. The Land-Rover also uses our car components to very good effect. I am glad to say that it has met with a very satisfactory response and, indeed, the orders and enquiries we have already received, particularly from overseas, indicate that the vehicle will be something very much more than an additional source of production. It may yet equal – and even exceed – our car output in quantity.

The Land-Rover range expanded quickly to include long-wheelbase and station-wagon models. Garnished with galvanized steel and pock-marked with rivets, this 107-inch Station Wagon from the early 1950s had a look that only a mother could love.

He was right. As new variants such as station wagons and long-wheelbase versions appeared, production rose to over 20,000 in 1952 to over 30,000 just three years later. By 1966 the company was celebrating building the 500,000th Land-Rover and the millionth milestone would be reached just ten years later.

SIXTIES SUCCESS

Despite the success of the Land-Rover it was still regarded as a poor relation to Rover’s car range. During the 1950s the company produced a succession of robust cars suited to doctors, magistrates and politicians, but retained its reputation for innovation with a series of jet-powered cars. It was also prepared to innovate with a new model for a new market. First conceived in the late 1950s – the era of Harold Macmillan and his ‘You’ve never had it so good’ speech – the Rover P6 embodied a raft of contemporary cutting-edge technology, although rather less than the new generation of designers, including Charles Spencer ‘Spen’ King, wanted.

The main feature of the P6 was its architecture of base unit and panels. This consisted of an internal monocoque steel frame that could take all the car’s automotive loads, with the body panels being bolted to it. This was said to increase the vehicle’s longevity by confining any corrosion to the non-structural panels that could easily be replaced – a feature that also made minor crash damage easier to fix. Any restyling could also be done quickly and at low investment. The downside was that it was expensive to build and that incomplete cars could be driven around without body panels in all weathers, with consequent repercussions on quality. The simple restyling feature was never tested thanks to the soundness of David Bache’s original design, which was virtually unchanged for the life of the car.

Power came from a new, 4-cylinder ‘Heron Head’ overhead camshaft engine, transmitting power through an equally new gearbox to a rear axle arrangement that employed a De Dion tube while also featuring inboard disc brakes. The front suspension was equally innovative, with a bell crank arrangement supporting horizontal coil springs. This was chosen to maximize the size of the engine bay as Rover was still toying with the idea of a jet-powered car for the masses and had already shown one with many P6 features.

The car also carried a significant number of safety features such as a collapsible steering column and twin-circuit all-round disc brakes. There were internal crash protection features too, including front seat belts, and a careful design of interior switchgear. Despite these, Ralph Nader, American car safety guru and author of the 1965 book, Unsafe At Any Speed, remained unimpressed by certain aspects of the design.

The Rover P6, which first appeared as the Rover 2000, was a technological marvel but its cost and lack of profitability eventually sent Rover into the arms of Leyland Motors.

Rather than market an intended 6-cylinder version, Rover offered extra power with the twin-carburettor TC model.

Nevertheless, the P6, launched as the Rover 2000, proved to be a sensation, even though it came up against the Triumph 2000, which was launched at the same time. Where the Triumph scored with its smooth, 6-cylinder engine, the Rover trumped it with the sheer innovation of its design. Ironically, Rover had also planned a 6-cylinder version of the P6, which was eventually cancelled in 1963.

However, this innovation came at a price – literally. At first, the Rover board had been concerned about the delays in getting such a marvel into production. Once that had been achieved, they became worried about the cost of producing it. Even before its launch, the board minutes of the Rover Company report that the costs of the P6 were being ‘carefully watched’. The company was later extremely anxious about the ‘considerable number’ of modifications affecting the P6 once production got under way.

The P6 was part of an expansion programme that had been instigated by Rover. In July 1961 it was looking at achieving an annual profit of £2.5 million with an output of 50,000 vehicles. Subsequent study showed that, in order to generate this, the company would require an uplift in volume to 53,000 vehicles with 39,000 of these being Land-Rovers – that was how important a product it was. While the P6 would increase penetration into the passenger-car market, initial volumes were comparatively low, with a target of approximately 10,000 vehicles each year. Other actions considered were a reduction in staffing and the sale of farmland adjacent to the Solihull site, which eventually garnered £1 million from property developer Bryant Homes.

The company struggled to achieve its profit targets when volumes fell short of those predicted. This prompted an instruction to look for new models of the Land-Rover, which could generate more profit than the cars. It was this exercise that was to lead eventually to the development of the Range Rover. The company also explored the possibility of marketing the Steyr-Puch Haflinger four-wheel-drive utility vehicle but the negotiations came to nothing.

The deal to produce the General Motors all-alloy 3.5-litre V8 was a boon to Rover, offering as it did a lightweight and powerful engine for its range of cars and the upcoming Range Rover.

More successful were discussions with General Motors concerning their 215cu in all-alloy V8 ‘Fireball’ engine. These resulted in a $1million deal for Rover to take over the manufacturing rights for the engine, some built examples and the services of a General Motors development engineer to help put it into production. The work was originally planned to take place at Solihull but permission for further expansion on the site was refused by the Board of Trade so it was relocated to the plant at Acocks Green in Birmingham, another former ‘Shadow Factory’. The final agreement was signed in January 1965 and the plan was to fit the engine into the P5 and P6 models, where it would produce considerably more power than the current engines, while weighing less. It was not thought suitable for Land-Rovers, for which a new, iron, V6 engine was proposed. In the end, more power would come from adopting the 2.6-litre car engine.

Although the early 1960s were troubled economically, the Rover Company was in buoyant mood, funding its continuing expansion by a £2 million share issue in 1963. By the middle of the decade it was developing a major upgrade of the Land-Rover, which would appear as the Series III, in addition to new major military vehicles, the ½ Ton Airportable and 1 Tonne Forward Control. It was also looking at ways to increase production of the P6, partly to offset a decline in demand for commercial Land-Rovers. In May 1965, Rover was approached by the Coventry firm Alvis, which was seeking a merger with the larger company. This was agreed in June, with Alvis shareholders receiving like-for-like Rover stock. Not only did Rover acquire the Alvis name, which it promptly decided to apply to a new mid-engined V8-powered sports car, but it also gained some valuable aluminium machining capacity for the new V8.

IDENTITY CRISIS

Eighteen months after the Alvis deal, a bigger merger was in prospect. The British motor industry had been in a state of flux in the mid-1960s. The economic crisis precipitated by the realization that the ‘never had it so good’ boom had been an illusion saw a slump in car sales. The British Motor Corporation (BMC) had been particularly badly affected. Formed in 1952 by the merger of rivals Austin and Morris, BMC had lost its way in product terms, thanks largely to the autocratic rule of Mini designer Alex Issigonis. Issigonis’ larger version of the Mini, the Austin/Morris 1800, had been a sales disaster, forcing the company to design a new, more advanced car that would eventually emerge as the Austin Maxi. Until that time its reliance on small cars, which returned little if any profitability, as well as an unhealthy reliance on the domestic market, had led to significant losses. The situation was not helped by a poor industrial relations record.

BMC’s problems were offset by the canny purchase in 1965 of Pressed Steel, which gave BMC control over most of Britain’s steel-stamping capacity. This was one of the factors that led Jaguar’s Sir William Lyons to sell his company to BMC in 1966. It was a move that created British Motor Holdings (BMH) and gave the new company a slightly more balanced model range, including some large cars that could generate a profit. Jaguar also had considerable presence in overseas markets, notably the USA. The main problem for BMH was a yawning gap in the mid-range sector that was now extremely popular largely thanks to Ford’s Cortina.

With the Ford Motor Company and General Motors well established in the British motor industry, the Chrysler Corporation was anxious to get in on the act and proposed expanding its share interest in the Rootes Group. This prompted the Labour Government’s Minister of Technology, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, who had formed the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, to try to bring together Donald Stokes’s Leyland Motor Company, Rootes and BMH. The aim was to create a corporation that would have enough weight to take on any motor company in the world, but the attempt failed, with Rootes becoming Chrysler UK in 1967.

Sir Donald Stokes was seen as a paragon of British manufacturing, but stumbled over the complexities of running British Leyland.

Meanwhile, the advantages of acquiring more car-manufacturing capacity had not been lost on the ‘buccaneering’ Donald Stokes. With Chrysler homing in on Rootes, Rover was the only remaining player left. Its share of the overall car market was small but the worldwide appeal of the Land-Rover was attractive and had obvious synergy with Leyland’s bus and truck offerings. The only difficulty was the clash between the Rover 2000 and its Triumph equivalent, but this could be overcome.

The Rover P8 was meant to replace the larger Rover saloons and kept the Range Rover out of the design studio. But the engineering was too complex for the model to be profitable and it was unceremoniously dumped by the accountants.

The Range Rover prototypes had lash-up bodies but, in order to rush this potentially profitable model into the market, more advanced concepts were cast aside in favour of simply refining the design.

Rover Company board minutes record the approach from Leyland Motors in December 1966. They were pushing at an open door. The deal would mean a £25 million bonus for Rover shareholders in the stock they would receive and the board had no hesitation in recommending acceptance.

Incoming Leyland management were quick to impose themselves at Solihull. By April 1967 Stokes was complaining that Rover’s profitability was unsatisfactory. One project that offered a reprieve was the ‘100-Inch Station Wagon’ that would become the Range Rover. By July the first prototype, powered by a 6-cylinder engine, was complete. By September work was proceeding ‘at top pressure’, with a member of the Value Analysis Department permanently assigned to the design team to make sure that the new vehicle did not follow the P6 in allowing costs to run away unchecked. With the styling department working full-time on the P8 executive car project, which was being rejigged to avoid conflict with a Triumph 2000 facelift, advanced designs for the new project were ditched in favour of refining the lines of the prototype.

While Leyland was getting to grips with Rover, it was also being courted by the Government with the aim of creating the previously stillborn corporation. This emerged as a de facto takeover of BMH by Leyland Motors, who were in a much stronger financial position. The new British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC) came into being in May 1968. Stokes became Chairman, making former BMH boss, George Harriman, President without executive powers. Harriman collapsed at the news and had to be taken to hospital. Another leading light at BMH, Joe Edwards, parted company with the new corporation before it was formally started, but William Lyons managed to retain a large measure of control over Jaguar. The Government provided a dowry of £25 million in grants to get the new marriage off the ground.

Stokes and John Barber, recruited from Ford, commenced the mammoth task of reorganizing a large part of the British motor industry. Under pressure from the Government to increase output and exports, in order to offset a looming balance of payments crisis, a programme of mass redundancies was set aside for fear of destroying the new corporation at birth with a series of damaging strikes. Instead, the new management concentrated on a programme of model rationalization, reducing vehicle stocks and paring back the dealer network. Barber recruited a mass of ex-Ford product planners and cost analysts to bring the future model programme under control and to ensure their profitability. Changes in labour relations, including the introduction of measured day work to replace piecework, would come later.