If British Leyland hadn't purchased Rover.........

B

bbrich1968

New Member
Sorry to do this if it has already been done, or if i have not read enough on the subject please forgive me.

It grates me to think that there is no large British owned car industry, however that is not the really the point of this post come question.

My question in a long winded kind of way comes from my mindset that the last true rover car was the SD1, although the development was through the specialist division, the original idea drawings concept etc was Solihulls brainchild so to my mind this is the last true rover, even if it was a shed.

Now to my point,

If British Leyland hadnt purchased Rover in the late 60s and devalued the brand what kind of car do you think would have evolved through to today?

Would they have embraced turbo charging ala saab, would performance have come along those lines, or would we today have 3.0 litre turbo diesals, you have to say they were an innovative bunch.

Would we have ended up with a corporate car like todays audi A6 or Bmw's 5 series. I dont see rover as a cheap car, i dont see it as a Jag either, more medium class but with all the toys and future now innovations as per the P6.

I know its a very broad subject, but you must sometimes think.........if only they were left alone what would we have today.

Just look at what they were developing when they were purchased or even the travesty of spending 3 million plus on development and tooling for the the P6BS that Stokesy threw away you know they were going to dominate again in the seventies as they did in the sixties and a new generation saloon would have been out to the public long before the SD1 finally appeared.
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ps
Sorry in advance to all SD1 owners for calling the car a shed, i love them aswell but i worked on them in the middle eighties at All electric garages in Harborne, Birmingham, they were made to a price. (the british leyland effect)

 
I did an article on more or less this subject for The Other Club's magazine (They asked me to! Our club gave me the brush off). Basic thrust was that the investment needed for the second engine line to make the V8 on top of the strain of the very late introduction of the P6 pushed the Rover board into the arms of Leyland in 1967. Had they had the courage of their convictions to hold out as independants they would have quickly seen the (most unexpected at the time) success and profits from the P5B, P6B and Range Rover. Leyland were then coerced by the government into swallowing BMC a short time later.

We know from Rover photographs that work was in progress on fuel injection for both the 4 cylinder and the V8 at the time of the takeover. The EFi 2000 might even have turned out as the much lamented 2000S with the sportier suspension set up. I'm pretty sure that a couple of holes in the factory number series identified by Nick Dunning are most likely for the 2000 convertible and the 2000S.

Rover themselves had already cancelled P7 at the time of the takeover. This was a lengthened P6 with a six cylinder version of the P6 4 cyl. Rather than reworking P7 for the V8 cost pressures had dictated a light makeover for the P6. This was a shame as P7 had double wishbone front suspension, whilst the P6B turned out not as cheap as hoped. Rover actually used a new front inner wing and chassis rail arrangement (hence the different front bumpers and the different front suspension arms) which noticeably worsened the front suspension geometry. The P6B has greater camber change with compression than the P6.

Still on the stocks were Range Rover (then known as Road Rover!) a 2 door fastback version of P6 known as Gladys for Alvis, the P8 Uber Saloon and the P9 sports car (again for Alvis).

Gladys looks to me like one of those good ideas that got rather lost along the way to the showroom, a bit like a Mk1 Granada Coupe in appearance, my immediate question is Why? And surely quite unsuitable for the Alvis clientelle.

P9 is quite well known, both as the BS running prototype that got quite a bit of road test coverage at the time and as the stunning styling mock up that was the proposal cancelled by Jaguar's William Lyons as too much of a threat to the E Type.

P8 is the dark horse. It started as a combined replacement for P6 and P5 but quickly grew into a Mercedes S class competitor that would have given the Germans a real problem. One (damaged) car apparently survives but has not been seen for a very long time. At the time of cancellation in 1970 all tooling was complete and installation of the production line on the point of starting. From here on things get murky but there is good circumstancial evidence to presume that P8 was the start point for both SD1 and the Australian P76. The latter was engineered at MG Abingdon but under David Bache's supervision. At the very least it got the P8 4.4 ltr V8. Comparison of photo's suggests it got P8's doors intact. There is persistent rumour that the P8 floorpan formed the basis of both subsequent cars although clearly the suspension layouts are very different leading to a marginally different wheelbase. All these actions would make complete sense in the presence of so much completed tooling.

SD1 is as you rightly say built down to a price. BMC engineers got a significant look in on the development process and I think this shows in the detail design, which lacks Rover's attention to detail. The other achilles heel of SD1 was of course the paint process. It is unclear to me whether that was a Rover initiative or BL. The other thing that lets SD1 down by conmparison to previous Rover's is the interior. It must be remembered that the P6 was revolutionary at its' time and the SD1 interior is very clearly a direct descendent of P8 at least in style. I just can't imagine the Rover board tolerating those door casings or the headlining. Other aspects of SD1 are more difficult to attribute. The rear axle was definitely a Rover input although P8 had had de dion, engine line up was definitely BL. The high spec SD1's with leather trim do give a glimpse of Rover past, but there were far too many low spec ones. Perhaps it is best seen as what Rover might have built if tasked with making a cheap car? Definitely not a true Rover in my view or at least not aimed at Rover's normal market place.

Enough of history, I think the point is that Rover were poised to occupy the same sort of market spot as we now associate as a two way fight between BMW and Mercedes. There would be a good argument that this market segment would not support three players and one would have gone to the wall. My guess is that would be between Rover and BMW. BMW were quite shakey in the late 60's and it was really the success of the 2002 series in the early 70's that made them. My guess is that it would have been Rover that survived.

Rover's weakness was always in engines. The EFi work is a good sign, but I would be concerned about Rover being able to match up to the Mercedes engineering machine in that regard. Also the continent was switched on to diesels much earlier than Britain so Rover would have been likely to be late to the party there too.

Whatever - the injected 2000 and the Uber Saloon P8 seem to me to point to a stunningly interesting future for Rover if they had escaped Leyland's.

Chris
 
The union thing is a tricky one, the sheer numbers and the mass control of the unions at BL obviously dictated through the seventies, add to the fact that the country was on its a..e and most large organisations suffered from strike action i think you can safely say that Rover would have had its fair share of unrest with regards to industrial relations.

Did Rover adopt BL's working pratices,.... ie the abolishment of piece work (spelling?) or motivated workforce, Labours interference with this practice meant you got your pay regardless of how non productive you were. It would be interesting to find out, are there any members with any personal experience on this matter?

Is it fair to say that the quality suffered with the P6 during the seventies, the feeling i get is that most people hold the series 1 in high regard, the series 2 something to dismantle, is this because they feel the series 2 is a BL car? (mines a late 2er and i dont want to dismantle it)

My personal feeling is that the people of solihull were proud of what they producing, there is a massive pride factor in owning a P6, i have only had mine a few weeks and i cant believe the amount of people that have come up to me to talk about the car, i have 2 vw baywindows and they are equally as fantastic in different ways and people dont purposely come to talk to me about them.

The p6 is revered, comments like "thats fantastic, my uncle had one and it was brilliant" etc etc etc, one guy almost headbutted his windscreen driving past the house screeching to a stop, he opened his window took a long look and said, "i should never have got rid of mine, best car i ever owned", to affect people in this way cant be just rose tinted memories, there is a sense of pride for what has been built and put in front of them, you have to feel that the guys that were making the cars had that same sense of pride.

I know ive waffled on a bit there and you dont know how much text i deleted before i posted this up!!!

Ive talked myself into believing that the quality and workmanship of the marque wouldn't have been as devalued if British Leyland hadnt took advantage.

When you look at the rot boxes vw were in the seventies and how crude their cars were, aircooled boxer engines with cars that had no heating and no soundproofing with no chance of surviving the first year without breaking down, where are they now more or less top of the tree in their sector of the market, people dont even question the quality factor.

Middle management loved the P6, left to its own devices i think that the Rover car of today may just have been somewhere between a BMW 3 and 5 series, a car that would have taken sales from both cars and seriously troubled the similarly priced mercs of this world as well.

Cheers Rich.
 
The union thing was not a specific to BL problem. I have been a lifelong supporter of the principle of unions and always encouraged my employees to join. In the mid seventies, however, there was a national coalition of militants, notably Red Robbo at BL, Arthur Scargill in the NUM and others, who passionately believed in a particular confrontationalist view of the relationship between workers, management and government. At the time I saw this as fundamentally wrong and I think events have proved this to be the case. Whatever you think of her subsequent record (and I am a fierce critic) Thatcher was entirely necessary for the good of the country in breaking this view of worker relations. It's just a shame that the pendulum then swung too far the other way in favour of exploitative managements (isn't that so Pilkie!).

Certainly Rover would not have escaped this turmoil whether part of BL or not.

The quality problem at BL and Rover was part of a wider picture in Britain that saw turning up for work as a right and the activity wilst at work as completely irrelevant. My own observation of the phenomonen within the rail industry was that it was largely a product of poor management. Arguably people were just tired from the war and it took that long to work through the system.

As to the P6 there is no doubt it was an outstanding car. It still holds its own in comparison to modern cars and for a design that saw the first prototypes on the road in the late fifties that is astonishing. The key ingredients to this success were the young team of engineers who fathered it. All keen motor racers. And a management that was engineering lead and not accountant lead. This also was it's downfall. The car was ready for launch around four years before any significant number were actually shipped. Today that is the entire life of a design! In consequence Rover ran through the sixties with a severe financial hangover which was just topped off by the cost of launching the V8.

It certainly seems to be the case that S1's have a better survival chance than S2's. I think there's more to it than just quality control on the line though. Constant production interruptions seem to have lead to large numbers of base units sitting around in fields before being properly painted and built up, and not necessarily in the order they were built in! The VIP's are a particular case in point with a horrendous reputation for rust as a result. There is also a suggestion that the quality of steel strip used in the seventies was inferior to that of the sixties. That could well be due to BL procurement sourcing on the basis of price before quality.

At least at Solihull Rover did seem to retain the huge pride of a family firm. I think the real problems stem from poor decision making by high management. If my reading of the developments in train at Rover at the time of the Leyland takeover are right then it seems also fair to accuse Leyland management of stagnating the design in favour of keeping on taking the profits.

Broadly then, I agree with you Rich. But it's too simplistic to see the problem as purely BL. Rover were to some extent architects of their own downfall and the events of the time need to be seen in a national perspective. Lets just be thankfull we have inherited such a wonderful car!

Chris
 
I agree entirely it is too simplistic to view it purely as a BL problem and i curse you both for taking such a fair and logical view!!!!!

You have left me with no where to go. Other than research Red Robbo, im no social historian and being a 1968 baby have no real memories of the strike actions or the characters involved.

I fear that in asking the question the inevitable has happened and we digress into why it failed and not what we could have had if they had survived and evolved under their own steam.

What i was hoping for was more outlandish claims like the dominance of the european car markets,
or
Rover would have bought bmw stole its assets and then sold it on for ten very weak euros but only after ransacking its iconic model range and pinching its latest design for a small bmw and calling it the Rover 1 series.

Pipe dreams i know but in the words of an american blogger on the austin rover site
"it makes us all want to puke at the moral, industrial, financial & logical irony of it all"

Which is a very good point, is there a cycle in there, we as british people are generally thought to be unsophisticated people, we are seen as wasp chewing bulldogs stuck in the past thinking we are better than any body else. Could it be the case that we evolved through what is a natural cycle in manufacturing before any other nation, we merged and bought and merged and bought, then we failed and sold, is this now not the case with BMW and more recently Ford.

The indians and the chinese new found capitalism will probably implode on itself and another new kid on the block will take the reins, the question is how long 5 years, a generation or a long tradition such as ours.

Cheers Rich
 
Last week I was in the carpark of the Opera House in Sydney, Australia. Included in the "upmarket" cars was an immaculate Jaguar E type V12. It was surrounded by a large party of Japanese tourists. I examined the car and was approached by a tall Japanese. What was it, he asked? I informed it was a British car. This was conveyed in Japanese to the party and invoked much oohing and ahing. What year was it, he asked? I said I was not sure but it would be between 40 and 50 years old. This was greeted with astonishment and when they walked away, they were still looking over their shoulders. Yes, the British designed magnificent cars ( but did not always make them very well )
 
Your quite right Rich - lets have a bit of informed fantasy!

So lets start by assuming that Rover survived independent to see the profits roll in from P5B, P6B and Range Rover.

That would have secured development of P6/P6B to an all EFi range including a sports 2000S and convertible. Next up we can be pretty sure P6BS would have launched as a new Alvis. I suspect it would have looked much more like the engineering prototype than the rather later swoopy design study - so think V8 engined MR2. Gladys might have been approved for production but i suspect would have been a flop.

Then to the next generation! P8 would have been another market shaker looking much as the late styling bucks but with better materials and finishes than SD1 was saddled with. That would have left Rover needing a smaller car to replace the P6. By now the de dion rear end is a trade mark feature much as the semi trailing independent was for BMW, so the new small Rover would certainly have one. There would have to be a new four cylinder engine, so lets hope that common sense prevails and they buy in a decent engine designer and we finish up with a nicely made twin cam 8 valve with EFi. Development would have started around '69 when it became clear P8 wouldn't replace both P6 and P5. Say 6 years to launch that gives a new 2000 around '75. That sounds about right for the model cycle. But we could well have got an S3 P6 with the new engine before that. Design freeze for (P10?) would have had to be around late '73. By then we know that David Bache was well down the upmarket hatchback road, so P10 could well resemble a smaller SD1. But properly engineered with proper Rover underpinnings including the de dion. That sounds a BMW beater for sure!

Only fly in the ointment might be the space needed to build these cars. Solihull would definitely be full with land Rover, Range Rover and P8 so might either see the eventual SD1 plant, only making P10, or a new greenfield site. Perhaps back in Coventry where Rover belonged? That sounds expensive so there would have to be another deep intake of accountants breath to make all this work!

From there the crystal ball gets a bit cloudy - too many variables around in the world for a strong guess. But Rover tended to have a small number of bodies configured with different engines to suit different clientelle. So lets guess on a five and six cylinder variant (perhaps a V6?) of the new DOHC Four to fit in beneath the now 4.4ltr V8.

All sounds cracking to me.

Chris
 
chrisyork said:
Basic thrust was that the investment needed for the second engine line to make the V8 on top of the strain of the very late introduction of the P6 pushed the Rover board into the arms of Leyland in 1967. Had they had the courage of their convictions to hold out as independants they would have quickly seen the (most unexpected at the time) success and profits from the P5B, P6B and Range Rover. Leyland were then coerced by the government into swallowing BMC a short time later.
Click to expand...

It may not have been so much lacking courage of their convictions as sheer survival - Rover's body supplier was Pressed Steel and they joined the BMH conglomerate with BMC and Jaguar.

Having a critical supplier in the camp of a larger competitor would have been at best a trying experience for any independent car company, and the more upmarket BMC products as well as Jaguar were direct competitors at least on price, though not necessaily occupying exactly the same market niche.

It would be nice to see what the company could have been if (especially) Land Rover profits had been used to develop new Rovers (rather than subsidising the production of millions of BMC 1100s and 1300s all of which cost the company about £10 each more to make then they could sell them for)

As to the effects of the 70s industrial malaise, almost every British industry suffered from this - I don't see that Rover coul have escaped unscathed. but Rover with income and capital may just have survied what a broken down BL couldn't

However to do this they also needed to have volume production - something they recognised at the time the P6 was being developed. Traditional and virtually hand-built Rovers of the P4/P5 ilk would likely have disapeared at the end of P5B production

P8 would take over the P5s position at the top of the range, though I wonder whether the looks would have met with approval from old school Rover drivers?

P6 eventually gives way to P-10 which in my mind is much like an SD1, but rather better screwed together and probably a little heavier and rather pricier (Base unit and deDion?)

Is there a baby Rover in the line?Limited production capacity at Solihull would be a huge complication and some external (probably Government) capital would surely be needed to build a new plant. This plant would probably have to be built in a depressed area to secure backing from the politicians and there would be some concern given some of the issues the Rootes Group had experienced with the Hillman Imp plant at Linwood

The problem here is how could an independent Rover survive the seventies oil shocks with such a range? None of these cars are noticeably economical and Land Rovers and Range Rovers don't do the Corporate Average Fuel Economy numbers much good either. That's a real problem - BL couldn't shift thousands six-pot SD1s for any money for a couple of years after 1979

However Rover never understood the export market and that is where their competitors really made their mark - export sales are crucial to be a global player and to survive against the big boys you need to be a big boy yourself.

So sooner or later there would have been a merger with someone.
 
Brits do design great cars, they didnt go together that well in the seventies but this is true for a lot of manufacturers, Ford were having similar problems, as were fiat, alfa, Lancia, vw and audi. Mercs were out of reach of most but had a great engineering pedigree which protected the brand. Also look at the way Fords were still rotting away at a rapid pace in the eighties, remeber the first sierras and the mk 3 and 4 escorts, french cars i cant remember but the datsuns disappeared at an equally alarming rate. Typically the germans manged to trade on the fact that their cars used galvanised steel before anybody else thus enhancing their reputation, when you think that it was the early nineties before the jag xjs used galvanised bodies it shows the poor level of investment from the group/government.

The one that managed to get away with their cars being rot boxes and poorly put together were Jaguar it seems they were able to do what Rover had proposed to do in terms of new cars and sports saloons and they managed to protect their brand to great effect.

Would you say that once the p6 was gone that Rover wasn't allowed to trade in its traditional market due to William Lyons and Jaguar?

Also what did you make of the Honda/Rover 800?

I was never a fan, think that is due to my mindset and also the fact that it didnt use the v8 engine.
Saying that though the series 2 vitesse hatchback has something Rover about when viewed from the side with a good set of alloys on it. The bonnet could have done with less slope and the headlights and grill were too skinny but all the same it has something about it.

I remember the 213 and 216 coming in when i worked at the garage and the older lads cursing the car saying it wasnt worthy of the of the badge. By the time the 800 turned up i was off to pursue another career so i never got near one.

Was this was the last attempt by the group to have a go at getting near a Rover car?

Everything after this seems to be an Austin ie; montego/meastro replacements with rover badges on them.

Cheers Rich.
 
I'm still hankering after a Rover 800 coupe but would I have when they were new and cost about £30 K ? I doubt it and that must be the problem
 
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