========================= ROVER =======================
Happened to spot this and thought it might be of more than
passing interest to those on the list:
ROVER FOLLOWS JAGUAR, ASTON MARTIN DOWN THE ROAD
By Peter Bale
LONDON, Jan 31 (Reuter) - Thirty years ago German car maker
BMW struggled, producing bubble cars, while the British Motor
Corporation thrived -- the second largest car maker in Europe.
Now the tables have turned and Bayerische Motoren Werke is a
premier brand which on Monday swallowed Rover, the last even
half-way British mass car-maker.
The famous names of Jaguar, Austin, Morris, Wolseley,
Triumph, MG, Aston Martin and Lotus have all been consumed by
foreign multi-nationals or shut down within bigger groups like
Rover.
Even with Rover in British ownership, however, the
"British" car of today owed more to Japan than to British
engineering after a decade of massive investment by Japanese
marques.
The background to the 800 million pound ($1.2 billion) deal
is the story of the British car industry itself: a catalogue of
post-war decline, nationalisation and decay only reversed in
recent years by a resurgent Rover brand.
"No one could have believed 30 years ago that BMW and Rover
would each be building about half a million cars," said Mark
Bishop, deputy editor of Carweek magazine.
It is a tale of thrusting post-war German growth matched by
post-war British industrial decline.
"There is strong nostalgia in this deal," said Bishop.
Rover embodied some of the best known British car marques
inherited from BMC, later British Leyland. While the Rover and
Land Rover brands were retained, it shed Austin and Morris and
was embarked on a revival of the MG (Morris Garage) sportscar.
Apart from Rover only Jaguar survives from the British
Leyland era to produce cars in significant numbers.
Industry analysts argue that both were lucky to survive
mismanagement and poor product planning in the 1960s, followed
by nationalisation when they were virtually run as job centres.
Like Rover, Jaguar was sold off by the British government in
the late 1980s -- Rover went to British Aerospace while Ford
picked Jaguar and bespoke sportscar maker Aston Martin.
General Motors, which like Ford vacuumed up British
offshoots before and after World War Two, built on its Vauxhall
mass label with a 1980s foray into tiny sportscar group Lotus
only to pass it on to the resurrected Italian company Bugatti.
Only tiny producers such as Rolls-Royce and the thriving
sportscar-maker TVR of Blackpool can genuinely call themselves
British, and that only because BMW failed last year to go
through with proposals to buy Rolls from Vickers PLC.
So what makes a British car "British" today?
Rover based virtually all its cars, apart from the
31-year-old Mini and ageing Metro inherited from British
Leyland, on floorpans and engineering from Honda of Japan.
Its best-selling 600 is essentially a Honda Accord. While
Rover gave its cars a trademark interior of walnut veneer and
leather, it could not conceal their Japanese heritage.
Carweek's Bishop argues the most "British" mass-produced
car is probably the Nissan Micra -- produced in Sunderland.
Fords and Vauxhalls may come from Belgium, France or Spain.
Honda, Nissan, Toyota and Peugeot of France all have plants
in Britain reflecting its place as among the lowest cost
locations to produce cars in Europe.
Rover chairman George Simpson told a news conference that
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Britain had to put aside nostalgia and accept the global nature
of the industry: "The motor business is very, very much an
international community these days. It's very, very difficult to
be efficient in our business if you take a nationalistic
approach."
Copyright (c) 1994. Reuters Information Services Inc.
All rights reserved.
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-- Andy Mace
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