Rolls Royce/Bentley Bid
Melling was approached by Professor Donald Longmore, a dedicated British patriot and a very keen fan of Rolls Royce/Bentley. It is not a well-kept secret that Melling has driven Bentleys for most of his adult life, and at one time had a collection of them. They came to an agreement, along with Mr John Richards (who had very close connections with Prince Philip), that they would organise a consortium to finance a buyout bid of Rolls Royce – this being offered for sale by the Vickers Group.
During the course of obtaining the funds the sale being operated by Lasard's of London, a business plan was organised by Melling for the future of the company. This was accepted by the consortium, and a meeting was arranged with the shareholders for the following Friday morning to put forward an offer. They were also informed that an offer was going to be made by BMW/VW, and another offer by Ford had already been rejected.
The overriding reason for the consortium was not just to try to keep the company under British ownership, but the fact that whoever owned it would have control of the pricing of the luxury car market – and it was important to have that control in Britain.
It was all agreed and the funds were laid out in a Swiss bank where the consortium raised £550M, and the meeting with Lasard's and the shareholders was to have been at 11.30am on the following Friday morning.
However, when they arrived at this time BMW/VW had already met with them, and their offer had been immediately accepted. This caused great consternation with not only the consortium, but many other influential people in Britain.
After Melling's bid to secure Rolls Royce lost out to a German buyer, he was asked by other members of his consortium to build a new luxury car that would be quintessentially British, and fill the void left by sale of Rolls Royce/Bentley. Momentum gathered behind this idea as certain members of the British establishment, including a central member of the British nobility, gave their support.
Melling proceeded to design the car, called the Melling Xavier, and make deals to form another technical consortium to fit the car – including Cartier, Asprey's and Alfred Dunhill. Unfortunately, the project fell apart after some time, leaving Melling with a V12 engine which was completed and running, but could not be put to commercial use – and so he suffered hefty financial losses.
Read more about this topic: Al Melling
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