Austin Rover Group - History

History

Following the collapse of the British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC) in 1975 and the stark Ryder Report on the ailing firm, the resulting government bail-out and nationalisation saw the company being renamed to British Leyland (BL).

However, the huge industrial relations problems, ineffectual management and product duplication that had plagued the company up to the nationalisation continued throughout the late 1970s. The problems centred around Longbridge union leader and shop steward Derek Robinson (nicknamed "Red Robbo" by the British press). Robinson had assumed a greater level of control over BL than any of its senior managers, and his network of union leaders in the various BL plants had the power to end production if he had instructed them to do so.

The Labour government of the time ran out of patience with Robinson, and appointed South African-born corporate troubleshooter Sir Michael Edwardes to turn BL around.

His first task was to curb the excessive amount of power that the trade unions had over the company. After discovering Robinson's links with various communist groups, the company amassed sufficient evidence claiming that his actions were intended to deliberately damage both BL itself and the UK economy. As a result of this, he was dismissed in 1979. Secondly, Edwardes began a ruthless programme of factory closures and sell-offs. The biggest casualties of this were the MG assembly plant in Abingdon, and the Triumph plants in Speke and Canley. BL pulled out of entire markets - for example the large Leyland tractors range was sold off wholesale to Marshall. Thirdly, he entered into a collaborative agreement with Honda, the first product of this alliance being the Triumph Acclaim, which paved the way for the joint development of a range of cars which spearheaded the company's revival in the 1980s and 1990s. Lastly, the number of BL dealerships in the UK was trimmed down drastically.

The new, slimmer British Leyland was organised into a series of groups. Austin Rover handled the mass production of cars, with the lower- to mid-market cars being badged as Austins and the middle- to upper-market cars as Rovers. Light commercial vehicle production (4x4s and vans) was managed by the Land Rover Group, whilst full-size commercial vehicles were built by Leyland Trucks and Leyland Bus.

Sales of Austin Rover products were reasonably strong, though not quite as high as the sales achieved by some of the British Leyland products. The Austin/MG Metro was regularly among the top five selling cars in Britain throughout the 1980s, and in the early part of the decade it was the best selling supermini in the country. The Metro, which was launched in 1980, gave the firm a much-needed competitor in the entry-level hatchback market and filled a gap in the range vacated by a scaling down of Mini and Austin Allegro production.

The Austin/MG Maestro (launched in 1983), was initially very popular, but sales dipped towards the end of the decade and in 1989 it was the 19th best selling car new car in the UK. This was less of a problem thanks to the follow-up of the Triumph Acclaim with the first generation Rover 200 of 1984 — the second product of the Honda alliance and one of the few strong-selling small family saloons of its era. So in effect, Austin Rover was selling around 100,000 cars of this size every year during the mid to late 1980s, regaining its share of the sector after the scaling-down of Austin Allegro production in its final years. The similarly sized Austin Maxi had already been discontinued in 1981 to allow the Triumph Acclaim to take over its production lines.

The Austin/MG Montego went on sale in 1984 and sold fairly well, though it was unable to match the sales success of the sector's established favourites — the Ford Sierra and Vauxhall Cavalier. The car had been in the pipeline since the late 1970s when the company's main competitors in this sector were the Morris Marina and Princess, but the Montego actually replaced the Morris Ital and Austin Ambassador which were the respective facelifted versions of those two cars.

Austin Rover's executive car, the Rover 800, was launched in 1986 as the third product of its venture with Honda, sharing its development with the Honda Legend. This car also sold well, being a popular competitor for the likes of the Ford Granada and Vauxhall Carlton/Opel Omega. It was also sold in America under the Sterling brand, but this project was quickly shelved due to unacceptable product quality issues that led to low sales.

Austin Rover's decision not to replace sports cars like the MG MGB and Triumph TR7 was justified by the fact that such cars were no longer popular in the early 1980s, and many other manufacturers had also stopped - or were about to stop - production of small two-seater sports cars. Buyers were instead being guided to "hot hatchbacks", following a trend set by Volkswagen's Golf GTI in 1976. By 1985, Austin Rover had launched a line-up of performance variants of its Metro and Maestro hatchbacks and the Montego saloon. These cars were badged as MG models and proved popular, especially in the form of the MG Metro. MG models accounted for approximately 10% of Metro, Maestro and Montego production between 1982 and 1991. The Rover Group continued production of the MG Metro until 1990 when it was replaced by the Rover Metro GTi. MG Maestro and Montego production continued at Cowley until July 1991 when they were discontinued to make way for the GTi variant of the Rover 200 & 400.

Following the renaming of its parent company, BL, in 1986 to the Rover Group, and the subsequent sell-off of its truck and bus businesses, and takeover in 1988 by British Aerospace, and then in 1994 by BMW, the combine now known as Rover Group was eventually sold back into private ownership and became MG Rover, which lasted five years before going bankrupt. MG production was revived in 2007 by new owner Nanjing Automobile, while the Rover marque was purchased by Ford in 2006, only to be transferred to ownership of Indian carmaker Tata in 2008, as Tata also took over Land Rover and Jaguar to form Jaguar Land Rover.

The Land Rover marque was removed from the combine at the time of the 2000 sell-off, becoming part of the Ford Motor Company, while BMW retained the rights to build the new MINI which was launched in 2001.