History
Following the financial 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 British Leyland (BL).[1] The car manufacturing subsidiary of BL became Leyland Cars, and later BL Cars Ltd, and it was this entity which ultimately became Austin Rover. The Leyland name had become tainted by the industrial unrest and poor quality cars of the 1970s, and the creation of the Austin Rover brand was intended to present a new public face of the company, although at corporate level it was still known as "BL plc".
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 centered on 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 incumbent 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 large 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 (Liverpool) and Canley (Coventry). BL pulled out of entire markets – for example the large Leyland tractors range was sold-off wholesale to Marshall, and Jaguar was privatised in 1984. Many of BL's non-core subsidiaries (such as refrigerator company Prestcold and industrial engine manufacturer Coventry Climax) were also culled during Edwardes' tenure.
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 smallest and cheapest models being sold under the Austin brand, while the more upmarket models carried a Rover badge. High performance version of the Austin hatchbacks and saloons made use of a revived MG badge. 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. The luxury manufacturer Jaguar was demerged from BL in 1984 and privatized, later taken over by Ford in 1989, and was ultimately reunited with former BL stablemate Land Rover in 2000 to form what is now Jaguar Land Rover.
Sales of Austin Rover products were reasonably strong, though not quite as high as the sales achieved by some of the earlier British Leyland products – the Maestro and Montego for instance did not sell as well as their predecessors, the Austin Allegro and Morris Marina, despite being fundamentally superior vehicles for their time. The Austin/MG Metro was regularly among the top five selling cars in Britain throughout the 1980s, and for two years in the early part of the decade it was the best selling supermini in Britain. The Metro, which was launched in 1980, gave the firm a much-needed competitor in modern supermini market and filled a gap in the range vacated by a scaling down of Mini and Austin Allegro production. At its peak in 1983, the Metro was Britain's third best selling car with more than 130,000 sales.
The Austin Maestro, launched in March 1983, was initially very popular, but sales dipped towards the end of the decade and in 1989 it was the 19th best selling new car in the UK with less than 40,000 sales, having peaked in 1984 at more than 80,000 sales as Britain's sixth best selling car. 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 in Britain during the mid to late 1980s, regaining its share of the sector after the scaling-down of Austin Allegro production from 1980. The similarly sized Austin Maxi had already been discontinued in 1981 to allow the Triumph Acclaim to take over its production lines.
The Austin Montego went on sale in April 1984 and sold well, being Britain's seventh best selling car in 1985 and 1986, 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 July 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. 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 sports cars were no longer popular in the early 1980s, and many other manufacturers had also stopped – or were about to stop – production of sports coupes and roadsters. Buyers were instead being guided to "hot hatchbacks", following a trend set by the Volkswagen Golf GTI since 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 1991, when these models were discontinued to make way for the GTi variants of the Rover 200 and 400. However, the last Maestro and Montego models survived in production until December 1994, just before the 200 and 400 ranges – which had been expected to replace them – were themselves replaced.
Consolidation and renaming
In 1986, Austin Rover's parent company, BL plc, was renamed "Rover Group", and the truck and bus businesses were subsequently demerged and sold off to DAF and Volvo, respectively. The spare parts and logistics arm Unipart was also spun out in 1987. After an abortive attempt in 1988 to divest Land Rover to General Motors, the entire Rover Group was sold off by the British government in 1988 to British Aerospace. The car making subsidiary Austin Rover Group Ltd was renamed "Rover Group Ltd", which saw the effective disappearance of the Austin Rover name and brand, even though the Austin badging had been removed from the Mini, Metro, Maestro and Montego models after 1987. By 1991, all Austin Rover dealer signage had been changed to the new claret and beige "Rover" branding, and use of the old blue and green "chevron" logo had ceased, although it made sporadic appearances on the cars themselves (see below).
The combine now known as Rover Group remained in BAe ownership until January 1994, when it was sold to BMW. It remained in BMW ownership for six years before being sold to the "Phoenix Consortium" in May 2000, incorporating the MG and Rover marques and becoming MG Rover
