30 replies to this topic

[Stevee]

me and few other mates

we're all got British made cars for our frist cars

and i want another british car

but problem is the fact there were to many strikes

that crippled them alot and the car's we're just a little crap

but ive rebuild a rover 100 with 1.6 K engine in and there not one problem with that atm

the rot problems gone, eltricks have all been replaced & we used better wire

even the head gasket is living though

its a good built car!

[MiniBonkerz]

I actually had the great experience of driving the mg xpower sv for the day we had a driving test to handle the car then had the rest of the track to go out and enjoy it only 4 of us done it including my dad was a truly great day that was before it all ended think we went in 2002

[MiniBonkerz]

here it is they produced a few varients we drove the 985bhp one it was very quick indeed

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[njathind]

me and few other mates

we're all got British made cars for our frist cars

and i want another british car

but problem is the fact there were to many strikes

that crippled them alot and the car's we're just a little crap

but ive rebuild a rover 100 with 1.6 K engine in and there not one problem with that atm

the rot problems gone, eltricks have all been replaced & we used better wire

even the head gasket is living though

its a good built car!

I thinks i'll need a winter car so the mini can avoid the salt, me thinks a 100 or bubble shape 200, possibly a 75, depends on insurance at the end of the day, damn it's annoying bein a 17 year old guy.

[Ouster]

The MG group should have so built this:

[Robert]

Oh, oh oh... I'm going to be sticking my head into the firing line here...

British Leyland was a dinosaur, and couldn't possibly have continued in the way that it did. In the 70s, there was actually one year when BL saw 20000 strikes - different departments admittedly, but basically everybody was striking about something at one point or another. Anybody who has worked for large corporations such as this (as I have!) will know how slowly these dinosaurs move - and so they were almost doomed to failure. Much as it pains me to admit it, Rover took much longer to die than it should have done. There were some very good products that kept much of the rubbish afloat for many years. The mere fact that the Mini and the Land Rover Defender stood the test of time as well as they did is an indication of this.

One thing that we Brits are very good at is innovation - we are fantastic innovators. Not just in the automotive market, but in pretty much everything. However, we fall down with manufacturing and execution. Just look at the last Mini's - a fantastic product that people still wanted to buy after nearly half a century, but they rust like you wouldn't believe.

If only somebody would have stepped in and pulled Rover's chestnuts out the fire - we would have been laughing. A progressive car company with a reputation for quality could have worked wonders. Somebody like Honda, or BMW? Oh....

I rest my case...

[Stevee]

The MG group should have so built this:

Sorry i maybe wrong but why is there a Hint of The Jag Xjj220 Race car & Corvette? in that MG?

[mab01uk]

But the rover production line would have needed so much changing in order to make it fit for producing the MINI. Compare Oxford and Longbridge before it was knocked down and the different is huge.

The brand new MINI production line had actually being fully installed and tested at Longbridge and was making the first bodyshells, when the change of plan came and the major job of swapping MINI from Longbridge and Rover 75 from Cowley Oxford started. The entire body in white facility and assembly line for the MINI had to be moved 70 miles south while the entire Rover 75 facilities moved 70 miles north. It took 9 months, cost £230 million and delayed the launch of the MINI into showrooms until 2001.
The first 15-20 pre-production MINI's were all built at Longbridge.
The book New MINI by Graham Robson has the full fascinating story and the reasons behind what happened all in detail.

Edited by mab01uk, 31 May 2010 - 09:49 AM.

[huntface]

There's quite a good Clarkson documentary about the demise of BL.

He sums it up perfectly but saying the Triumph Stag was the epitome of what was wrong with the company.

Triumph wanted a 3.0/3.5l V8 for the Stag and rather than stick the tried, tested and thoroughly brilliant Buick/Rover V8 which they had access to, at great expense, they built their own.

Which was terrible.

[huntface]

The MG group should have so built this:

Sorry i maybe wrong but why is there a Hint of The Jag Xjj220 Race car & Corvette? in that MG?

I once had the pleasure of poking about a XJ220. Well I say pleasure, it shattered all my childhood dreams. As I was growing up, in my mind, the XJ220 was the ultimate supercar.

So I was very sad to see that it had the same switch gear as my granddad's Rover 216. I was even more shocked to see that behind that rear grille were Rover 200 tail lights.

I was heart broken. My dream car was another mishmash of crap from the BL parts bin.









And the engine was out of a Metro..............

Edited by huntface, 30 May 2010 - 08:50 PM.

[mab01uk]

You could write a very thick book and the failures of BMC/BLMC/Austin-Rover/Rover, etc.

This book details the final years:

End of the Road: The Real Story of the Downfall of Rover
"BMW promised a bright new future for Rover. In turn, Rover was to keep BMW as the independent car dynasty it wanted to remain. But it all went wrong. Badly wrong. From M&A through a battle of executive egos, to union in-fighting and boardroom bloodshed. The clash of cultures, disastrous decisions and ultimately European Union meddling that led to the sale of Rover and end of an era for industrial Britain. Then along came the white knights - the Phoenix consortium, comprising four car indistry veterans, who promised a bright future for MG Rover. They beat off the other contender for ownership, Alchemy's Jon Moulton, who wanted to considerably strip down the company and run a much more focused sports car manufacturer as a way forward. But five years later, when the white knights declared the black day had arrived and MG Rover was finished, the crowns of the saviours looked incerasingly tarnished, as they stood accused of betraying the trust placed in them, and walking away rich men as the Rover workforce streamed off to the benefit office. This is the full story, with unparalleled access to all the key players. It reveals where the errors were made, who is to blame, and along the way tells one hell of a rivetting story of the events that will go down in history as the end of Great British car manufacturing."
http://www.amazon.co...r/dp/0273706535

BMW poured money into Rover to develop the desperately needed new models like the Rover 75 and new MINI to secure the long term future of Rover, that previous owners like BAE had failed to finance or invest in. Previous British management and owners like BAe who bought state owned Rover for £150 million from the goverment in 1988 then asset stripped the properties and sold off factory sites like Cowley for property development for their own gain before selling what was left of Rover and its outdated range of unreliable cars to BMW in 1994 for £800 million cash making a further vast profit for BAe in the process....................

Edited by mab01uk, 30 May 2010 - 11:19 PM.

[mab01uk]

But the rover production line would have needed so much changing in order to make it fit for producing the MINI. Compare Oxford and Longbridge before it was knocked down and the different is huge.

But wurely it would have been cheaper to adapt the classic mini production line than to build a whole new factory for the BMW mini?

The classic Mini production line could not have been adapted in any way apart from possibly the outer walls and roof! A new building was actually set up at Longbridge for the new MINI assembly hall but was later used for buffer storage of Rover 75 bodyshells from Oxford during the changeover with the new MINI production line. Modern cars are built by a much smaller workforce and using computer controlled robot welding lines, etc.

[mab01uk]

Apparently Ford own the rover name, and brought it for £10, if i'd have known I'd have brought the name just to have saved it, so much for Rover coming back.

Ford actually paid £6 million to BMW for the rights to the Rover brand name in 2006 as they felt it was in the interests of Ford's Land Rover business to own the Rover trademark. As said it now belongs to Tata of India when they bought Land Rover and Jaguar off of Ford in 2008.
http://www.brandrepu...-brand-name-6m/

It was the Phoenix Four who bought MG Rover off of BMW for £10.
http://news.bbc.co.u...ness/741701.stm

BMW bit of far more than they could chew (in world car company terms they are actually a small company) and left too much of Rover under control of bad British management and then started to haemorrhage money which threatened to bring down the previously profitable BMW Group with it. BMW eventually sold Rover in March 2000 for just £10 to John Towers British management Phoenix team with £500 million pounds as a goodwill gift and the 4 British directors spent the last 5 years of MG-Rover trying to sell out to the Chinese and lining their own pockets for their own short term personal gains..............as was proved in the recent inquiry, needless to say they are all now rich men living in luxury mansions never needing to work again!
http://news.bbc.co.u...ess/4574603.stm

Edited by mab01uk, 30 May 2010 - 11:11 PM.

[mab01uk]

Yeah ford only brought it cause they could

and

only reason the classic mini went out of production was cause it wasnt meeting EU Regultions On Emissions and Safety

But to be honest Stuff The EU no matter who's in power the EU runs this county

i want us out of the EU! so we can be inderpented again! everything went down hill when we joined Them!!

our car factorys should come back!

even if its Austin, Morris, Mg, Triampy, i dont care who!

we should be proud of what British leyland built!
and should be made in this country!

sorry but i hate goverments at times, if i had the cash i'd buy Austin and make new cars!

The classic Mini also went out of production because customers were no longer buying it in economic numbers making it even more expensive to build. In the final years of production volumes had dropped to less than 10,000 cars a year (from a peak in 1971 of 318,475 per year) with many remaining unsold at dealers for months at the end in 2000. The new MINI is now being produced at Oxford in numbers close to the classic Mini's peak but this still has to be increased to make it economic, hence why BMW is expanding the MINI range with new models like the Clubman, Coupe, Roadster and Countryman.

There is still a British Motor Industry with British factories and workers but it is now mostly foreign owned, there are also still many British component suppliers.

Edited by mab01uk, 30 May 2010 - 11:05 PM.

[njathind]

I agree with that MG concept, I think it could have done for MG what the NSX did for honda, I just hope the new owners of MG dont mess up, it's looking promising so far. It's such a shame that the MG Rover grooup got split now leaving the chinese to brand the new 75 as a Roewe because TATA now own the Rover brand and have decided to do all with it. And I agree totally with the idea that MG Rover group was ruined by the Pheonix consortium as already said, all they did was try and sell it off to the chinese and line their pockets.

I think the day Longbridge closed in April 2005 was the day they all split the remaining money and called in the administrators, it really annoys me that the seriouse fraud investigation people refused to launch an investigation into this, it would have brought justice to all of the workers at longbridge and shown up BMW big time for not selling the group responsibly.

If I could I'd have brought the group for £100 and tried to save it myself, sometimes I think it's better to live in a dream world. I appreciate that to have saved it would have meant some lay offs but its better to have some jobs at longbridge than none, the Pheonix Consortium really did screw the group over, I think they saw the £500 million pound good will gift to help fix the company and just brought it for the money they could siphon off, they did all with reviving the brand, all they did was try and pawn off some sport versions of the existing model range as MG's, the Rover streetwise as a jumped up 25 and the cityrover was made by another company and badged as a Rover, although they did have some good concepts lined up though such as the 75 Coupe ( I shall buy one of the few pre production models one day) a cracking MPV that in 2002 looked like a Renault or Seat of today.

The set up was there at Longbridge, it just needed fine tunning.

Such a shame

Edited by njathind, 31 May 2010 - 09:24 AM.