Land Rover Mini Gt

[Stayce Cawthorn]

TheRover Group plc was the British vehicle manufacturing conglomerate known as "BL plc" until 1986 (formerly British Leyland), which had been a state-owned company since 1975.[2] It initially included the Austin Rover Group car business (comprising the Austin, Rover, Mini and MG marques), Land Rover Group, Freight Rover vans and Leyland Trucks. The Rover Group also owned the dormant trademarks from the many companies that had merged into British Leyland and its predecessors such as Triumph, Morris, Wolseley, Riley and Alvis.

The Rover Group was owned by British Aerospace (BAe) from 1988 to 1994. In 1994, BAe sold the remaining car business of Rover Group plc to the German company BMW. The group was then broken up in 2000, when Ford acquired the Land Rover division, with the Rover and MG marques continuing with the much smaller MG Rover Group until 2005. Ownership of the original Rover Group marques is currently split between BMW (Germany), SAIC (China), and Tata Motors (India), the latter owning the Rover marque itself with its subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover owning much of the assets of the historic Rover company.

After divesting of its commercial vehicle and bus manufacturing divisions (Leyland Trucks, Leyland Bus and Freight Rover), and the spares and logistics firm Unipart, the company then consisted of the car manufacturing arm Austin Rover Group and the Land Rover Group. This group was privatised in 1988 by the sale of the company to British Aerospace (BAe) for 150 million,[2][4] who retained Day as joint CEO and chairman, and made Kevin Morley MD of Rover cars.

The strategy going forward, therefore, was to concentrate on the upmarket Rover brand instead. Two vehicles originally badged as Austins, the Montego saloon and Maestro hatchback, became "marque-less" with bonnet badges the same shape as the Rover longship badge but without "Rover" written on them. Instead any badging just showed the model of the car. When the Austin Metro was facelifted for the 1990 model year, it was rebadged as the Rover Metro.

On 31 January 1994, BAe sold its 80% stake in the company on to German vehicle manufacturer BMW[5][6] for 800 million (a takeover which caused uproar in the House of Commons),[7] the name changing again in 1995 to BMW (UK) Holdings Limited.[5] The Japanese manufacturer Honda, who owned the remaining 20% stake, terminated the long-standing alliance with BL/Rover which had been in existence since 1980 and also sold its shares to BMW a month later, although the licensing agreements surrounding the manufacture of the collaboratively developed Rover 200, 400, 600, and 800 models remained in place.

Millions of pounds of investment by BMW failed to turn the company into profit.[6] It has been estimated that the entire Rover bankruptcy cost BMW fifteen billion Marks.[8] In March 2000, BMW announced it planned to sell the Rover Group. Following bids from Alchemy Partners and Phoenix Consortium, the MG division, including a collection of dormant marques and the intellectual property rights and technical designs of MG and Rover-branded vehicles as well as the Longbridge plant were sold to the Phoenix Consortium, led by John Towers, an ex-Rover Group executive. BMW retained the historic Morris Motors assembly plant in Cowley and the Pressed Steel plant in Swindon to build the forthcoming new Mini family of vehicles, which had been developed at Longbridge by Rover Group and were due for launch within a year. Land Rover and the Solihull assembly plant were sold to Ford Motor Company, becoming part of Ford's Premier Automotive Group, ultimately reuniting it with Jaguar which had been divested from British Leyland in 1984 and purchased by Ford in 1989.

All remaining Rover volume production at Cowley (essentially now just the Rover 75 as the Rover 600/800 ranges had already been discontinued by this point), was moved to Longbridge, as BMW demolished the Cowley and Swindon plants before starting construction of Plant Oxford, the new home of MINI production. Much smaller than its predecessors, the MG Rover Group struggled as it continued the heritage of building cars at the Longbridge plant. Adhering to UK regulations, BMW guaranteed that Phoenix Venture Holdings (initially named MG Rover Holdings) would have enough money to keep MG Rover Group in business for at least 3 years following the sale. The agreed "dowry" from BMW included a 427million interest-free loan and stocks of cars. MG Rover's short-term plan was to expand the MG range with sporting versions of existing Rovers, introduce new versions of the Rover 25, 45 and 75 models, reengineer and redesign the MG F, and eventually replace the entire model range with new cars developed through a joint venture with another carmaker.

The MG Rover range initially consisted of five cars: the classic Mini, Rover 25, Rover 45, Rover 75 and MG F along with car-derived van derivatives of the 25. The Mini was only built under temporary license during the first five months of MG Rover's existence. In 2001, the MG ZR, MG ZS and MG ZT (based on the Rover 25, Rover 45 and Rover 75 respectively) are launched as sporting alternatives to the standard Rover models. The range further expanded in 2003 with the launch of the smallest model, the Indian-built CityRover, built as part of a venture with TATA, the Rover Streetwise, a restyled version of the Rover 25 with SUV-like styling, and a flagship model, the MG XPower SV, based on the Qvale Mangusta.

Following the collapse of a proposed venture with Malaysian carmaker Proton, in June 2004 Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation signed a joint venture partnership to develop new models and technologies with MG Rover, with the projection to produce up to a million cars a year, with the production shared between the Longbridge site and locations in China. MG Rover sold parts of Longbridge to St. Modwen Properties for 57.5M in a lease-back deal.

SAIC were to have a 70% stake in this company in return for a 1 billion investment, with MG Rover owning the remaining 30%. However, the National Development and Reform Commission held the opinion that if BMW could not make a success of Rover, then it would be hard for SAIC to do so. Although the joint venture was not yet finalized, MG Rover sold the rights to manufacture Rover's 25 and 75 models and the Powertrain Ltd business to SAIC for 67M, to help keep the business afloat in the face of falling sales.

After MG Rover Group's financial crisis and talks of acquisition or investment by Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) failed in early 2005, the MG Rover Group suspended production and went into receivership on 7 April 2005. Following liquidation, Nanjing Automobile Corporation bought the rights to the MG marque, and the leftover assets of MG Rover. A 33-year deal was signed in February 2006 between Nanjing Auto and St. Modwen Properties covering the lease of 105 acres (a quarter of the total area of the Longbridge plant) but including the two main car assembly plants, the paint shop and administrative offices at a rent of around 1.8 million a year. In December 2007, Nanjing and SAIC announced their merger, which reunited some of the marques that had formed Rover Group, and ownership of the Longbridge plant became a SAIC controlled facility.

Despite BMW agreeing to sell the Rover marque to SAIC,[9] Ford bought the rights to the Rover name from BMW for approximately 6 million. As part of its purchase of Land Rover from BMW, Ford had acquired an option of first refusal to buy the Rover brand name if MG Rover Group ceased trading. Ford thus reunited the original Rover Company marques, primarily for brand-protection reasons. When Ford's Jaguar and Land Rover businesses were sold to TATA Motors in 2008, Rover, along with the historically prestigious Daimler and Lanchester marques were transferred to TATA Motors.

Although the Rover 800 went on sale shortly after BL plc changed its name to Rover Group in July 1986, it had been developed in conjunction with Honda (whose corresponding model was the Legend). It was initially available as a saloon with a fastback version launching in 1988. It sold well among buyers in the executive market, with a facelift in November 1991 and the introduction of a coupe version a few months later. However, it stagnated after a replacement targeted for the 1992 model year was cancelled. Many of its duties as a flagship were performed by the 600. The 800 series was updated again in 1996 which gave the car a chrome and silver grille and a lot more standard kit. By its demise in 1999, it was looking considerably dated and was replaced with the 75.

The Rover Group's first significant new car launch was the Rover 200, which was introduced in October 1989. Unlike its predecessor, it was a three or five-door hatchback, the former to launch later, instead of a four-door saloon which would become the Rover 400. It used a new range of 16-valve K Series petrol engines as well as a Peugeot 1.9 diesel and 1.8 turbodiesel both fitted to the Phase 1 Peugeot 405.[citation needed] Sales were stronger than its successors and its launch coincided with a winding-down in production of the similarly sized Maestro, which finally ceased production at the end of 1994 having spent the final years of its life as a budget alternative to the more upmarket Rover 200. Coupe and cabriolet versions of the 200 were later launched in 1992 and these were sold alongside the all-new 1995 model and continued until that model was upgraded to become the Rover 25 in 1999. The 1989 Rover 200 was a strong seller throughout its life and its successor continued this trend, though its final year of production (1999) saw a significant dip in sales. These strong sales were not as high as the ever-popular Ford Escort and Vauxhall Astra.[citation needed] The Rover 200 had been around since 1988 as the Longbridge-built Honda Concerto, which offered a higher level of equipment but only achieved a fraction of its sales.

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