Interesting article. My dad’s family were from this part of Birmingham and I fondly remember driving past the plant and underneath the bridge as a small child, so I might be wearing rose tinted glasses.
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Whatever their storied history, and despite what that article says about the firm “brimming with innovation”, they just made shit cars.
In about 2002 I downsized from a perfectly good Toyota RAV4 to a Rover 25 - worst car I’ve ever owned.
It had done less than 25,000 miles, one lady owner. Day two of owning it, the sunroof got stuck in the open position, so back it had to go. Then a few weeks later the head gasket went - another trip to the dealer under warranty. I think this was the ancient A series engine, which they still couldn’t make properly after God knows how many years.
I got rid of it for cash when I moved to Turks & Caicos a year later (losing money on it of course) but was glad to see the back of it.
So much as I would have liked the Midlands car and motorbike industry to have kept going, since I was born just up the road in Coventry, the various incarnations (pun intended) of Austin/Morris/Rover//British Leyland /MG never had the investment they needed, had a workforce unwilling to embrace change until it was too late, and were just not competitive.
And a management unwilling to invest.
It’s frustrating that it took BMW to make the most of the mini - I loved my mini that I bought, brand new, when I came back from Brazil at the end of the seventies. 
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In the 90’s I happened to film at the Austin Rover Longbridge and BMW Regensburg factories in consecutive weeks.
The final boast of the AR plant manager was that they could store 5000 completed cars under cover - and 10000 in the open.
BMW were proud that they could store 4 hours worth of production - a hundred or two - before they were despatched to the dealerships. I told them about the AR boast and their response was “That is crazy - why build cars that no-one has ordered?”
That surprises me. I swapped the SAAB 900S that I found so disappointing for a Rover 200D because I was offered such a good deal on the part exchange and despite expecting nothing special from the Rover it turned out to be a great little car. The only problem that I can remember with it was that the dealer delivered it with the wrong numberplates.
I had two Rover 25’s, one from brand new and banged up high mileages on both without any problems. I also had a Rover 75 with the 1800 engine. Second hand and when eventually the problem occured that was common with the 1800 and the engine “blew it’s top” Rover fully reimbursed the repair but I then decied to get rid of it as it could happen again. It was a lovely car and the climate control worked brilliantly when down in France on holiday in a heatwave.
Sounds like I got a Friday Afternoon Special then.
Most BL cars were Friday afternoon specials.
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I had a Rover 213 VP that was 3 years old (on a ‘C’ plate) when I bought it. It lasted 6 years before the windscreen fell out through rust - it was impossible to bond a new one in, there was nothing left to bond to. The rest of the car bodywork was also hanging on by a thread - unlike the engine, which was the 1300 Honda unit, which was practically bomb-proof.
It was the last BL/Rover car I ever had.
That was the only one worth buying
i’m an old enough American who remembers when a significant part of the US market was British made.My first car in 1972 was an Austin America (think MG1300) followed quickly by an MGB. After that I got practical with Totoytas and the odd (for me) US Camaro or Dodge. That is, until I got the car bug later in life as a collector (and didn’t actually have to drive them to work)and got a TR4a, TR6 and Spitfire MkIII. Sold them all when I moved to France- perhaps I will try again when I have a place where I can work on them.
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Oh no they didn’t! On being posted to Singapore my dad treated himself to an upgrade from a Morris 8 by ordering the famous MG Magnette
that with the part-octagonal speedo set in walnut [?] Leather upholstery was standard.
The leather, coupled with ours being black, made for a sizzling experience in Singapore.
It broke down on the trip home from the docks. Not because it was a shit car but because the Singapore MG dealer was shit at the pre-delivery service - no oil in the gearbox!
We were loaned a Morris Isis - great lumbering overblown Moggie Minor - while the months went by for the new g/b to arrive from UK.
Then it was fab. My mum was a very fast driver. It could do 80mph no probs and she frequently did. But that was when UK built some good cars.
Badge engineering had begun. The Wolsley version was identical except for the rad grill. It was the police wheels of choice, seen chasing crims in ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ and other cop shows of the 50’s and early 60’s.
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Oh yes they did - in the mass-produced British Leyland and later period - I’m not talking about the 50s and 60s when cars were almost hand-made.
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Always loved the magnette.
Ah! The period of Red Reg or whatever he was called, when the Labour Gvnt owned the business.
For sure the standard of BMC and latter incarnations - all UK car making - was the pits. My 1963 Mini was great, tho’. And the two Austin 1100’s that followed that. Bedford CF camper - fab.
I remember a letter in the Merc Owners’ Club GB where a bloke, senior in BL production office, told of how they bought a plain vanilla Merc 4 door something and took it apart to the last nut and bolt because they couldn’t understand how Merc could build a car of such quality and still make any money.
On a shoot which took us to the spare parts HQ of Datsun [as was] at sunny Worthing, the manager told us that the average cost of parts under g’tee of Jag was a hundred and something quid [1970 prices]. For Datsun it was £6.
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Red Robbo.
To be pedantic it was in Durrington. I could see it from our garden. 
It was a real state of the art facility. Datsun/Nissan put a lot of money into the local area. They even funded a special needs educational facility. The captain of Worthing RFC was reasonably high up the Nissan ladder and he turned up at the club in a wide variety of vehicles but rarely a Nissan. They always ran a fleet of competitors cars so they knew exactly what they were up against.
What are the odds a similar post 20years from now on Jaguar?
I had a Rover 90, probably in the '60s I assume though it seems like a hundred years ago, and I loved it. But for some reason it had to come off the road and I took all the glass out of it, welded the doors shut, put a ‘roll cage’ in it made out of scaffolding, (a safety feature you see, which included the large scaffold clip about 6 inches from my right temple), removed both the battery and the petrol tank and bolted them inside the car right next to me, and raced it as a saloon stock car at Long Eaton Stadium.
For some reason I was sitting out of one race and a friend who had written off his own machine borrowed it. It was its last race because he came barreling down the straight and somehow missed seeing the solid mass completely barricading the track. The result was the engine was pushed back more or less alongside him. Sadly, he suffered no injury. 
I saw a Rover from that era last year at a car meet and it was looking immaculate. That surprised me because I had always thought that they had all met their end on Stock Car tracks. At our local oval they were the car of choice.