The Morris Marina was conceived in a hurry, but designers consoled themselves in the fact that it was only going to last five or six years… Here we reveal pictures of the ADO77, and discuss why it never came into fruition. Missing Marina THE trouble with developing and launching a car in a hurry is [...]

MGR’s Land Rover rival? IT’S fairly common knowledge within the industry that, when BMW and Rover cut their ties in 2000, there a certain number of conditions were imposed about the future use of certain marque names. For one, BMW decided to allow MG Rover to use the Rover marque name on its own terms [...]

It lives on: MGR’s secret Rover facelift The farce that was the arrival of the 2004 facelifts of the Rover 25/MG ZR, 45/ZS and 75/ZT will probably haunt anyone who worked at MG Rover for years to come. If you don’t remember it, then cast your minds back – MGR fans were eagerly anticipating the [...]

The last chance saloon MG Rover. It was a brave new beginning for the remants of The Rover Group, split up and sold off by BMW in May 2000. The consortium responsible for the formation of MG Rover – Phoenix – was led by John Towers, and if anyone knew the machinations of Longbridge better [...]

The Tourer Concept Vehicle In the months following the formation of MG Rover in May 2000, many changes were quickly put in place that affected the make-up of the product range. Rover’s range was split in two, and the immediate marketing focus was shifted away from the existing brand in an attempt to establish MG [...]

A class act BMW knew that in order to create a successful Rover for the 21st century, there needed to be a re-think of the range… a slimming down of model lines. After much consideration on how to go forwards with Rover, it was decided to continue down the road that was leading the company [...]

Sporting Rover ARGUABLY, the Rover 400 was viewed with disappointment among buyers and certain elements within Rover itself. That said, the Richard Woolley penned saloon version was a huge improvement over the five-door hatchback, and Rover admitted as much, when at the launch of the five-door hatchback, they told us that the “Real 400″ would [...]

Replacing Montego AFTER arriving at BL in the winter months of 1981, Roy Axe knew that little short of a complete overhaul of the entire Austin-Rover range would be required to return the company to profitability by the late 1980s. And although Harold Musgrove had achieved a near-miracle by getting the Metro, then the Maestro/Montego [...]

Coupe de grace Hot on the heels of the MG EX-E, the Rover CCV (Coupé Concept Vehicle) made its debut at the Geneva motor show of 1986. Unlike the MG, which there was absolutely no intention of putting into production, the Rover CCV acted as a toe-in-the-water exercise to preview the styling of the Rover [...]

MG’s future hot-shot First shown to the world at the 1985 Frankfurt motor show, it is fair to say that the MG EX-E shocked visitors simply because it was so attractive and so unexpected. At the time of the EX-E’s debut, MG could only offer the “M” cars – sporting saloons and hatchbacks – so [...]

A lesson in lightness FOLLOWING the success of the BL Technology developed lightweight ECV3 project, it was decided to evaluate a system of manufacturing for building aluminium structured vehicles and then test the structural integrity and durability. This Metro is one of six vehicles built as replicas of steel production vehicles, and employs the system [...]

Tripping the light fantastic IN many ways, the 1st November 1977 – the date that Michael Edwardes took the helm at British Leyland – can be seen as the first day of the rest of the company’s life. Of course the company was very much a rapidly sinking ship – the hull breached in many [...]

Last throw of the dice The SD2 was dead – long live the SD2… well, almost. Post-Ryder, the Specialist Division would fall into abeyance, and would become part of the all-encompassing “Leyland Cars” division. TM-1 was the result – a car to replace the Triumph Dolomite and Morris Marina. In essence, the car was almost [...]

New age Landie FOR all those who thought that the only Specialist Division prototypes produced were the SD1 and SD2, here’s something of a treat for you. During the early 1970s, BL management investigated the possibility of replacing its long-lived Land Rover, and tasked the Specialist Division to come up with a low-cost, easy to [...]

Safety first Following Ralph Nader’s 1965 report Unsafe At Any Speed, which highlighted the poor handling and/or crash-resistance of numerous cars sold in the US, the race was on by the car manufacturers to prove that they took the safety issue seriously, despite the old automotive adage that “safety doesn’t sell”. Like all other companies [...]

Rolls-Royce projects During the early-to-mid 1960s, Rolls-Royce entered into a collaborative venture with BMC, with a view to jointly producing a range of saloons and coupés. Rolls-Royce was thinking in terms of down-sizing at this time, a reaction to the general down-turn in demand for their traditional coachbuilt models during the post-war years. In due [...]

Vanden Plas prototypes The coachbuilding firm of Vanden Plas had been purchsed by Austin in 1946, and thus became part of the BMC empire that was created by the merger of Austin and Morris in 1952. Until the end of the 1950s, the factory at Kingsbury in north-west London was chiefly used for the production [...]

Paradise lost The Roy Axe studio in Canley had been created to move Austin Rover forwards with a new design direction. Interesting projects were soon underway, with the initial effort being concentrated the XX Programme – however, by the end of 1982, ARG designers were also working hard on the replacement for the Metro, dubbed [...]

Keith Adams The SD2 was the logical next step in the rejuvination of the Specialist Division’s range of cars. The plan had been kicked off in 1969/70, when Rover and Triumph produced their own big car proposals; of which the Rover version, penned by David Bache, was chosen over the Triumph Puma, as penned by [...]

Keith Adams The Rover 45 was one of the longest-lived stop-gap cars produced in a very long time. We all think of the Morris Marina as a car that outlived its usefulness by many, many years (1971-1984, if one considers the Ital a Marina), but the Rover 45 equals that achievement when one considers that [...]