The whole story
The whole story – Chapter 1 : Humble Beginnings, the principal players
THE British Motor Industry may have only gained momentum ten years after that of our continental rivals, but by the time of the great depression in 1929, there were literally hundreds of car producers, big and small dotted across the country. It could be described as a cottage motor industry in many cases, but there [...]
August 25, 2011
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Keith Adams · 
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The whole story – Chapter 2 : Formation of an Empire, BMC is created
IN 1952, old rivalries and suspicions were allegedly slaked when The Nuffield Group and Austin joined forces to become the British Motor Corporation. The idea behind the formation of BMC was a good one; to form an enormous British car company in order to fight the very real threat posed from overseas manufacturers – and [...]
August 25, 2011
· Keith Adams · One Comment
The whole story – Chapter 3 : British Leyland, turbulent time
THE creation of the British Leyland Motor Corporation, in 1968 may have been a long time coming, maybe it is also easy to describe it as an answer to a question that no one had yet posed, but there is a kind of convoluted logic as to why it happened. As we have seen, BMC [...]
August 25, 2011
· Keith Adams · No Comments
The whole story – Chapter 4 : The Ryder Years, Ship sinking fast
SIR Don Ryder had been plunged in at the deep end by the government. He was given little time to make sense of a mess that had been building up since, arguably, before the merger of Austin and Morris in 1952. In a nutshell, he was faced with the following problems: Appalling record across the [...]
August 25, 2011
· Keith Adams · No Comments
The whole story – Chapter 5 : Michael Edwardes arrives
IN August 1977 the inevitable happened and Ryder resigned as Chairman of the NEB. Ryder did not leave on bad terms; in fact when he left he remained upbeat about the company’s chances of success in the future. Ryder, however, always considered that debate about British Leyland was discouraged at the NEB and now that [...]
August 25, 2011
· Keith Adams · No Comments
The whole story – Chapter 6 : The 1980s: A decade of lost opportunities
SIR Michael Edwardes had left BL a much better position in 1982 than it had been in 1977 – this is an unarguable fact and despite the opinion of some of his detractors, he had produced tangible results. Whereas at the time of his arrival it looked as though the company was on the verge [...]
August 25, 2011
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The whole story – Chapter 7 : Life under British Aerospace
LIFE must have seemed very quiet for any Rover manager, following the sale of the company to British Aerospace in 1988 – gone were the days of constant media scrutiny, public haranguing and trade apathy. Arguably, for the first time since 1968, the company could get on with their new model programme, and follow it [...]
August 25, 2011
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The whole story – Chapter 8 : Night of The Long Knives
Many within the media and the British Government saw Honda as being the saviours of Rover; a logical conclusion to draw when one considers the amount of collaborative work that they and Rover had undertaken, but sadly, this to prove not to be the case. British Aerospace as stewards of the Rover car company had [...]
August 25, 2011
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The whole story – Chapter 9 : Like a phoenix from the flames
IN January 1999 BMW announced that Walter Hasselkus’ replacement as chief executive of Rover was Professor Werner Sämann, a man regarded within the industry as a bit of a “tough guy”. He could not have joined Rover at a worse time – its future was far from certain, and it was an inevitability that there [...]
August 25, 2011
· Keith Adams · 2 Comments
The whole story – Chapter 10 : Down and out in Longbridge
FORGET for a moment, all the talk of pension funds, selling the family silver and drunken deals with the Chinese, and cast your mind back to May 2000. The world was a very different place back then. The Phoenix Consortium had bagged the remains of the once mighty Rover Group from BMW for a headline-grabbing [...]
August 25, 2011
· Keith Adams · One Comment
