Around the World

Forty years ago, the world’s car markets looked a very different place – nowhere is this more the case than in South Africa, which managed to create a number of strange and interesting hybrids. Keith Adams leads you through some of the more interesting ones. […]

Phil Rixon takes a rare opportunity to compare the Morris Nomad with an Austin Countryman and an Austin Maxi to see how closely BMC’s tailgated trio are related. […]

Updated: There was an operation to build Maestros in Bulgaria, and we have the full and exclusive story of how it came together. Thanks to ex-Rover Group and BAe executives, we have been able to piece together the story of the Roadacar assembly operation in Bulgaria and conclude why it failed in the way it did. […]

Malta – that beautiful enclave in the Mediterranean is a favourite for tourists all over Europe. However, unbeknown to many, it was also host to an assembly operation which was home to […]

Keith Adams A rare, South African-specification, CKD-built Rover 2600 SDX has been offered on eBay. The car, which was built in Leyland South Africa‘s Blackheath plant, is freshly imported and […]

A little-known incursion by BMC under the marque Austin into the South American continent was the assembly of Austin commercial vehicles and Gipsy off road cars in a factory near […]

Chile’s BMC operation remained a specialist small-scale facility throughout its lifetime. However, what marked out Chilean Minis and ADO16s from their counterparts from across the globe was that they were […]

Final assembly of CKD Austin 1300s began at a plant in Novo Mesto during 1969, with the cars arriving from Longbridge almost complete; indeed, the chassis plates of these models […]

The Netherlands saw CKD production of BMC cars, alongside the usual versions imported from the UK and Belgium… Roderik Tonen tells the story. IN 1949 the Dutch Morris importer, J.J. […]

Ireland was an interesting market for BMC>Rover as, for a short while, not only were they importers, but they were a CKD assembly operation. Andrew Ryan takes up the story… […]

As was the case in the UK, many export markets suffered badly during the 1960s and 1970s. Denmark is a case in point, where the growth and success of the […]

The Chilean BL operation was the first attempt to produce the Mini in South America, but by no means was it the last… Story told by Rodrigo Toledo. The ‘Brick’ […]

Prompted by Spanish Government initiatives to promote industrialisation, Rover and BMC independently embarked on Spanish ventures. Authi A couple of years before the merger that would bring Rover and BMH […]

Like Sipani in India, Autocars Co Ltd was set up with the help of Reliant, built a range of fibreglass-bodied cars of dubious quality, and would later become involved with […]

The history of BMC>Rover is certainly not limited to the UK and, at the height of the post-war years of the ‘Empire’, there were production facilities all over the world. […]

British car production in South Africa following the end of the Second World War initially amounted to CKD (Completely Knocked Down) production of Austins and Standard Vanguards by local producers. […]

After the formation of BMC, Australia became an increasingly important market for the company, with models imported from the UK giving way firstly to local assembly of CKD (completely knocked […]

Briefly popular in Argentina and an iconic addition to the scenery of Buenos Aires, the Siam di Tella story is another of those BMC defeats-from-failure that litters the 1950s and 1960s… […]

Chrysler’s attempted Australian invasion of the UK The history of Australian Chrysler cars in Britain has its roots in America – a truly multi-national tale!  The story starts in the […]

BL Belgium press kit: Celebration of the 500,000th car assembled in Seneffe, 10 May 1977 // Translation by Dimitri Urbain, original material supplied by André Vermeersch The Seneffe plant is […]

The Australian market featured a number of interesting variations on the ADO16 theme that we didn’t get in the home market. The most fascinating was the five-door Nomad, which might have kick-started the hatchback family car market years before the arrival of the Volkswagen Golf… or negated the need for the Austin Maxi. […]