Austin Rover Group U.K.: Austin Rover is a British Motor Vehicle manufacturer company Ltd established since 1982. The company headquartered located in Longbridge, Birmingham, West Midlands, England. The key people of the company are Harold Musgrove and Graham Day. The company mass-market car manufacturing subsidiary was British Leyland (BL).
Established
1982
Headquarters
Longbridge, Birmingham, West Midlands, England
Founder
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Website
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History
Since 1975, the following financial crises of the British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC) and the stark Ryder Report on the fall down firm. The consequential government bail-out and nationalization saw the company being changed its name to British Leyland (BL). The car producing auxiliary of BL became Leyland Cars, and later BL Cars Ltd. And it was this body which finally became Austin Rover. The Labour government of the time ran out of patience with Robinson and allotted South African-born corporate troubleshooter Sir Michael Edwardes to turn BL around. His first job was to curb the large amount of power that the trade unions had over the company.
The new, slimmer British Leyland was organized into a series of groups. Austin Rover handled the bulk production of cars, with the lower- to mid-market cars being badged as Austin’s and the middle- to higher-market cars as Rovers. Light commercial vehicle production (4x4s and vans) was controlled by the Land Rover Group, even as full-size commercial vehicles were produced by Leyland Trucks and Leyland Bus. Since 1984, the luxury maker Jaguar was de-merged from BL and privatized, later taken over by Ford in 1989, and was eventually reunited with former BL stable mate Land Rover in 2000 to form what is now Jaguar Land Rover.
More Information
Sales of Austin Rover products were sensibly strong. Though not fairly as high as the sales achieved by some of the earlier British Leyland products. The Maestro & Montego for instance did not sell as well as their predecessors. The Austin Allegro and Morris Marina, despite being basically better vehicles for their time. The Metro, which appeared in 1980, gave the firm a much-needed challenger in modern supermini market and filled a gap in the range vacated by a scaling down of Mini and Austin Allegro production. At its peak in 1983, the Metro was Britain’s third best selling car with more than 130,000 sales.
In the beginning of 1983, the Austin Maestro appeared, it was originally very popular. But sales dipped towards the end of the decade and in 1989 it was the 19th best selling new car in the UK with less than 40,000 sales. Having spiked since 1984 at more than 80,000 sales as Britain’s sixth best selling car.
The Austin Montego
The Austin Montego went on sale in 1984 and sold comparatively well. Though it was not capable to match the sales success of the sector’s established favorites. The Ford Sierra and Vauxhall Cavalier. Austin Rover’s executive car, the Rover 800. Launched in 1986 as the third product of its venture with Honda, sharing its development with the Honda Legend. This car also sold well, being a popular competitor for the likes of the Ford Granada and Vauxhall Carlton.
Austin Rover’s decision not to changed sports cars like the MG MGB and Triumph TR7 was acceptable by the fact that sports cars were no longer fashionable in the early 1980s, and many other makers had also closed – or were about to stop – production of sports coupes and roadsters. The Rover Group continued manufacturing of the MG Metro until 1990 when it was replaced by the Rover Metro GTi. MG Maestro & Montego construction continued at Cowley until July 1991 when they were closed to make way for the GTi variants of the Rover 200 and 400. Though, the last Maestro & Montego examples survived in production until the end of 1994. Just before the 200 and 400 ranges-which had been predictable to change them -were themselves replaced.
Branding and logo
BL had been using the Austin Morris branding insecurely in the original 1968 merger to manage and market the marques works by the former British Motor Corporation. But it was not until 1978 that it was given a formal business identity with the blue and green “chevron” logo. That starts appearing on Austin and Morris-badged BL cars in that year-the Princess and the van/pick-up versions of the Morris Marina were the first vehicles to wear the logo.
The chevron logo lastly dropped in favor of a black silhouetted version of the Rover “long ship” badge upon which the model name (Metro, Maestro, and Montego) was applied, even with the exception of the remanufacturing R6 Metro of 1990, the Rover name was never officially used for these models. A number of new models were in created at the time that Austin Rover Group completed to exist. Including the second generation Rover 200 Series introduced later in 1989. And the new Metro which was appeared in May 1990.
Consolidation and Renaming
Austin Rover’s parent company, BL plc, was changing its name “Rover Group” since 1986. The truck and bus businesses were afterward de-merged and sold off to DAF and Volvo, correspondingly. The MG making was revived in 2007 by new owner Nanjing Automobile, while in 2006; the Rover marque was bought by Ford Motor, only to be transferred to ownership of Indian carmaker Tata in 2008, as Tata also took over Land Rover and Jaguar to form Jaguar Land Rover.