Rover shut down

[IAIN]

[quote="morris_mini_minor"]argh thanks iain memory gone fuzzy over the years i do recall the other factory

Old age !! It does funny things to you.

[quote="Pete"]I could swear I heard Minisport had a load of stuff away, inc shells. I'll do some digging.

Mini Sport had some Rover Cabriolet shells about 2004. I know where one went.

[mab01uk]

Rover MG, Longbridge, 18/02/07
Still some photos below of the abandoned factory that were on 28dayslater, though many have been removed - The UK UE Urbex Urban Exploration Forums.
http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/rover-mg-l ... nnel.t9749

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/rover-east ... 010.t49314

[IAIN]

I had seen those pictures before. I just reminds you how sad and depressing the whole thing was.

[georgek]

Great pictures, they certainly didn't spend any money on improving the product and facilities, you can see why it all went belly-up, very sad for the people who lost their jobs because of it.

[mab01uk]

For those who have not seen them before, the Mini Clubman in the tunnels beneath Longbridge as pictured on:
http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/sho ... longbridge

[JC T ONE]

very sad endeed

[georgek]

What's this bloke doing in the sink!!!

[AMCO72]

You know, even from here in NZ these pictures just make my blood boil. Hold on, I'll just go and pop some more blood-pressure pills......ah, thats better. Now where were we..... Ah yes... what were you guys thinking way back when all this started; well probably not YOU guys but maybe your parents, and maybe even your Grandparents. How did you/they let the likes of Red Robbo and Co. rule the roost so effectively. I know there were problems on the management side as well, but if you had been living in Japan or Germany you would have been told....'vee haff our vays off makingk you vork'. And you bloody well would haff vorked or else!!!! All those jobs gone, everyone on the dole, it's a scandal. I'm sorry but I put it fair and square down to the unions. Then some foreigners step in, write out a cheque for a couple of hundred pounds and its theirs!! We on this forum drive these British icons that were once assembled' in factories like Longbridge.....we love them, or sometimes hate them, but 'once upon a time'.....sounds like a fairy story already....the British car industry was as good as anywhere and better than most, and you turned out some dammed interesting cars. So what if they leaked a bit of oil. Is it this British working class mentality that we hear about. Surely everyone wants to work, get some money, do things they want to do...restore old Minis or whatever!!!! I have often wondered if any of these Union bosses are still alive, and think back to the old days and have any regrets as to how they destroyed the British car industry. Agh, I dont know......I think I'll just shut up and take up knitting. OK....shoot me down

[Pete]

I'm not sure the unions were responsible for Rover designing cars that people didn't want to buy.

[mk1]

I had a really good conversation with one of the liquidators of Rover Group a few years ago. The stuff she could tell you REALLY did make your blood run cold.

A few of the facts that stuck in my mind were:

1) There was no computer system at all in the administration department. Everything was done on paper.

2) There were people in that department that had analysed one section of a form for 30 years, but had no idea whatsoever how what they did related to what the person sitting next to them did. This attitude ran throughout the company.

3) Because of the lack of administration, the management had no idea whatsoever what any parts they bought in actually cost.

4) Because of point 3 no one had any idea how much their products cost to make.

5) Because of 3 & 4 no one knew how much to charge for the cars they produced or if they were making a profit or loss on each model.

She told me that the production side of the business was actually quite efficient considering that it had suffered from a chronic lack of investment for 40 odd years, but it was the administration & management system or should I say total lack of any administration or management whatsoever that led to the companies downfall.

Its very, very easy to blame the workers & the unions for the downfall of rover, the truth however is much more complicated.

I also quizzed her about her views on the Phoenix 4 & whether they really did go into it to cynically strip the company for what they could get. She categorically denied this and put the whole venture down to a triumph of hope over reality. Sounds about right to me.

[georgek]

Most of the blame must rest with management for not modifying production lines and improving the product making cars more reliable and rust free, the Japanese & Germans managed to do it, though it didn't help that strikes were a way of life at the time.

[Pete]

I dont think the latter Rover products were blighted by rust or unreliability issues , the problem was their model range started to look very out of date ! Had things worked out differently could the MINI have saved the company ? Would so many have bought them with a Rover badge on ? Would they have been any good ? We'll never know the answers but I'd suspect it's no.

[mab01uk]

I dont think the latter Rover products were blighted by rust or unreliability issues , the problem was their model range started to look very out of date ! Had things worked out differently could the MINI have saved the company ? Would so many have bought them with a Rover badge on ? Would they have been any good ? We'll never know the answers but I'd suspect it's no.

Also would Rover MINI's have sold as well in the USA which is now the biggest markets for MINI's ahead of UK.......bearing in mind BL/Rovers previous record there and the lack of an existing Dealer network in the USA? (The U.S. is now the largest market for the MINI, with 57,511 cars sold last year, followed by the U.K. with 50,428)
http://www.motoringfile.com/2012/01/09/ ... Podcast%29

In the New MINI 'history/development books it is said that once BMW knew the plan was changed and the MINI was now to be sold effectively as a BMW built small car rather than a Rover, there was a sudden quality upgrade implemented for the R50 MINI before launch in 2001.........although quite a few faults became apparent but were kept contained within the BMW Dealer network via the 5 year TLC servicing scheme.

New R50 MINI comes to Longbridge....


First R50 Body Built in 1999


Early R50 Built at Longbridge (Methods Build 1999)

New Rover MINI comes to Longbridge.
That was the Plan, although in the end it never happened........

The general BMW plan for the Rover Group was that Cowley, renamed Oxford would produce the large cars, with Longbridge, becoming Birmingham which would produce the small and medium.

Rover Birmingham (Longbridge) needed to undergo major restructuring to prepare for the launch of R50 (new Mini) in the year 2000. In order to create a world class manufacturing facility for the production of the new Mini, Rover needed to replace existing old buildings with new factories, designed to accommodate modern machinery and equipment.

More details of the original Factory development plans for R50 MINI production here:
Longbridge New Mini R50

MG opens its gates for factory tours:
"If you’ve ever fancied visiting Longbridge for a factory tour, now’s your opportunity. MG Motor UK is opening its gates for two-hour tours of the facility starting on 15 March. The tours take place every Thursday, start at 1.00pm, and last for approximately two hours."
http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/2012/03 ... ory-tours/



John Cooper unveils the new MINI Cooper

[AMCO72]

Guys, I was really referring to the start of all this trade union nonsense in the car industry, and it started back in the late 50's at about the begining of the Mini launch, and continued through the next couple of decades at least. I mean we in NZ can only go on what we read in the paper, but most of the stoppages were for very minor and stupid things....in fact they were just excuses to go on strike. Why do you say that strikes were a way of life then, as if was ok. 'What about the workers'!! Mind you we had a similar situation here in NZ with the freezing workers and dock workers. They regularly went on strike at the busiest times of the year for maximum disruption. Then what do you know, we have English [pommy] union men infiltrating the NZ unions and stirring our boys up to bigger more destructive things. The big thing was that the infiltrators had 'the gift of the gab' so our lot were easily lead by persuasive and smooth talking chaps. Workers that go on strike nowdays are treading a very slippery path to the dole.....permanently.

[georgek]

The reason why the unions got away with holding companies and the British public to ransom, was that they bank-rolled the Labour party so they sat back and did nothing. The Tube drivers still have regular strikes and earn 60k because they hold Londoners to ransom every year, it can cost £4 to go one stop on the tube in London!!! it's about time the Conservative- Liberal government did something about it.

[mab01uk]

There was an interesting first hand account about working for British Leyland (1969 to 1980), back in the Jan/Feb 2010 issues of Miniworld magazine by Leslie Palmer, who in 1969 became BL's first non-clerical, salaried female employee aged 22 taken on as a graduate management trainee to investigate new methods of working.

In Part 1 she gave several examples of finding management not really knowing if cars such as Coopers or Healeys were actually making a loss and relates how she discovered the Mini 850 was being sold cheaper than the 1000cc even though for 2 or 3 years it had cost more to manufacture its engine because the volume point meant having them specifically engineered. Customers who bought the cars expected smaller to be cheaper but it wasn't the case............

She later needed the basic totals of cars produced and sold each week to make sales projections, etc. Before computerisation this was worked out by hand on a paper spreadsheet. What was built on plant versus what was out at the dealerships and what was sold proved impossible to find out as there was a discrepancy of at least 20% a month. No one knew exactly where all the cars were or how many there were. She found the guy responsible for the figures only to find this had been the case for 12 years! It seems every Friday night a man went out with a torch and wandered round the Longbridge plant counting cars. It turned out the cars were being moved around to make space for more, the paperwork stuck to windscreens/dashboards often got blown away and once lost mean't the now unidentified cars stood for months on end effectively lost in the system (or lack of one). She says that before 1969 the volumes of Minis, etc, produced were still small enough to keep control of with the old system but from 1969 until about 1978 the explosion in volume plus labour disputes, supplier disputes and lack of enough car parking, along with the workers holidays coinciding with the UK August registration suffix sales boom compounded the problems.

She goes on to say the Mini Coopers never made money due to the low volumes with high cost of many non-standard parts fitted and that the price premium made it less desirable as a new car but very popular as a secondhand model. The 1275GT replacement was however highly profitable due to mainly using standard parts but John Cooper would not compromise on this, she insists it was this rather than his £2 per car payment that caused the Coopers to be discontinued by BL. "There were huge arguments as the Cooper was a very popular model internally with staff, but the Cooper wasn't selling enough. The 1275GT made money the Cooper didn't."

Part 2 of the article starts with the work on the 9X the proposed Mini replacement. Asked about any dealings with 9X or Issigonis himself Leslie says, "We saw it from time to time. It never had much support internally. There wasn't money for it, budgets were tight and there wasn't room for it. His was an approach of what he thought the motor industry ought to be, as opposed to what it was. I don't think anybody thought it had legs. There was a bit of support from the emotional sense, but not in a commercial sense. I'd say he was being indulged rather than it was ever a valid project. That sounds dreadful but it's probably true. They put him out to grass, although he was still respected. I didn't meet him directly, I saw him give a lecture or two. The problem he had, or the problem we had with him, was his unwillingness to ever engage with commercialisation. He would only ever do what he wanted to do and he was quite difficult in that sense."

She goes on to describe the discord and discontent with the 'Red Robbo' wildcat strikes, lack of secret workers ballots and abuse of power by both unions and management in the 1970's.

Also the issue of organised stealing from plants is covered. "There was actually a price list of parts for every car that was produced in Longbridge that anybody could buy at a discount. It was eventually traced to a man with a garage better stocked out than our stores. The filching was co-ordinated, it had to be, it had to be done in collaboration with so many people in production control or the stores."

The article concludes with descriptions of the sexism rife amongst workers and management at the time, the class driven divisive structures - there were four different levels of dining room/canteens (Directors included free bar) - and details some of the problems with the old, inherited tired and inefficient dealer network, also gives some interesting background on the launch of the very popular and successful 1979 Mini 20th Anniversary Special, why the Mini kept getting reprieved and finally the 1980 launch of the Metro after which she left Leyland to work elsewhere in market research for the Motor Industry.

[AMCO72]

Yes, essential reading for all on this forum. Find it.

[miniminor]

Fascinating history, it's a wonder BMC / BLMC / Leyland / Rover etc lasted as long as it did and managed to make so many cars - still sad at it's demise!!

[mab01uk]

Just read this interesting new book on BL which "concentrates on the period in time when our nationally owned car producer ‘enjoyed’ almost consistent decline".
British Leyland – Chronicle of a car crash 1968-1978


AROnline Review:
http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/blogs/b ... car-crash/

[foxy52]

I'm not sure the unions were responsible for Rover designing cars that people didn't want to buy.

...thats the point pete,the demise of the mass produced british designed and built cars was ostensibly because of poor design,performance...allegro,marina etc..etc?!! and thats just 2 examples from blmc and so on,.. we completely lost our way to say vw with the golf etc.......the union leadership was blamed for stoking the fires of discontent.. i,m sure the men/woman who lost their jobs would have rather been working unlike the feckless people in our society today can get by by living off the state.. our freind from the colonies eluded to that ??!!...the mini was a fab idea in terms of size and what u could get in it ??..never mind the power and speed produced by the cooper and s when it was further developed....in its time there was nothing like it and because so many were made it will be around forever....u only have to look at the vast array of mini clubs in the uk alone never mind europe.. even the french are keen !!! lol...foxy52