Rover Group

Company and Cars, 1986-2000

Mike Gould

• Publisher: Crowood
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781847979407
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Automotive Transportation & Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The Rover Group - Company and Cars is a comprehensive history of the company and a guide to its products. Centring on the period of the official existence of the Rover Group, the book also examines the events leading up to its formation in 1986 and its controversial aftermath, following its dismemberment in 2000. The book is backed by first-hand accounts from Rover employees, as well as a foreword by Jon Moulton, the man behind several bids to acquire elements of the company. Including production histories and full specification guides to its cars, The Rover Group is a compelling insider's account of one of the most controversial periods in the British motor industry. The book covers: the beginnings of Rover and its place in British Leyland; Land Rover's expansion in the 1980s and how it led to the foundation of the Rover Group; Rover under British Aerospace and the sell-off to BMW; Rover's struggle under German management and BMW's disposal of the Group and finally, the aftermath of Rover's collapse - MG Rover, Land Rover and MINI. Fully illustrated with 270 historical and original colour photographs.

PART ONE

COMPANY

CHAPTER ONE

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THE ROCKY ROAD – ROVER’S EVOLUTION

WATCH-MAKING TO CYCLING

The Midlands city of Coventry, replete with its fine cathedral, emerged during the eighteenth century as a centre of watch-making in England. No one is really sure why, but it was probably due to its position at the crossroads of several trade routes through the country and to the efforts of prominent locals, who introduced some significant timekeeping innovations. The business prospered and by the mid-1860s over 2000 people were recorded as being employed in watch-making. However, in the second half of the nineteenth century factory-produced watches from America began to be imported, alongside quality timepieces from Switzerland, and the industry in Coventry fell into decline.

Many workers were taken up by a new emerging business making sewing machines, which required a similar skill set. One major firm was the Coventry Sewing Machine Company, founded in 1861 by James Starley. Eight years later Starley decided to cash in on the growing fashion for cycling, and in 1883 he launched a tricycle with two large chain-driven front wheels and a vestigial rear wheel. He called it ‘The Rover’.

Like other cycles of its time, The Rover was extremely unwieldy owing to its tricycle layout. It was James Starley’s nephew, John Kemp Starley, who took the radical step of designing a machine with two equal wheels attached to an angled frame. The front wheel was attached by a fork arrangement steered by a handlebar, at first indirectly then by a solid attachment. Drive was achieved by linking pedals on an axle running through the bottom of the frame to the rear wheel using a chain. The front cog was larger than the rear, to confer mechanical advantage. With two smaller and equal wheels, many of the perils of the ‘ordinary’ or ‘Penny Farthing’ bicycle were largely avoided, so it became known as the ‘Safety Bicycle’. However, with braking achieved by a simple leveroperated friction device acting on the solid front tyre, riding it was not without its hazards.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the danger, cycling became a favourite pastime in the late Victorian era. The invention of the pneumatic tyre made riding more comfortable and the introduction by Starley’s of the Rover Ladies’ Bicycle, which featured a shaft drive arrangement to prevent skirts becoming tangled in the chain, broadened its appeal. Now, men and women had equal opportunity to take to the road and find freedom. With the introduction of The Rover the modern bicycle was born and, thanks to the Starley family, the world would never be quite the same again.

STREAK OF LIGHT

From the earliest days of J. K. Starley’s bicycle manufacture, the factory was known as the ‘Meteor Works’. As the company expanded, it moved into larger premises, ending up in the ‘New Meteor Works’ in Helen Street, Coventry. The plant appeared on Luftwaffe reconnaissance photographs marked as ‘Rover Werke, Flugmotoren’ and was a prime target for the devastating air raids of 14–15 November 1940. It was reported to The Rover Company board that it had been severely damaged, with the ‘Long Shop’ completely destroyed and beyond repair. There was no production taking place but sadly two employees were killed and three injured. Showing it was still at heart a family firm, a £500 grant from the company was made to relatives and the injured, and board members also made a personal contribution. Administrative staff were moved to Chesford Grange, a nearby country house, while machine tools (which generally survived) were moved to Shadow Factory Number 1 at Acocks Green, in accordance with pre-war planning. Other production was moved to another Shadow Factory at Barnoldswick in Lancashire. When Rover started making the automotive version of the Rolls-Royce ‘Merlin’ aero engine, it was called the ‘Meteor’ and when Rover moved permanently to Solihull, that factory took the name.

EARLY MOTORIZED VEHICLES

Following a slump in bicycle sales at the end of the nineteenth century, Starley began to work on a motorized version. The first motorbike with the Rover name was launched in 1902, but John Starley did not live to see it, dying at the untimely age of 46 the year before.

The Rover Company’s first car was an eight-horsepower model in 1904.

The company had also been dabbling in car production. An electric-powered vehicle was made in 1888. Because of British regulations of the time, it was tested in France, where it achieved the remarkable speed of 8 miles per hour! It was not deemed worthy of further development and in the end the first Rover car was the Rover Eight, launched in 1904. The design was remarkable, with the driveline forming a backbone structure for the vehicle. As this included the rear axle, there was no suspension other than the compliance of the tyres, although the body was spring-mounted to give an element of comfort for the occupants. This arrangement was soon dropped in favour of a more conventional chassis and in this form the car was driven across Europe to Istanbul, the first to achieve this feat.

By 1912, Rover’s cars had grown in both size and power.

Clearly, Rover was never afraid of pursuing new technology – in 1913 a representative was sent to Harwich to meet innovative thermal engineer Rudolph Diesel, who was due to arrive on the overnight ferry from Antwerp. While Diesel certainly boarded the boat, he never made it to the end of the journey and was assumed to have drowned en route. Opinion was divided as to whether his disappearance was a result of suicide, or murder connected with his work on German U-boats, but what is certain is that it would be some time before Rovers were running on compression ignition engines.

The company built Maudslay trucks and Sunbeam staff cars during the First World War and also supplied motorbikes of their own design to the Russian Army. When peace arrived, Rover was quick to launch the Rover Eight, made at a factory in Tyseley, Birmingham. The Eight featured an air-cooled flat twin engine with the cylinder heads poking out of the bonnet, protected by scoops that also served to shield the eyes of the driver as the cylinders glowed red in the dark.

TURNING ROVER AROUND

While the Rover Eight enjoyed initial success, the company was forced progressively to lower its price to meet the threat of new competition from vehicles such as the Austin 7, which had a more conventional water-cooled engine. The economic recession of the 1920s combined with the success of other manufacturers saw a fall in Rover sales and the company was soon running at a loss. On the verge of bankruptcy, Rover’s main creditors installed a new managing director, Frank Searle, who had been a tank corps commander in the First World War before gaining industrial experience with Daimler and Imperial Airways. Searle recruited Spencer Wilks, who had left Hillman when it was taken over by Rootes, as general manager. Wilks was soon joined by his brother, Maurice, who took the post of chief engineer.

Together the team began to transform the model range. This period also saw the development of the shield badge of the Rover bicycles into the famous Viking longship badge that was to become the brand’s emblem for seventy-five years.

While it was taking time to turn Rover around, the company was confident enough to try a publicity stunt using one of its Light Six models. The idea was that the Light Six would race the Blue Train, a French express train that whisked eager (and rich) British holidaymakers from Calais to the south of France and back. The man behind the enterprise was Rover’s publicity director, Dudley Noble, the same man who had waited in vain for a meeting with Rudolph Diesel. The first attempt was beaten by fog that made driving impossible. Undeterred, the Rover team, accompanied by a Daily Express reporter, made their way to the south of France determined to beat the train on the return trip to Calais. However, shortly after leaving St Raphael, Noble’s co-driver drove the car into a ditch. They struck lucky on the third attempt, arriving at Calais just twenty minutes ahead of the train. Driving non-stop, they had covered the 750-mile route at an average speed of just under 40mph. It was enough of a margin to be convincing and it made the name of Rover, with the men in the team becoming heroes in the British press.

Rover’s recovery under the Wilks brothers resulted in classics like the Rover 14 of 1936.

The tiny Scarab broke the mould of Rover’s ‘doctors’ cars’ of the 1930s. It never went into production but showed the company was prepared to innovate.

During the remainder of the 1930s, the Rover Company produced a succession of solid saloons, including the first of the ‘P’ series, the P1. With the one exception of the Scarab, which did not make it past the prototype stage, its products were aimed squarely at middle-class professionals and established the company as a paragon of British engineering. By the mid-1930s the company was generating significant profits.

WAR EFFORT

Solihull was ‘Shadow Factory Number 2’, managed for the Ministry of Aircraft Production by Rover and making radial aircraft engines. This model, made by Solihull’s carpenters, shows the original camouflage, some of which can still be glimpsed on the original buildings.

There is a popular perception that Britain was unprepared for the Second World War, but this is only partly true. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s meetings with the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler may have sacrificed Czechoslovakia but they bought some time for Britain to get ready for the gathering storm. One measure was the creation of ‘Shadow Factories’ that would build war materials away from urban areas, which it was felt would be heavily bombed once the war started. ‘Shadow Factory Number 1’ was built in Acocks Green, a suburb of Birmingham, and the Rover Company was invited by the Air Ministry to run it. This was followed by ‘Shadow Factory Number 2’, constructed in farmland at Solihull in the Warwickshire countryside although it was only a few miles from Acocks Green. The Solihull factory was designed to produce radial aero engines from parts machined both there and at Acocks Green, and was distinguished by several H-shaped test houses for them.

Both factories were complete by 1938 but it was not until the outbreak of war in the following year that Rover’s war work really swung into action, producing the Bristol Hercules aircraft engine (which was more powerful than the famous Rolls-Royce Merlin).

Early in 1940 Rover was contacted by the Air Ministry about an ‘entirely new form of aircraft propulsion’. This was the jet engine being developed by Squadron Leader Frank Whittle. It had first run in 1937 but the patent had been allowed to lapse. Whittle had formed th...