Rover is a british automotive trade name that was used for over a hundred, from 1904 to 2005. It was launched as a bicycle manufacturer called Rover Company in 1878, before starting to manufacture autocars in 1904. The brand used the iconic Viking longship as its logo. The rights to the trade name are presently depart of Jaguar Land Rover, but no Rover vehicles are presently in production and the trade name is considered dormant. Despite a collectivist absorption by the Leyland Motor Corporation ( LMC ) in 1967 and subsequent mergers, nationalization, and demergers, the Rover trade name retained its identity, foremost as an independent subordinate division of LMC, and subsequently through versatile groups within british Leyland ( BL ) through the 1970s and into the 1980s.
Reading: Rover (marque)
The Rover trade name then became the flagship brand of the newly and eponymously renamed Rover Group in 1988, which included the actually stronger and more valuable trade name names Land Rover and Mini as it passed beginning through the hands of british Aerospace and then into the ownership of BMW Group. Sharing engineering with Honda and fiscal investment during the BMW possession led to a revival of the trade name during the 1990s in its core midsize car segment. [ 3 ] In 2000, BMW sold Rover and related MG car activities of the Rover Group to the Phoenix Consortium, who established the MG Rover Group at Longbridge. BMW retained possession of the Rover trade name, allowing MG Rover to use it under license. In April 2005, Rover-branded cars ceased to be produced when the MG Rover Group became insolvent. The MG Rover Group ‘s assets then got split up between two chinese automakers – some were bought by SAIC Motor, who obtained technology that was incorporated into a new chinese occupation of Roewe branded luxury saloons. other assets were bought by Nanjing Automobile. BMW sold the rights to the Rover trade name to Ford in 2006 for approximately £6 million, the latter exercising an option of inaugural refusal to buy it dating back to its purchase of Land Rover in 2000. Ford thus reunited the master Rover Company marques, chiefly for brand-protection reasons. [ 4 ] In March 2008, Ford reached agreement with Tata Motors of India to include the Rover trade name as contribution of the sale of their Jaguar Land Rover operations to them. legally the Rover trade name is the place of Land Rover under the terms of Ford ‘s purchase of the list in 2006. [ 5 ]
ownership [edit ]
Rover Company [edit ]
british Leyland [edit ]
In 1970, Rover combined its skill in producing comfortable saloons and the broken Land Rover 4×4 to produce the Range Rover, one of the first vehicles ( preceded by the Jeep Wagoneer and IH Scout ) to combine off-road ability and comfortable versatility. Powered by the licence-built ex- Buick V8 engine, it had innovative features such as a permanent four-wheel drive system, all- coil spring suspension, and disk brakes on all wheels. able to reach speeds of up to 100 miles per hour ( 160 kilometers per hour ) so far besides capable of extreme off-road use, the original Range Rover design remained in output for the adjacent 26 years. The company ‘s other major project at this time was the P8, a successor, styled by David Bache, for the 3-litre. [ 6 ] The car ‘s shape owed much to Detroit, with a presence bumper concealed under a “ bumperless ” polyurethane nose, in a manner evocative of contemporaneous Pontiacs, and a side profile evocative of a slenderly chunkier Opel Rekord. [ 6 ] Although the original brief was for the car to be no longer externally than a rover 2000, management changes led the project to be redefined as it progressed, and the P8 scheduled for launch at the 1971 London Motor Show was substantially larger than any existing Rover sedan, with the Rover V8 locomotive expanded for this application to 4.4 litres. [ 6 ] The car followed the P6 in employing a steel frame structure with bolt-on steel or aluminum panels. The manufacturer was however short of cash and focus at this prison term : the P8 was one of several new exemplary projects subjected to a slipping time-line. [ 6 ] By the revised launching date towards the end of 1972 the considerable exploitation costs had been expended and pre-production prototypes had even undergo extensive examination in Finland. Production capacity had been set away for the P8 at the Solihull implant. [ 6 ] however, an consumption review in 1970 found the project subjected to criticism from Sir William Lyons, by immediately an influential extremity of the british Leyland control panel : speculation has arisen that Lyons saw the car as a menace to future investment in the recently launched Jaguar XJ6. [ 6 ] It by and by emerged that Rover ‘s rival would not have been peculiarly brassy or easy to build, and the shrinkage of the european market for sedans of this size that followed the 1973 petroleum price shock suggest that desertion of the stick out in 1972 – even at the eleventh hour – may have been the right decision for british Leyland ; but the P8 was not entirely ummourned about thirty years late. [ 6 ] Some of the P8 ‘s style cues turned up two years by and by on the Leyland P76, and the driver ‘s opinion of the instrument jury ( albeit without the Austin Allegro style “ biquadrate “ steering bicycle that appears in one of the surviving pictures of it ) would have been not wholly unfamiliar to the driver of a 1976 wanderer 3500. [ 6 ] As british Leyland struggled through fiscal tumult and an industrial-relations crisis during the 1970s, it was effectively nationalised after a multibillion-pound government cash injection in 1975. Michael Edwardes was brought in to head the company .
1985 Rover Vitesse ( SD1 ) ( post-facelift ). The Rover SD1 of 1976 was an excellent car, [ citation needed ] but was beset with so many build quality and dependability issues it never delivered on its bang-up promise. Following the blockage of the Triumph factory at Canley, production of the TR7 and TR8 was moved to Solihull ; soon after, a beast program of cutbacks in the late 1970s led to the end of car output at Solihull, which was turned over for Land Rover output only. The TR7/TR8 was discontinued while SD1 production moved to Cowley. All future Rover cars would be made in the former Austin and Morris plants in Longbridge and Cowley, respectively. In 1979, british Leyland ( or as it was now officially known, BL Ltd. ) began a long relationship with the Honda Motor Company of Japan. The result was a cross-holding social organization, where Honda took a 20 % interest in the company while the company took a 20 % stake in Honda ‘s UK auxiliary. The share was thought to be mutually beneficial : Honda used its british operations as a launching pad into Europe, and the caller could pool resources with Honda in developing new cars. Austin Rover Group was formed in 1982 as the mass-market car manufacture auxiliary of BL, with the discriminate Rover Company becoming efficaciously defunct. In the 1980s, the slimmed-down BL used the Rover brand on a image of cars codeveloped with Honda. The first Honda-sourced Rover model, released in 1984, was the Rover 200, which, like the Triumph Acclaim that it replaced, was based on the Honda Ballade. similarly, in Australia, the Honda Quint ( known in Europe as the Quintet ) and Integra were badged as the Rover Quintet and 416i .
Rover Group [edit ]
By 1988, Austin Rover had moved to a one-marque strategy, using alone the Rover stigmatize. Its parent, BL, was renamed as the Rover Group, with the car division becoming Rover Cars. In 1986, the Rover SD1 was replaced by the Rover 800, developed with the Honda Legend. The Austin range were now technically Rovers, though the word “ Rover ” never actually appeared on the badge. rather, there was a badge exchangeable to the Rover Viking supreme headquarters allied powers europe, without wording. The Metro was formally badged as a wanderer when the restyled adaptation was launched in May 1990. The second generation Rover 200, based on Honda ‘s Concerto, was launched in October 1989, but now featured a hatchback alternatively of a four-door public house, the bodystyle which would feature on the Rover 400 ( visually similar and based on the same underpinnings ) from its launch in April 1990. The larger Rover 600, launched in April 1993, was based on the Accord and used versatile Honda and Rover engines and was aimed far upmarket at the likes of the BMW 3 Series quite than the likes of the Ford Mondeo which the Honda Accord was marketed to compete with. rover exported Rover 800s, badged as Sterlings, to the United States from 1987 to 1991 .
british Aerospace possession [edit ]
In 1988, the Rover trade name went binding into private hands when the Rover Group was acquired by british Aerospace .
BMW ownership [edit ]
The Honda partnership proved to be the turnaround point for the company, steadily rebuilding its image to the bespeak where once again, Rover-branded cars were seen as upmarket alternatives to Fords and Vauxhalls. In 1994, british Aerospace sold the Rover Group, including the Rover, Land Rover, Riley, Mini, Triumph, and Austin-Healey brands to BMW, who had begun to see Rover-branded cars as potential major competitors. Under BMW, the Rover Group developed the Rover 75 and was launched in June 1999, as a retro-designed car influenced by the earlier Rover P4 and P5 designs. It proved to be a success for the trade name, gaining incontrovertible critics, although it failed to outsell the BMW 3 Series. In May 2000, BMW split up the Rover Group, selling Land Rover to the Ford Motor Company for an estimated sum of £1.8-billion, retaining the MINI trade name and selling the rest of the cable car business to the Phoenix Consortium, who established it as MG Rover. Although BMW included ownership of the MG brand in the deal, they retained ownership of the Rover brand, licensing its consumption to the new MG Rover company for function on the ongoing cable car models that they had acquired .
MG Rover licensees
Read more: Paris Saint-Germain F.C.
Read more: Paris Saint-Germain F.C.
[edit ]
2003–2005. Rover ‘s Viking Longship logo,2003–2005. A particularly assembled group of businessmen, known as the Phoenix Consortium and headed by ex-Rover head administrator John Towers, established the MG Rover Group from the early Rover Group car operations ( acquired from BMW for a noun phrase £10 in May 2000 ) and continued to use the Rover trade name under license from BMW. In 1999, the Rover Group had sustained losses of an estimated £800 million – largely due to the declining sales of its existing 200 and 400 family cars and initially slow sales of the Rover 75. The four businessmen who took control condition of the newly formed MG Rover Group are reported to have received around £430-million in a dowry from BMW that included unsold stock. The foremost new Rover-branded car to be launched after the formation of MG Rover was the estate of the realm adaptation of the Rover 75, which went on sale in July 2001. In October 2003, MG Rover launched the CityRover, a badge-engineered Tata Indica that served as an entry-level model. Despite high initial expectations, sales were poor and it received chiefly damaging critics. respective concept cars intended to point the way towards a substitution for the Rover 25 and 45 were shown in the early 2000s, but no production model emerged. MG Rover production ceased on 15 April 2005, when it was declared bankrupt, resulting in the immediate loss of more than 6,000 jobs at the company. On 22 July 2005, the physical assets of the collapse firm were sold to the Nanjing Automobile Group for £53m. They indicated that their preliminary plans involved relocating the Powertrain engine plant to China while splitting car production into Rover lines in China and resumed MG lines in the West Midlands ( though not necessarily at Longbridge ), where a UK R & D and technical facility would besides be developed. On 30 May 2007, Nanjing Automobile Group claimed to have restarted production of MG TF sports cars in the Longbridge plant, with sales expected to begin in the fall. Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation ( SAIC ), who held the intellectual property of Rover 75 car design ( bought for £67m before MG Rover collapsed ) and was besides bidding for MG Rover, announced their own version of the Rover 75 in late 2006. In July 2006, SAIC announced their intent to buy the Rover brand name from BMW, who still owned the rights to the Rover trade name. [ 7 ] however, BMW refused their request, ascribable to an agreement that Ford had reached with them to be given first option on the brand when it acquired Land Rover. unable to use the Rover name, SAIC created their own brand with a like name and badge, known as Roewe. Roewe was finally launched in early 2007 .
Land Rover [edit ]
Ford purchased the Land Rover ship’s company from BMW in 2000, and the batch included the option to purchase the Rover trade name name if MG Rover ceased trade. This mighty was exercised on 18 September 2006 and effectively meant the mark was transferred to Land Rover. [ 8 ] [ 9 ]
Jaguar Land Rover [edit ]
Ford sold their Jaguar and Land Rover operations to Tata Motors in 2008, along with the rights to the Rover brand. [ 10 ] In 2013, the operations of Jaguar Cars and Land Rover were merged into the single car manufacture company Jaguar Land Rover along with the rights to the Rover brand. [ 9 ]
Models [edit ]
Launched by Rover Company ( 1904–1967 ) [edit ]
Launched by BLMC/BL ( 1967–1986 ) [edit ]
1986 Rover 416i ( australian marketplace )
Rebrands by Rover Group ( 1986–2000 ) [edit ]
- Mini/Supermini cars
- 1986–2000 Rover Mini – Originally called the Austin Seven/Morris Mini Minor in 1959, but renamed Rover Mini in 1986.
- 1990–1998 Rover Metro, Rover 100 (111/114/115) – Originally called the Austin Metro. Rebranded as a Rover three years after Austin’s fall.
- Family cars
- 1989–1994 Maestro – Never branded a Rover, but sold through brand dealerships with a badge the same shape as the Rover badge.
- 1989–1994 Montego – Never branded a Rover, but sold through brand dealerships with a badge the same shape as the Rover badge.
Launched by Rover Group ( 1986–2000 ) [edit ]
1999 Rover 75
2001 Rover 45 and 2004 Rover 75 Mk II
Launched by MG Rover ( 2000–2005 ) [edit ]
See besides [edit ]
References [edit ]
Read more: The MMS Institute Thailand