# So what's the view on MG Rover



## Carlos (May 6, 2002)

My own opinion is that, sad though it is, if they can't make good enough cars that will sell well and enable them to make a profit, then I don't want Â£100m of taxpayer's money disappearing down the toilet to prop them up until next time :?


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## jgray (May 8, 2002)

I think it has been very difficult for them to develop new cars with the state of their finances. BMW basically did a right number on them, they always stated that they were only really interested in Land Rover and effectivley dumped Rover after poaching Land Rover and Mini.

Apart from the Rover 75 there has not been a new car in almost 10 years. and rebadged MG Rovers dont count nor does sticking big plastic bumers onto little Rovers.

It does make you think waht the hell were the buy out team planning. their ideas seemed to consist of resurection of the old MG brand stick it on some old cars and hope for the best.
And as for the MGSVR or what ever it is called Â£85,000 for an old fashioned looking coupe that is unable to compete with cars half the price.
Then they head off in the opposite direction with rebadged 10 year old Tata cars from India.

The staff are in a predicament but unions havnt helped there case with constant strikes over the last few decades.

Most Car manufactuers are now operating at a loss it was always only a matter of time for Rover, Â£100 million would only prolong the inevitable.

A sad situation however.


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## Carlos (May 6, 2002)

Hmm I understand the directors are ok though, having spirited off millions into a pension fund. I wonder if they will donate that cash to help keep the company afloat :?


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## pas_55 (May 9, 2002)

:wink: Let them hang,the management who took over have just lined their own pockets.No re-investment and they've left it to the last moment to come up with the money.If the banks wil not step in why should we.Oh and guess who owns the name Rover,yep that's right BMW :wink:


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## garyc (May 7, 2002)

I have every sympathy for the workers, and none for the fat cat managers who have had their snouts so firmly in the trough after having paid just a tenner for the business. Rovers real problem is that their cars are just not good enough, neither are (were) their management team.

As a tax payer I object to another penny going to that business.

Prediction: a future for MG as a niche brand. Continued future for Powertrain. Plant to be sold off to China plus some 'consulting' work or the fat cats.

Some of us remember BL and BMC before that. It's always been badly run and troubled with poor labour realtions, low competitiveness of product and countless product quality issues. The tax payer has squandered literally Â£billions over the years on this crappy business. I say 'enough'.

Something tells me that Labour will make some sort of calculated and cynical financial concession, since the election is on us and Longbridge sits in marginal constituency. :roll: :x


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## jonno (May 7, 2002)

A sad event really.
They just didn't have the right products or reputation to cut it, and the view taken was never a long-term one from the time it was bought from BMW.
I agree with Carl - the directors seem to have devised and executed an excellent "exit straegy" :wink:

Politically though, too many voters work(ed) in Rover/their suppliers for the gov't not to try something, especially with Blair trying to get re-elected. Suspect a last minute rescue package (till the next time) using outr hard-earned, and it won't be you and me buying an equity stake either.

Anyone remember the hugely expensive disaster that was BL ?
Don't expect this to do wonders for MG/Rover residuals either. :roll:


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## jonno (May 7, 2002)

Don't ya hate page caching
And then you end up typing the same thing as the previous poster


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## jonah (Aug 17, 2002)

I think its very sad to see a great groupe raped of its technolagy, BMW took them over when they were'nt doing well invested money to an extent but also stole 3 things which would of seen Rover not in this situation.

1: 4x4 technology stolen by BMW use to develope their own system for the X5 then sold to Ford where they did the very same for Volvo and Ford 4x4 sysetms.

2: The Mini, all the development costs were shouldered by Rover but when BMW decided to walk away they took the one car that would of seen Rover in profit leaving Rover heavily in debt with the development costs.

3: Rover had a car 95% ready for production to replace the rover 25 and was believed to be a market leader, this had to be shelved as BMW walked away.

I'm not sure giving them a bridging loan of 100 million wouldn't of helped as the chinese weren't happy with the stae of the books or the people managing Rover. The buck has to stay with BMW IMO although the union hasn't helped as alot of other companies were scared off with the employees jobs for life contracts which seems isn't worth the paper its written on now as they're not solvent. 
John Towers i'm sure will walk away with more than the Â£1 he bought Rover for i'm sure :?

I also believe MG will still excist as Rover was broken up by Towers into smaller companies and feel MG as a brand will succeed producing sports cars from a small building somewhere in UK


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## Karcsi (Mar 6, 2003)

It was a stuffed dodo when it was sold by BMW.

I feel really sorry for the 6-7000 employees of Rover and the 15-20,000 employees at their suppliers who will lose their jobs. I wonder whether there is a case against both management and BMW for professional negligence - BMW never should have sold the firm, and Phoenix have failed miserably in any attempt to save the company.

I think the company has been a lost cause for decades. Rover has always had an image problem. But BMW/Phoenix made it incalculably worse by investing nothing in a proper new model. Rover + 20 yo models = [smiley=behead.gif]

They desperately needed a decent mid-sized family hatch and saloon to replace the 200/400. Forget the city car. Competition is fierce, margins low, and volumes low.

The problem with Rover is the classic pitfall - it's in the middle. Neither is it a niche product, nor is it a high volume cheap product. It has no market. If you want a decent small car at a cheap price, you have a dozen other manufacturers with far new and better products on offer for the same or lower prices, and they all have a brand name that is respected.

I think this is just the start. Daewoo should have gone the same way. Many of the Korean and other "cheap" car manaufacturers will go the same way. Car prices are very competitive (new and secondhand), people have access to more money (you get offer a loan with a packet of crisps these days) and they are far more discerning (read "shallow") about what they buy.

We will end up with a handful (3-4) of mainstream manufacturers, and perhaps half dozen specialist independent manufacturers for the filthy rich.

The communists had the right idea - do you want a Lada or a Trabant.


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## garyc (May 7, 2002)

Karcsi said:


> The communists had the right idea - do you want a Lada or a Trabant.


Which one has cupholders as standard?


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## vernan (May 27, 2002)

jgray said:


> And as for the MGSVR or what ever it is called Â£85,000 for an old fashioned looking coupe that is unable to compete with cars half the price.


To be fair to Rover, that's not the point of the SV, but it's a niche product that will only appeal to some. Not to most Audi/Porsche/BMW owners. But that's the point.

Anyway, why they kept up the Rover brand I've no idea. MG is a bit lame in itself, frankly (they've always done mass-market, small, slow roadsters like A and B - hardly glamour) but Rover means P4s and P6s.


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## Karcsi (Mar 6, 2003)

garyc said:


> Karcsi said:
> 
> 
> > The communists had the right idea - do you want a Lada or a Trabant.
> ...


Both did have lots of places to hold a cup and other proletariat brickabrack.

But I think the Trabant was made out of discarded British Rail plastic coffee cups smuggled out of the UK by Stasi double agents in mini 2-man submarines. That's why delivery times were up to 10 years.


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## clived (May 6, 2002)

I drove a Rover for the first time in about 12 years this week (I won't say who it belonged to in order to avoid embarrasment!) - a MG ZT 1.8 turbo / 160bhp.

As I said when I got out of it, it's ok - apart from the intruments, clutch, gear change, terrible torque steer and very abrupt throttle lift characteristics. So, as long as you don't want to see how fast you're going, change gear, turn or accellerate, it'll probably do you fine!


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## jonno (May 7, 2002)

clived said:


> I drove a Rover for the first time in about 12 years this week (I won't say who it belonged to in order to avoid embarrasment!) - a MG ZT 1.8 turbo / 160bhp.
> 
> As I said when I got out of it, it's ok - apart from the intruments, clutch, gear change, terrible torque steer and very abrupt throttle lift characteristics. So, as long as you don't want to see how fast you're going, change gear, turn or accellerate, it'll probably do you fine!


So you've bought one then Clive?


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## Karcsi (Mar 6, 2003)

If he has: many happy returns Clive, 65 today! :lol:

You'd think with the every increasing pensioner population Rover would have a large market there to exploit.


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## t7 (Nov 2, 2002)

clived said:


> I drove a Rover for the first time in about 12 years this week (I won't say who it belonged to in order to avoid embarrasment!) - a MG ZT 1.8 turbo / 160bhp.


It's not Clive's :wink:


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## clived (May 6, 2002)

jonno said:


> So you've bought one then Clive?


Now, I'm not being funny Jonno, but we've got a BMW 535d, a slightly modded TT Roadster and a Golf TDi for going to the shops in at home. If I set off in the direction of a Rover dealership, the men in white coats would be sure to get to me before I got there. Of course, now it wouldn't matter as I assume the sales guys are all taking a few days off...


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## Karcsi (Mar 6, 2003)

No, Jonno was the one being funny.


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## Guest (Apr 9, 2005)




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## Guest (Apr 9, 2005)

BMW were not the great asset strippers many would claim, and they could certainly have learnt a few lessons from this lot.

BMW paid Â£800 million for Rover and spent hundreds of millions more trying to sort out a chronically ill company (within BMW, Rover was known as 'The English Patient'). No one else would have put that kind of money into Rover, least of all another British company. They developed new models and got to work on the Mini, and thank God they kept it, at least there's one piece of motoring history that is still with us and still great, still made in England and likely to be around as long as there is an internal combustion engine. What kind of job would Towers et al have done on the Mini? Rebadged Tata perhaps?

When BMW sold Rover for a tenner, Phoenix bought an estimated billion pounds worth of cars and land including a new factory, a comprehensively retrained workforce and a very good new car in the 75. Since then they have spent zero on development except for weekend fun in the race teams and the V8 75 and that SV blancmange, toys for the boys and no mistake. Finally they flogged off as much as they could while still keeping a roof over their heads, in the hope that they could sell the last chunk, the cars, to China and shift production to Â£2-an-hour land, ultimately making Longbridge redundant one way or another.

they absolutely, milked the life out of it. Could have been a good thing if they had gone their own way, stayed out of the league table game by making only what they could sell and not filling up the country's airfields with pre-registered cars dropping in value by the day, talk about devaluing their product, and in turn that owned by existing customers. Then a badly-thought out deal with Virgin cars, who were selling cars direct from Rover cheaper than dealers could buy them. result - no dealer confidence/loyalty/interest. Franchise networks have been pulling out of Rover ever since.

In 2002, they sold Â£11.5m of land, then in '03 it was Â£5m and last year they sold Â£42.5m worth of land at Longbridge to a property development company and signed a 35-year lease at Â£3.6m a year. They called it freeing up assets, others might say lining pockets, but who sells the house to property developers and then rents it back from them? A person who has no long-term aspirations to stay where they are for too much longer maybe.

The directors' pension fund is estimated to be worth about Â£16m, while the employees pension fund is underfunded to the tune of Â£60m. That Â£16m will give the directors pensions of about Â£85k a year, for what - 5 years 'work'? And what else did they do in that time? They sold off Unipart, made Phoenix Holdings a seperate entity to the beleagured Rover (no-one can come chasing them for money), and managed to pay one director Â£1.55m in ONE YEAR.

The whole thing stinks to high heaven. Those BL days never left the building


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## BAMTT (Feb 22, 2004)

clived said:


> a slightly modded TT Roadster


 :lol:


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## ag (Sep 12, 2002)

It is amazing that the Rover Group still exists today.

Things were already bad in the late 1960s. British Leyland was attacked mercilessly for wanting to rationalise its product range. This was because they felt that retainng the individual character of each marque was important. Perhaps settling on a few marques would have been better, and more importantly, easier to market into a word that had no knowledge of Rover, MG, Triumph, Austi, Jaguar, Daimler, etc etc etc. Our inability to sell these disparate marques effectively all over the world led to an almost total reliance on the domestic market. Lack of revenue and the banks' total unwillingness to invest in British manufacturing (Do you remember the old "Countries can never go bankrupt" mantra) meant that few new models left BL, and more importantly, few well-developed, world-beating cars that could be manufactured economically. By the end of the seventies, more cars went out in workers' car boots than on transporters.

The reasons for the collapse of the British Motor Industry are always said to be various and complex. This is not true in the least. We never had a Motor Industry per se. We had a few brilliant, but arrogant engineers and businessmen who produced some fabulous cars but also completely demolished their succession simply by being put on pedestals. Step forward William Lyons, Edward Turner et al. Times chnge and the way of doing business change.

When the Japanese started building cars and motorcycles they put 300 engineers to work on each model. Most Triumph motorcycles of the 30s 40s, 50s and 60s were designed by one man. The original Mini was famously sketched on the back of a *** packet. And you wonder why most people, given the choice, chose not to buy British.

Our preoccupation with managerial problems and bankers' shortsightedness was nothing compared with our inability to see the benefit of producing properly developed products and selling them to the world.

The final nail in the coffin was the decision in the late 70s/early 80s that all manufacturing in the UK should stop. This was because manufacturing was a dirty working class profession and the Tories wanted everybody to be middle class and vote for them. A torch also carried by new Labour.

Am I bitter, yes. This Country's ability to manufacture put it in the Premiere League of world economies, nothing else did, especially not banking and service industries. These will be gone as soon as India and China cotton on how to make loads of cash with little or no investment.

Instead of pouring money into lame companies, look at why they failed and address the educational weaknesses and stategic mistakes that lead to the situation and try and stop the event repeating its-self.

Whenever there is a problem of this nature, we always seem to think that throwing money at it now will have an effect. It is always too late, and the government knows it.


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## omen666 (Oct 10, 2004)

Time will bring the truth out.

This is a case of the Phoenix Group taking all of the assets and selling them quickly before the business community worked out it was doomed.

They have sold all the assets, intellectual property rights, brand rights and the land (leased back).

The first job for the Administrators is to list the company's assets and see if there is a viable business.

Without the IP rights, there is no company. That is why the Admin's are trying to reopen the talks with the Chinese. Without the IP rights, there is no business to save.

The only way Rover can get these back is to buy them!

This is going to be the 'British Enron'.


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## Jae (May 6, 2002)

The Governement knew about the demise of Rover long ago.

They had 2 dates in mind, which was advised to their collegues in the relative departments.

The dates were

8th April

or

6th May

How can a dissolved government hand out Â£150m ???

As far as I can see, BMW invested shed loads to save the lemon. Had enough, and sold, taking some of its investment with them. Makes business sense. BMW WAS looking after the staff at Rover in the form of pensions, even after the give away, but trade unions advised they swap back to the Rover one.

When it was being sold, anyone remember the Alchemy Group? Wanted to downsize the company, and just concentrate on the MG brand, which in its own right, has a lot of value (albeit damaged at the moment). Trade Unions and the Govt were not happy with the prospect of the job lossess, and back the 4 Horsemen, who, in turn, raped the company of all its worth, selling the rights to the its best models to SIAC in the form of the 25 and 75, and leaving it with nothing but a black hole of debt, a skilled workforce with no jobs and the executionors of the mess more wealthy than they were when they started.

Powertrain supply Ford, Lotus and Rover, and are still running, thankfully. The MG Brand has not been mentioned much at all, but if the 4 Horsemen come out of this holding the MG Brand, god help them. I say bring back Alchemy, and leave them to develop what was once a good british brand - that is if they are interested.

BTW, Rover, as a company, supported the local economy LESS than its rivals. If this was Toyota, the regions (yes, the midlands) automotive supply business WOULD be screwed.


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## Dotti (Mar 9, 2003)

It had to happen. Too many car manufacturers on the market today. I suspect Fiat will be next!


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## Jae (May 6, 2002)

http://www.********.co.uk/images/rover.jpg


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## Loz180 (Sep 20, 2004)

I think the most exciting part of the investigation that will ensue will be the Pheonix 4 explaining how one part of MG Rover made Â£16m in profits based primarily on interest payments on a Â£427m INTEREST FREE loan from BMW?? this will take a little fanciful explanation methinks...

The blaggers bought MG Rover for Â£10. they raped it. There is even some doubt as to wether the Chinese have the rights to the Brand "Rover" now. so they can build the stretched 75 that they were so excited about....

Its a great pity that so many will loose there jobs. I have to be honest here though, and I don't expect this to go down well:

If I had been one of the Pheonix 4 and had the chance to buy it at a tenna and then make mutiple millions out of it knowing secretly there was a great chance the thing would flop eventually. I WOULD have done it too.

They did try to make it pay all round. The deal with the Chinese would have been a lifeline to an "at risk" concern. They were greedy but they did take a bit of responsiblity.

Also I think there might be a chance that creditiors (HBOS might be down about Â£100m if the figure of 5000 unsold cars is right  ) can come after the holding company as there were guarantees in place. and unlike the rapper with the Â£55k rent dispute, the guarantees are still enforcable.

I will watch this with interest.

When Richard Gere did this in Pretty Woman we all thought he was cool as Fcuk. Lets not forget that. and yes I know he developed an accute case of compassionate capitalism in the end but thats not what made him who he was.

Would have served the staff at Longbridge to watch that film and then draw up new CVs... :?


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