Rover - any hope?

The government wants to give Rover a bridging loan to help them survive if do a deal with a chineese car company.

However is not to late for Rover? I don't see any new Rover's on the road, Proton's seem more popular these days. The only decent Rover being made is some of the MG's and the 75, both the 25 and 45 are ancient, the 45 is basicaly a 1994 Honda Civic.

My uncle has a W reg 25,at less than 70,000 miles he had to replace the engine and how the gearbox has gone. So it seems they still have reliability issues especialy with the K series engines.

In essense the company supplies 10 year old designs with unreliable engines. A bit of wood on the dashboard is simply no longer enough to save the company.

I don'y know how many small car manfuacturer can exist in a word of chasis platform sharing.

 

I believe that any company stands a chance in the world if it innovates and moves forward.

Unfortunately this has not happened with rover who got stuck in 1982.

 

I can't see a deal with China as being anything other than an extremely short term measure. Why would the Chinese pay to make cars in the UK when they will pretty soon be making them as well and much cheaper in China? British manufacturing under Chinese ownership would be tokenism at best.

Sorry guys, but the combination of government, management and unions ensured that our car industry committed Hari-Kari in the 60s. The truth is that we make cars better in captivity (ie. under foreign ownership). However, even then we're unlikely to be able to compete with the Chinese as manufacturers.

Remember Humber, Hillman, Sunbeam, Riley, Wolseley, Austin, Morris, Alvis, Jensen, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc?

 

Well Austin and Morris were scrapped because their brands were assosiated with reliability problems. I think the idea of this chineese deal is that Rover would sell their advanced engine designs to China in return for cash so they can make new models which will sell.

 

Hmm, I see loads of new Rovers, namely the MG ZR, they are common as much around here.

The reason more people dont buy em, as you say, is because they are old, outdated, and totally boring. Doesnt help that the K-Series engine likes to blow head gaskets either...

 

Thats basicaly the problem, my uncle has the 1.4 K series engine, the pistons totaly ciesed up on his. Then just has he thought everything was working fine the gearbox goes. Luckily he can fix it all himselve or otherwise he would have had to scrap the car by now.

I've seen a few MGs, but Skoda's, Kia's and Daewoo's are much more popular.

I think Rover's are well over priced for what they are, the City Rover was a good idea but I have never seen one in the flesh they are really really unpopular here. People instead seem to much prefer the new Fiat Panda.

 

What is wrong with the gearbox.......

 

Not sure he said it was totaly failed, I know he took it a some specialists and they said it was cheaper just to buy a new one rather than bother trying to fix it.

My uncle is a perfectionist though, everytime my dad takes his car for a minor fault he ends up fixing loads of other stuff. I think he likes the engine but hates the unreliability of it. My grandad used to have Montego's before his Micra and they were always causing problems. My uncle said he read that after 60,000 miles its normal for K series engines to pack up.

I know the 1.8 K series units used in the Freelander (which I know is now owned by Ford) are always failing too.

 

When I use to sell cars I use to cringe when someone wanted to px their rover, I didnt have an underwriter who wanted them, put into context, we px'd two 1 year old 75's against two new C220's, we got 9k each for the two 75's even the rover main dealers didnt want to know. I feel for those who are going to lose their jobs but years of internal fighting have led to this, I for one wont be sorry to see them go.

 

Strange, that with losses of several million pounds, the pheonix consortium board paid themselves several times more money than the board of BMW did on the back of multi-billion pound profits. Hmmmm....

 

i have fond memories of my dad's old sd1 and my rover 420 sdi has given me no problems at all. i agree that they'bve been hoist by their own petard, even though they've had enough time to sort themselves out and fix the problems. i still say any company that is bonkers to sell a stock car with a nitrous oxide option deserves to survive. perhaps tvr or someone should buy the mg name.
cheers


julian

 

Talking of nitrous, I was given a ride in a Mitsubishi Legnum VR4 yesterday... many engine mods, rolling roaded at 340bhp without nitrous, around 450-460 with. Nitrous wasn't in use yesterday (it has been used to set a 12.5 at santa pod though), but it was still ****ing quick....

 

Looks like fiat wont be far behind them, although theyve successfully sued GM for a cool $2 billion for not, er, buying them this only covers the next two years losses! In fact is their a car manufacturer making money?

 

A TVR with nitrious! Ive driven many fast cars including a hand-built limited ed Carrera 4 and a CLK F1 lap car (no joke that by the way) but nothing quite prepares you for a 4.7 cerberra, if you suffer from constipation have a do in one of these!

 

BMW are making money.

 

Whats this about Fiat I thought GM now owned them? I know the next Punto will share the same chasis as the Corsa. Fiat are totaly different to Rover in the fact that their models are much newer and people still buy them. I do thing Fiat will have problems selling anything other than the Panda and Punto though.

The Rover board are greedy, Gordon Brown knows this and has told them to invest millions of their own money before the government hand out this £100 milllion cheque.

MG/Rover thought they could thrive of the boy racer/niche market. The problem is a lot of MG'S are aimed at younger drivers, most young drivers could never afford the insurance on even the cheaper models. The standard Rover's are so boring that even grandads are getting bored.

Gone are the days when people would buy a Rover simply because they thought it had more of a middle class image than a Ford.

 

I think it doesn't help that every day on my way to work I pass a bilboard advert for MG, which shows two old dears driving to a retirement home in a TF. Wasn't this the image they were trying to get away from?

 

Trouble is the brand has gone so far downhill that it's at the bottom (in the river).

When I was young there were plenty of P5 (a.k.a. 3 Litres) around and they were a splendid sight - a stepping stone to a Jag if you like. Company directors would and did drive around in them.

The P6 still had some flair - especially the 3.0 and 3.5 versions. Stylish motors - brand still strong.

Then the SD1 came along - ground breaking design not as classy as the older ones to my eyes but still a very desirable motor.

The tie up with Honda brought about some competitive cars - the 200 and 400 versions were good at the time e.g. a 216/416GTi compared well with the alternatives from Ford and Vauxhall, if not quite with VW.

Trouble is, I haven't seen much since - MGF was okay and they've sold a few but it wouldn't be my first choice. I think discounts rather than being the best is what has sold cars and that's not good for longevity I would have thought.

All I've seen in recent years (and to an extent over the longer term) is a disolving of the Rover brand - they used to be desirable, they then became competitive and alas have now slipped from being Grandad's cars to a brand that you certainly wouldn't invest your own money in and, to be honest, even if it were a company car I'd be unlikely to choose one.

They've gone from being a car lots wanted to one few people want - Skoda, over that same period have almost done the opposite!

Matt.

 

One of Rover's biggest problems was the Honda tie mean't they made some bland cars. The 200 of the late 80's was frankly horrible inside, a bit of wood could not help it out. The 100 was still being made 18 years after it was launched, an NCAP crash revealed how dangerous the car was, sales stopped over the night, production stopped 18 months early. I think this partly damaged Rover's brand.

The 75 is probably a good car, but its dated now and you will loose a lot of your money compared to a BMW 3 series. I am not sure why anbody would pay £15k for this

 

GM havent gone through with the purchase so Fiat have successfully sued for $2 billion dollors. GM are struggling, they dont have the funds to invest in their existing companies and they've realised that with Fiats $8 billion debt plus further losses of $1 billion a year it just isnt a feasible purchase. Its a shame coz Saab are suffering, they're new models are basically re-badged Subaru's and its doubtful that Saab will continue as they are.

Fiat have been struggling for years, apart from ferrari non of their products make money, Lancia is a joke, Alfa just cant compete with BMW etc and maserati make do with last-generation ferrari engineering. It doesnt help that they keep sacking their chairman and spend billions on that failed developing world car.