Rollocks. BMW were sold a dummy, because they were lead to believe that they would acquire FWD platform engineering experience from Rover. All that experience, however, actually belonged to Honda, and BMW were forced to engineer the 75 from scratch. For a first go at FWD, they did a damn good job, and the new mini goes on to prove that they got it figured pretty fast. BMW pumped millions into rover and found they were getting nowhere, so they let it go. If they hadn't have stepped in then rover wouldn't have lasted as long as they did.