Thread: Solihul ... How times have changed

Originally Posted by Rosco

Hey ..
How about the P76 ...
BWAAAAAHAAAAHAAA

Yeah but their motors made a good transplant for the Triumph Stag...

In fact I've seen more P76 motors in other things and running than in the original cars,..... and running

Never saw a good BL car. Had a Marina estate that was total crap. New company car so they coverd all the expenses but oh so unreliable. Design faults included washer and wipers that every time used would leave the remnants going across the screen directly in front of the driver. Very hard car to love !

The good news is they make my old disco seem very nice and reliable !!!

Originally Posted by numpty

Len was actually 73 when he died in 1995.

Originally Posted by disco2hse

But remember, to kids anyone over 18 is old, anyone over 25 is ancient and if he had grey hairs then, he must be way into his 70's --- he's like, sooo old

Beat me to it! I don't have his books with me so I couldn't check but I read them before I saw him in about '77. I honestly thought he was well past 60 by then.

Hey My mum drove a P76! Loved that tank. Only down side of ours was the cops knew and whel book mum would also tell her she was late to pick us all up.

Rover started (under a different name) making sewing machines in the middle of the nineteenth century. By the late 19th century they were also making bicycles, and one model, called the Rover, was so successful it changed the name of the company. By the beginning of the 20th century, Rover had started to make cars, and by the mid twenties were a successful and innovative company. They nearly went broke in the depression, but recovered by good management (imposed by their bank) and good design, and were sufficiently successful by 1939 that they were given one of the shadow aircraft factories to run. During the war they did extensive military work, including jet engine design and development, and were in a good position at the end of the war.

Except that steel supplies depended on exports, and they had never been big on exports. The Landrover was designed as a civilian Jeep replacement for the Sterling area (including Australia), with the design being intended to use a minimum of rationed steel (hence the use of unrationed aluminium), and, since it was intended as a quick fix for short term production, with a minimum of tooling - which resulted in the meccano like construction, unlike the Jeep which was built using conventional mass production car methods.

Arriving in Australia (and other sterling area countries) in 1948, the only competition was the war surplus Jeep, only available in limited numbers. And there was pent up demand for all cars due to no production during the war. Throughout this area it was so successful that until the mid seventies supplies were never able to meet demand. Rover soon found that it was not going to be a short term project as planned, and collected all the ideas they could from users, and these resulted in the 86"/107" Series 1.

By the time the Series 2 was introduced in 1958, outside the dollar area there was nothing to touch the Landrover - but Rover had serious problems. It was only a small company, and was struggling to meet demand, plus they really wanted to introduce new models (in the ordinary car line), and what was to become the Rangerover was already being planned - they needed more capital. In 1967 they agreed to a merger with the truck company, Leyland, on the basis that there were no competing models. Unknown to Rover, the bean counters at Leyland had a plan to take over the entire British car industry. Essentially, they managed this, and destroyed it in the process.

By the early 1970s, Landrover was the only part of the vastly expanded empire that was actually making money, which instead of going into product development or increased production facilities, went into trying to prop up the whole ramshackle empire. This meant stagnant design, poor quality materials, and, probably most damaging, continued inability to meet demand.

In the Australian context, this was disastrous for Land Rover. In the mid 1960s, the army re-equipped with Landrovers; this took virtually the entire Australian quota for several years - if you were a civilian, you just put your name down on the waiting list. Needless to say, some were not happy to do this, and one, Les Theiss (an earthmoving contractor), imported an unheard of competitor from Toyota - whom nobody had ever heard of either. He not only used them, he started selling them (and later other Toyotas). Although the early models had a lot of shortcomings, Toyota listened to their customers, where Landrover, able to sell everything they could make, were no longer inclined to do so - and by 1970 were no longer allowed to by their new masters.

As far as the Australian civilian market was concerned, by the time the Series 3 was replaced, Landrover had already lost the market, and their new competitors had the advantage that they had rising sales of other vehicles to enable them to maintain dealers everywhere, where sales of Leyland cars and trucks, crippled by the company's financial woes, poor design, and industrial strife with resultant quality and delivery problems, were in a downward spiral, losing dealers as the sales disappeared. By 1980, Leyland had realised the problems, and Landrover, now a separate division, had funding to improve the design, making improvements that should have been made ten years earlier, and at last able to deliver - not that it mattered as far as Australia was concerned - the sales of Landrovers had disappeared.

However, the sales of Rangerovers, with no real competitor, were booming. So it is hardly surprising that JRA transformed itself into a luxury car organisation, with, particularly after the end of the Perentie project, little interest and a bit of embarrasment about the Landrover. The Rangerover moved rapidly up market, and in 1991 the widening gap between it and the top line 110 was filled by the new Discovery, and, somewhat with relief, the 110 and 120 were dropped. Noisy customers eventually resulted in the reintroduction of the Defender a couple of years later, but it has never really fitted the company's image as a seller of luxury cars.

John

Excellent round up John Much appreciated.

That ought to go into the FAQ or whatever.

or in Dullbirds Calender?