Thread: A marketing opportunity missed

Originally Posted by p38arover

The point is, Brian, Rover bought the engine, not a licence to build one. Had GM built a light weight 5 litre alloy V8 at that time and was it for sale?

At the time Rover bought the engine, 3.5 litres was big by British standards. The car for which it was bought was not the Rangie but a Rover saloon that wasn't sold in big numbers outside Britain. The engine was light for a V8 and was ideal at the the time.

As I said in the earlier post, GM had already built that engine family in 5 litres. They had also built a turbocharged version.

Land Rover had to export. Their home market was to small to survive on. But LR consistently refused to provide what the export customers wanted. I was at Leyland when we were being totally flogged by Toyota in the market place and the principal reason was lack of performance. They were not alone in this. Britain once had a heavy truck industry and it died for the same reasons, refusal to accept that the overseas customers wanted and needed horsepower. Leyland Australia sent a presentation to the UK truck people telling them how the Oz heavy truck business was lost and how it could be somewhat recovered. They were told that a 400 hp prime mover that could haul a gross of 45 tons at a level road cruising speed of 60mph with some degree of driver comfort was needed asap. The American trucks sold in Oz, Kenworth, White, Mack etc were already doing this and had taken the market. The amazing reply was that no one needed that much power in a truck and 60mph cruising speed was dangerous! RIP the British heavy truck industry, now barely in existence except for a tiny number of specialists.

The British motor cycle industry died for the same reasons. They kept on making their obsolete designs, whilst the Japanese provided machines with self-starters, reliable electric systems, oil tight mechanicals, good appearance, good performance, and good prices.

My experiences at Leyland showed the poms to have a patronising, paternalistic attitude towards "colonials". They did not consider that anything we wanted or any local modifications we did had merit.

one very disgruntled customer.

I'll tell all of you that Brian has a very good point.A contract company I work with,and many others will follow suit bought Hilux's when the rules change so that airbags must be fitted to site vehicles,the sales went through the roof,next year Toyota are fitting cruisers with airbags FOR THE AUSTRALIAN MARKET ONLY!!.So guess what,all the companys are going to switch over when they arrive.A fleet of hilux's one year,a fleet of cruisers the next.No wonder tojo are laughing all the way to the bank.One more thing,there is a demand for heavy dual cab utes,They aren't buying 130's,instead they are paying $14,000 per conversion to make LC wagons into dual cab utes.The market for work vehicles in Oz is near 80,000 units per year,LR sell about 200.Enough said. Pat

i dont think it would really matter what landrover sold.........whether they had a big engine in them or not.

i cant tell you how many people i have talked to here about landrovers....and the first thing they say is how unreliable they are, and they have never driven them.

I cant see how you would expect landrover to make something solely for australia, when landrover themselves know they have no prospective market here. and are to lazy to do anything about it.

they have some of there cars up there in the luxury car market, why would they put there efforts into the defender? dont forget the defender was going to get canned, because they were not interested in developing it further...hence the ford engine i believe, they brought what they could afford not what they could develop.

it may of been a different sotry if landrover could still sell defenders in the usa..but i'm guessing it was just too hard to develop it to put airbags in....or was it that putting airbags in was getting a little too silly for a farmers car I dont know.

the fact of the matter is, they were not going to catter for australia....and they probably never will. so not amount of whinging because the car has a small engine is going to change things the car is built for EUROPE and europe doesn't want big engined cars they cost to much in tax, fuel and insurance. why do you think heaps of people in the UK drive around in things that have less power than your mums hair dryer.. the usual is around 1.8 to 2ltr

our fiat in the uk was 1.2......If australia brought a tax in and charged you on engine size and immissions i bet a few people would change there minds

Originally Posted by dullbird

one very disgruntled customer.

No, perhaps at one time a disgruntled staff member. We marketing types knew what was needed to stay in the marketplace and maybe even recover some market share. We were bashing our heads against a head office ostrich-head-in-the-sand attitude.

LR almost totally lost the Australian market over the next thirty years and now don't even have a dealer network to sell the product through should they ever manufacture an acceptable outback/rough use vehicle. At least in the seventies there were dealers in places as small as Quilpie, Thargomindah, Winton, & Dirranbandi.

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

They were told that a 400 hp prime mover that could haul a gross of 45 tons at a level road cruising speed of 60mph with some degree of driver comfort was needed asap. The American trucks sold in Oz, Kenworth, White, Mack etc were already doing this and had taken the market. The amazing reply was that no one needed that much power in a truck and 60mph cruising speed was dangerous! RIP the British heavy truck industry, now barely in existence except for a tiny number of specialists.

I think the 24t 190hp International Acco that I learnt on was probably more dangerous. Gotta love being passed while empty even in the current Isuzu 24t trucks by a 600Hp B-double. Now what would the Brit truckers think of 600hp. They clearly didn't understand Aus conditions.

Originally Posted by PAT303

I'll tell all of you that Brian has a very good point.A contract company I work with,and many others will follow suit bought Hilux's when the rules change so that airbags must be fitted to site vehicles,the sales went through the roof,next year Toyota are fitting cruisers with airbags FOR THE AUSTRALIAN MARKET ONLY!!.So guess what,all the companys are going to switch over when they arrive.A fleet of hilux's one year,a fleet of cruisers the next.No wonder tojo are laughing all the way to the bank.One more thing,there is a demand for heavy dual cab utes,They aren't buying 130's,instead they are paying $14,000 per conversion to make LC wagons into dual cab utes.The market for work vehicles in Oz is near 80,000 units per year,LR sell about 200.Enough said. Pat

My two cents ..

Land Rover is as much interested in that market as Bentley or Aston Martin .. and have been for a long time. I firmly believe when the SUV became the next big thing, Land Rover made the decision to focus on a niche market of speciality, luxury SUV models and extracted themselves from the utility market. The development of the Defender got left behind because money was spent on upgrading the RR, Discovery and Freelander to fit that market space.

The only reason the Defender is still around is because:
A) It is still popular in EU and provides a return for the company without spending too much on development
Is still used and bought by the armed forces
c) Provides a heritage to the other models that adds to the luxury appeal of the Land Rover brand.

This was apparent back in the days when BMW bought Land ROver. They never intended to buy the brand to sell mass produced utility vehicles. They didn't give a toss if Toyota were selling thousands of utility vehicles in AU, neither did Ford (Who bought Land Rover for the same reason, a luxury car brand). I doubt Tata, with a utility background, is even interested in moving the defender into that market space, I think they will make the new defender a lifestyle vehicle that will complete the Land Rover transformation.

We should be comparing LR to Jeep, with Jeep being the poor cousin with a similar range of vehicles.

Originally Posted by Greylandy

We should be comparing LR to Jeep, with Jeep being the poor cousin with a similar range of vehicles.

Well I agree and disagree.They too have suffered with ownership changes (though perhaps not to the same degree). I think the comparison is more likely outside of the US than in Jeep's home market. Similar range, well, I think a Grand Chero maybe equivalent to an up-spec Disco, but not into RR territory. ??

Jeep haven't had anything in the marketplace to equate to a Defender for sometime - since the end of the J20 perhaps. However the new J8 (including mil-spec versions) may be if/when it goes into production. The JK Unlimited really occupies its own niche market space.

...But the white flag has certainly come out for Jeep with the release of the Patriot and Compass. The Patriot is built on a Mitsubishi platform, welcome to the slippery slope of RAV4's, Outlanders etc, etc!

Cheers
Mike