Tedious obsession with Britishness that even James May slagged off when the 75 came out. I wish Rover was still going but stuff like that makes you question if they deserved it after all.
Jesus. I honestly thought this was a spoof!! I used to think Rover died because of poor investment etc etc now I’m sure it was the workers. school boy jokers that seemed to have forgotten they were at work not in the playground!!!
Yes but the way the workers seem to have forgotten that they are at a place of work, they're acting like a bunch of jokers. I can see why management gave up @@darendalton856
Brilliant documentary. This series should be watched by all students of business to learn how not to run a car company. The attitude of the British Rover workers in Bavaria -- immaturely laughing and joking about, there to get pissed and have a good time and not participate, while the bemused German BMW workers were conscientiously problem-solving -- speaks volumes about the very disparate mindsets. It's a great shame, as Rover was in a good position in 1995 with the new, well-received Rover 200 and 400 models, the 600 selling well and a new MGF. Within a decade, they'd be no more.
Rover never had a chance. There cars are of no comparison to BMW in quality or engineering. Rover went bust for a reason. Nobody wanted to buy there cars
I'm afraid BMW were in for what they could get, Range Rover tech and money, mini and a factory in the UK. How Rover failed was only helped by the above factors, oh and the UK government looking the other way...
They should have used the Rover name on the 600 and 800 series cars, but resurected the Austin name on the 200 and kept it on the Metro, thus aiming the right cars at the right market sector.... perhaps....
this shows over and over, just how incapable "management" was. Always aiming low, never driven by the engineer but by the accountant. Ever seen an accountant drive a Trabant? No they drive BMW's says it all, and is proof of very very poor management. HOW MANY OF THE 'MANAGEMENT' HAD A DEGREE IN ENGINEERING AND DESIGN? NONE.
This shows everything that was wrong with rover. The 200 and 400 were good cars but they focused everything on fuddy duddy ‘Britishness’ rather than it being a good car. The 200vi should have been more edgy and more of the direction they went it. Keep the wood if u need to but bigger wheels and a bit more racey and promote it as that not as a lounge chair!
So let me get this right, Rover had two long term image problems: flaky cars and an "Old person" image. So they solved this problem by passing over the ad that highlighted the improved static qualities of the 200 and which made no assumptions about what kind of person a Rover 200 driver should be, in favour of one starring a young fogey who's set in his ways. Genius! What could possibly go wrong...
The attitude of the English workers comes across awful- “we like what we like and we aren’t going to change or try anything new..”. As for “pudding” that’s an English thing, everyone else calls it’s dessert. No one foreign would know what they meant but they’re so unself-aware they couldn’t see this
Well systems 1 and 2 were built for the metro and mini so were ancient. System 3 which isn't shown in this video was far more modern, a lot of Honda input as it built both honda and rover models at 60 an hour.
Yes. If the workers were truly proud to be British they would have upped the build quality and lobbied management, through their shop stewards, to increase spend per vehicle to enable decent rust proofing for example. This way their product would have competed more successfully with those from VW. They would have kept more repeat customers and not gained a poor reputation. A bit of creative thinking applied and management could have bought in a new Golf mk1, stripped it down along side an Allegro and gone from there. Very sad.
Having known what happened subsequently you can absolutely see how and why things went belly up fast. I reckon BMW didn’t realise actually how bad things were in rover and how far behind they were. Without Honda there was nothing much there at this stage
BMW ripped Rover off, They got the new Mini and know-how of the Land Rover for there own 4 X 4. They also took the Rover 25 replacement car and made the new 1 series! The phoenix 4 put the final nail in the coffin, those 4 bastard's have a lot to answer for!
Team leaders criticising keen new employees for working too quickly perfectly epitomises what finally brought Rover Group to its knees. We should and could have done so much better. Pity really. And I speak as an ex Rover Group employee, although I worked in sales rather than production.
If someone want to know why rover failed - this shows it in all its glory. Smug and condescending of their customers and competitors with a healthy dose of jokes at the Italians expense.
BMW plundered Rover , taking the new Mini and taking all the know how to make a decent 4x4 from the land rover. It's like eating all the decent flavour crisps and leaving a load of ready salted in the bag and saying here man help your self to a bag of crisps!
Can you blame them? BMW were losing 25 million pounds a day with Rover. The hard truth is that Rover made cars that nobody wanted to buy, not even the British public. BMW left Rover with one billion pounds which they burned through in five years and then they went bankrupt. The real crime is the Pheonix Four who left the company with a combined 40 million pounds. They were the only real winners.
No can't blame, the government did not support car industry like the German, French Japanese or American. The government pretended it did not support state aid but as we have seen time and time again it does just not industry ,it just our government chose the winner to be the City rather than industry. Which may have seemed sensible at the time , in hindsight not so much
That’s business I’m afraid. BMW did try but the strategy was completely misguided. The low volume 75 shouldn’t have been a priority for replacement and was the wrong car completely for the market at the time
Bmw kept the mini land-rover ranger rover. Gave the rest away to 4 muppets that destroyed mg rover and life's . Mclaren put bid in to save rover in 2000. he never got the company . it was given to there labour buddies that knew nothing about cars or business. I remember Quainton wilson said the workers had extra 5 years of work. people should be thankfull. Another man that help destroy rover with the top gear fools
What Britain did best....Producing people (in this case motoring journalists...) who thought they were so clever in their smugness of being overly-critical & slagging off the products of our own industries & poor old MG Rover...Nowhere else in the world did or does this happen...a truly British disease that even Clarkson made a career out of......🙄
@@jemimallah sorry don’t agree to be honest. The damage was done years before BMW came along, through years & years of lack of investment in Rover Group by British Aerospace who owned it at the time & as a result being hampered by expensive Honda licensing agreements for all the cars. Given time it probably could’ve been turned round like VAG did with Skoda. But it was losing far too much cash to wait, the poor DM >GBP exchange rate was the final straw. So I would level the blame at BAe managers not Rover.
And if you are then confronted with, for example, those 3 baboons from Topgear who are making fun of everything, then such an introduction has failed in advance.
I stopped watching it when I realised how toxic Clarkson’s humour was. The way he used it to influence May and Hammond, along with the audience, is the definition of a malignant narcissist. No better than Trump.
