Tuesday 28 July 2009

The Story of the Death of Rover.

Part 3 The English Were Patient.

After the fuss and media fun and games of the BMW ‘takeover’ there followed an anticlimax akin the ‘phoney war’, that period of apprehension followed by not much happening after news of the war was famously announced by Chamberlain on BBC radio: 'I have to tell you now,' he said, 'this country is at war with Germany.' At the time in 1939 people were expecting German troops to begin parachuting into towns and villages some dressed as nuns according to Dads Army. (I don’t recall the Rover board showing any of these episodes to the BMW board though).

We waited and waited but – no Germans and then there was the Road show. All Rover group employees took it in turns to be shipped out to the various Social Clubs with suitable sized halls which existed around the company. At Longbridge, there was a large assembly hall on site where all were gathered too see a car launch style presentation with dry ice, flashing lights and presentations which explained the plan. This was summed up by the road show theme tune, Two Hearts, One Mind by Phil Collins. The two companies were to operate as separate organisations, that was the two hearts bit. But what about the ‘one mind’? That question remained unanswered. Amongst the shop floor, suspicion began to grow that BMW, like so many other aspiring owners were only interested in a few gems such as 4 by 4 technology and getting their hands on some of the iconic brands owned by Rover such as Mini, Triumph, Riley, MG etc. Amongst management there was incredulity that a company like BMW would not take the sane business decision to take the economies of scale that would accrue when the two businesses were merged. Just like in Dads Army, the Germans still did not come.

During this Time John Towers remained as head of Rover but it was widely understood that BMW thought that he was too close a supporter of Honda and Japanese manufacturing techniques and BMW were not very impressed with these. Then someone made the decision to allow a documentary team exclusive and intrusive access to the company to make ‘When Rover Met BMW’. This was seen as a daft decision by many, even in the department which dealt with the press and media. It achieved very little for the two organisations but as they were completing their filming and had most of the series edited, John Towers announced his departure. This caused pandemonium amongst the film crew and they hastily shot some additional footage and included a scene where Wolfgang Reitzler , then BMW number two to Berndt Pischetsreider, made an announcement of which John Towers was completely in the dark. The implication of the documentary was that they had expected this to be the outcome all along. The documentary did show however that Dr Reitzler appeared to be a very ambitious person – to say the least.

I can understand why so many in the company felt that John Towers should be the man to lead the team to run Rover after BMW pulled out. He was at the top of the organisation before BMW came along, when Rover was making profits and their products were overcoming their reputation for poor quality and old fashioned design. He was head of the company for the first few years after BMW took over and it was only after he had gone that things seemed to take a turn for the worse. That was when the Germans finally did arrive.

What then followed was a great British car and a huge squabble between two senior BMW executives which nearlt did for both campanies.

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