The Death Of Rover - TOP GEAR KILLED AN ENTIRE CAR MAKER?! - Analysing The Facts
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.ย. 2024
- In this video we look at something I've been asked by many to review, did James May, Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson kill an entire car company? The last British mass market car manufacturer Rover. In this video we look at whether or not this is the case I hope to finally put to rest what i see as a completely unfair accusation but that is of course just my opinion, please draw your own conclusions based on what has been presented.
We look at Top Gear, to The Grand Tour and try to figure out did Top Gear kill MG Rover? Or is this just an excuse perpetuated by many. This video is just my opinion based on the facts I have uncovered.
Sources:
Jeremy Clarkson - Rover 75 Review - www.topgear.co...
Jeremy Clarkson - Death of Rover - search.thetimes... and www.xpowerforu...
All Top Gear credit to the BBC
The Grand Tour One For The Road - Amazon
Men & Motors short clips - / @menandmotors
Follow me on Instagram for more cool stuff: / tomisdrivingcars
The top gear boys didn’t kill Rover, the troubles started early on as BLMC, then BL, making cars that competed with others from the same group, British aerospace then selling to bmw rather than getting Honda more involved. The phoenix four just kept it going for a little while longer, it was doomed
You’re right. The sale to BMW killed Rover. That was allowed to happen to deliberately kill the company I think.
@@adamlee3772not necessarily however the selling off of Land Rover by bmw and then bmw keeping the mini brand. Also politics didn’t help. It should never have been allowed to join so many competing car companies into one big massive conglomerate. Many things ruined mg/rover. Top gear wasn’t one of them.
@@Binge420It seems to me they followed the General Motors idea. We saw the same approach with other companies including the Roots Group, VW etc, but it didn’t work for BL. Was it because the public could no longer identify with what they perceived each individual brand meant now all the brands had a blue L badge on them? I always found it very strange seeing the Leyland badge on a Triumph or a Rover. When GM took on Vauxhall and Opel they were managed to retain individual brand identity yet still competed directly with the same models, but then Opel was taken out of the UK market leaving just one GM brand, unlike BL with its many models competing against each other;
Rover SD1/Jaguar, Allegro (non hatch)/Marina. I think Mini was the only distinct model in the BL group which must be something BMW recognised..
There is a big difference between platform sharing & simply rebadging cars with another badge you happen to own.
Phoenix Four embezzled the company. They were just vultures...
Top Gear didn’t kill Rover. The slow death began way before with the formation of BLMC. Completely inept management, workers who spent more time on strike than making cars, money wasted in all the wrong places, quality of the cars churned out in the 70’s was horrific. As much as I like Rover, I’m surprised the company managed to survive as long as it did.
Funny, you didn't mention woeful management, it was all the union's fault wasn't it?
They decided to build all those awful cars didn't they?
@@nkelly.9 the list of problems in this comment literally starts with inept management
As a German I can say Top Gear didn't had any impact in Germany at that time.
Especially the sporty MG models were popular and also the Streetwise. The problem was MG Rover was running out of money (Thanks to BMW! ) and had problems to keep their cars modern, even no chance to talk about "ahead of time."
The problem with BMW was, that it is more or less owned by one shareholder,the Quandt-Family.This family certainly disliked that Mr.Pischetsrieder burned their money
Rover was destroyed by British Leyland, trades unions and poor management.
BMW only bought Rover for the assets, primarily land at Longbridge and Oxford, the development of which has returned billions, I was there.
Did you work at Rover?
@@tomdrives Consider that Rover continued to use the K series engine with known gasket engine failures, would you consider that good management?
@@ascelotAs much as people shit on the Chinese, it’s funny that it took ‘them’ to fix the K-Series head gasket issue. But you already knew that.
@@Ezz800 Did know Rover brand went to chinese, but after that, its new to me, and FYI, ive had 2 rovers (75s), both TDI versions and loved both cars (last Rover was written off), and I loved its design choice, sort of retro and unique.
@@tomdrives you didn't have to work for Rover to know what was happening at BL, just watch the news.
In my opinion BMW and the UK government killed Rover
Spot on, the UK government specifically Margaret Thatcher by selling Rover Group to British Aerospace, they knew that Bridish Aerospace just wanted to sell of the car maker ASAP, that is why the government put in a 5 year no sell clause hoping this would give enough time to distance the government the sale to BMW. BMW only ever wanted Rover Group for the 4x4 technology they then used to launch the X5 they also needed a compact car to satisfy new EU legislation on car makers who only made big engined cars so they used 2 Rover designed cars one was the new mini and the other after a very small redesign to change it to RWD became the BMW One series. These were models that could have helped save Rover but instead BMW took these models. With ths cost of developing a totally new platform from scratch being around £1bn the money they saved in buying Rover using their designs to launch 3 new platform vehicles (X5, Mini and One series) aas considerable. It is my belief that BMW always intended to dump Rover on the scrapheap after pillaging their 2 new car designs and the 4x4 technology.
@@simply_psi Land Rover didn't have enough 4x4 technology to make it worth buying a Discovery, let alone the company. There's nothing in the original X5 that has anything to do with any LR product. The E53 was a jacked up version of the 5 series - of which they'd been doing 4wd versions since the late 80s.
The 1 series was a BMW design and would have been out a few years earlier if it hadn't been for the financial drain Rover was causing
@smorris12 yes BMW had done 4x4's in their saloon/sadan cars for many years, but they had not done a propper off road vehicle, they were not familiar with packaging requirements of a true off roader, the raising of air intakes, the isolation and extra water proofing of electrical components, suspension, ground clearance, and the very big difference in NVH needs of an off road vehicle compared to a standard road going vehicle. At the time BMW purchased Rover, Land Rover held the record for the angle an off-road vehicle could operate from without tipping over. They were the first company to develop hill descent control, which was directly taken by BMW, I know this because my brother worked for Rover bother before the BMW took over and afterwards. He saw that at the beginning og the take over the company was swamped by BMW designers and Engineers and they were examining everywhere in the design and production facilities, at first my Brother just thought they were coming in to see where they could improve design and production as BMW had the much better reputation, but it became clear that what they were doing was, checking exactly what they could take from the company. Look at the difference between how WV are when they buy a company, they share their technology and help improve the brand, look what dhey did with Skoda, a brand that was in way worse shape than Rover Group, yet WV put the effort in, improved production and shared their designs with Skoda and help build the brand to become one of the better European car makers. BMW just asset stripped Rover, this can be seen in the X5, as the early version had very similar reliability issues to the Range Rover including issues with ghe door locks opening when driven off road over 40 degrees angle, now that is one heck of a coincidence if they design hadn't been taken the design directly from the Range Rover. Land Rovers 4x4's are not as unreliable as their reputation would have people believe, several people I know have had Land Rovers, including Discoveries, Defenders, Range Rovers and Range Rover Sports, I must admit most of them no longer own them because of insurance costs being so high, because of a recent problem with the electronic locks making them very easy to steal. Out of all of their cars, only one had reliability issues, and this was a used car that had not been treated well by previous owners.
BMW killed Rover - They bought it, kept the best pieces for themselves, let the rest steadily decline, then shat it out. The Honda collaboration was going really well, such a waste.
The BMW ownership was great for Rover with the 75, it was a great car. When BMW left Rover they left them with a dowry which was £1b, one billion!
They were more cash rich than they had been in 30 years.
Thatcher twice (f*****g twice) refused to sell The Rover brand to VW, instead VW bought Skoda.
Honda left the partnership because they would not deal with BMW.
BMW didn’t kill Rover.
When Phoenix got their hands on Rover what did they do?
Paid each other huge bonuses and bankrupted the company.
Finally the (equal) worst prime minister ever said he wouldn’t give any money to keep Rover open.
Fu**ing politicians killed Rover.
BMW made a huge success of MINI and now they build more cars than Rover ever did.
That’s a huge success.
@@stivowen5710 False.
@@KarlHamilton true
@@stivowen5710would have been a even better car without that rubbish k series engine and better electrics. They even screwed a nice car up when the face-lift came along it looked cheap n nasty which infact it was then the city rover which they charged customers full whack for indian rubbish
Agreed
Clarkson absolutely hammered the Vauxhall Vectra & it sold millions. He raved about the Citroen C6 & it sold a few hundred.
Exactly this
Clarkson's review didn't stop people from buying the Vauxhall Vectra. I don't think it ever outsold the Ford Mondeo, but at one point, the Vectra was the fourth best selling car in the UK and it was always on the Top Five and Top Ten best selling car list in the UK throughout its lifespan. The Insignia, on the other hand, did manage to outsell the Mondeo. But by the time Vauxhall vanquished Ford, nobody cared about "Vauxhall vs Ford" anymore. People just wanted either a BMW 3-Series or a crossover. And now in 2024 they either have to have a Tesla or some electric Chinese if they want a car, because despite Brexit and all that "freedom" BS speech, the UK is still in Europe as far geography goes and as such, they still have to obey the coerced ZEV or BEV mandate of the EU. There is no actual demand for electric cars; the demand for electric cars is a coerced demand. _"Either you have an electric car or we're going tax the hell out of you if you continue to drive that diesel hatchback. Even if meets Euro 6 emissions standards. Then we're going ban you of driving your diesel hatchback, regardless what Euro Emission Standards it meets and you will have two choices: buy an electric car or no car at all"._
Never really paid attention to Clarkson reviews as I like to make my opinion based on me driving the car. It was so easy to get a test drive in any new car.
To be fair, if you were a fleet buyer in the 70s,80s and 90s Ford and Vauxhall were the go to manufacturer and in the 90s that meant Sierra vs Cavalier and later on Mondeo vs Vectra, IIRC Clarkson found the Vectra dull, well it's rival the Mondeo wasn't exactly exciting, in those days they were tools to get reps around the country reliably and economically, being exciting to look at wasn't in the remit, they just had to do a job, hence why both the Mondeo and the Vectra sold well, they did the job they were intended for.
Unfortunately, the phoenix four only helped themselves.
If God helps them who help themselves, then God must be giving the four phoenix scoundrels a very great deal of help.
Biggest bunch of con artists to ever set for in Birmingham. If BMW had sold to the Alchemy group, it would have stood half a chance.
Making shit cars killed Rover, nothing else.
Some of the most reliable cars I ever owned Rover SD1 V8 on LPG cheaper to run than Diesel Renault 21, maestro 1.3 170K miles never let me down...............
the most unreliable Renault 11 turbo always failing to start when hot , Fiat Strada rotted out in 18 months 🤔
Ford were building far worse cars from the 1950's until the Focus came out, but they survived?
ably assisted by cretinous Government politics.
100% agreed. The cars, mainly the ultimate production cars, were pure rubbish. Top Gear and the boys ruinned Rover cars? For God sake!
@@richardbryant7505 considering my car is 21 years and counting and still on the road with a no advisory s M.O.T. My Rover 75 isn't shit far from it!
The offhand comments and fair reviews by Top Gear are a result of Rover's past. BL having poor build quality, and favouring Jaguar over rover in the 70s and early 80s, BMW openly saying Rover will not survive, underfunding , not having an understanding of the issues within the company, and splitting MG and Rover from Land Rover and Mini (the money makers) in the late 90s, and the Phoenix Consortium committing various crimes to do with money in the 2000s are the reasons why Rover failed. None of Rover's owners/partners gave them the resources to develop a car properly.
No different to Holden in Australia. The last Australian Commodore was amazing but it was too late.
Mini continued to be made at Longbridge until the end of its life. A huge facility was built, designated Cab 2 to build the new "SuperMini" and the future looked secure, but BMW announced without warning that the new car would be built at Abingdon. Shortly after, again without warning, the 75, including part built cars and specialist track equipment, was moved, literally over a weekend, to Abingdon.
I think we knew then BMW was going to dispose of Longbridge. Morale was terrible, but then the Phoenix Four took over, after BMW officially signed the death warrant, and they were mobbed by ecstatic workers.
Unfortunately, quality declined as costs were cut......
Had they continued the association with Honda, perhaps things might have been different, but the arrangement with Tata produced a truly dreadful car. I remember we were horrified
TopGear didn’t kill Rover. The completely outclassed and outdated car range did that. Plus the Rover employees were wailing about us Brits not buying their cars, whereas the French buy French, Italians buy Italian etc. Rover was killed by a rubbish and undesirable model range. A car is a consumers second largest purchase after a house. If they’d stuck with Honda at least they’d have stood a better chance despite the dumpy Civic that led to the 400.
I'll have you know that us 'wailing' Rover employees poured our hearts, our souls, and every last drop of our passion into everything we did at Rover Group, the company we truly loved like it was family; because it was our family. We produced some of the finest cars the world has ever seen, with very limited resources, and at times under very difficult circumstances; but we never faltered. I am very proud of what we made, and those cars are still giving faithful & loyal service to their enthusiastic owners today. If you can't recognise that, then buy a soulless Tesla. I'm sure you'll be very happy with it.
Owned several rovers/mgs all were perfectly decent cars
I had a Morris Minor. Years later, I had MK2 Rover 400. Best car ever! Better than Ford!
@@matthewgodwin3050 im sorry to let you know but you really didnt build some of the finest cars.
@@sotirismp2883 Your opinion is noted. However, a great many people would disagree with you. Mini. Rover P4, P5, P6. Range Rover. Rover Turbine Car. Land Rover. Triumph Stag. Triumph Dolomite Sprint. Triumph Acclaim. Rover R8 Series. Rover R3 Series. Rover 800 & 800 Coupe. Rover 75. You saying these weren't fine cars?
some great points Tom,but Rover had pressed the self destruct button a long time before
Old independent Rover, the company that built the P4, P5, & P6, ceased to be when it was incorporated into British Leyland in the late 60s. The company we still know today as Rover is actually what was left of British Leyland. The cars were never actually Rovers at all really, just slightly reworked and rebadged Hondas. They were great cars, and I will always love them, but the sad fact is, they were always pretending to be something that they couldn't quite pull off. The last true Rover was the glorious P6. Which was quite a swan song really. A truly special car.
@matthewgodwin3050
I have some sympathy with that having had all three of those models & still have a couple of P6's & my P5B which l bought in 1985.
I would say though that though l didn't like it at the time, the SD1could have been a world-beater had the BL bean counters not got at it during development, or the problems with build quality hadn't beset the early cars. And l do now run an '02 75 which when l first got her, gave me the same feeling as my P5B & has been a 'sterling' daily car for the past nine years.
Bollocks.
Years of crap build quality and lacklustre styling made Rovers unfashionable. So much so that even having the BMW name behind them couldn’t counter it. Top Gears coverage of the 75 was actually very favourable but Rover had a reputation of building cars for old people. A reputation that the management seemed powerless to change. They failed to build on what successes they had and thus had no money to deliver the product development necessary to keep up with market.
Blaming Top gear for that is puerile and asinine.
@@mojosabien Bull shit , the Rover Tom Cat wasn't designed for old farts , considering Tiff on Top gear took it to Germany and drove it at 140 mph on the motorway. He said it was an excellent car to drive and gave it plenty of praise!. Paddy Kirk drove the Rover Vettesse round the Isle of Man at an average speed of 110 mph , he was impressed with the handling .The SD1 before that was a great race car with great results, so I don't think Rover made cars for old people. BMW knew what they wanted, and that was Mini, knowledge of the Land Rover, so they could build a 4 X4 and they wanted to hamper Rover by not letting them make the Rover 75 rear wheel drive from the beginning as they knew it would definitely have took sales away from the 3 series. The 75 with it's Rover 4.9 V8 would definitely have wiped the floor with the BMW 3 series!
@@davarosmith1334 one car. The metro, meastro, montego, the 600, 800, 25, 45, 75. Don't get me wrong not all of these cars are awful but none of them were fashionable.
@@mojosabienfrom that period bmw also built lots of crap as Audi aswell.
It wasn't three wide-boys that did for Rover, it was four scoundrels.
Very much this.
Top gear was very clear in it’s opinions , this applied to not only Rover but Vauxhall , Tesla , Dacia , Range Rover etc and yes it could be argued that the sheer popularity of the show did or didn’t help the brands featured but ultimately in cases like Rover , Tvr and others these companies killed themselves .
The British car industry never needed help to go down.
To blame Top Gear is a remarkable joke.
The top gear lads called a turd a turd rover had far worse problems than top gear … Bl started the downfall with mismanagement and trade disputes then the Honda platform sharing saved them for a while but then bmw ripped out landrover and the possible brand saving new mini leaving the skint shell of a brand then the city rover was the death rattle and by time longbridge was rased to the ground rover was over the end of final incarnation of British Leyland came to an end
Top Gear didn't kill Rover, BMW did.
BMW basically asset stripped the company, took away the new Mini for themselves which on its own could have saved Rover, stopped 100 production with no successor, stopped 600 production and replaced with the 75, which whilst on paper sounds fine, the 600 was never the car that was keeping Rover in the black.
Left Rover with aged MGF and 25/45 models, and let them keep the MG marque, whilst selling off or keeping for themselves every other marque.
Selling Land Rover, Jaguar, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Rover Group had nothing of any worth left.
What Rover needed was to retain the Mini, and a replacement for the 100/Metro, not the 75, because they had great success with small cars, and the success of Mini and the Metro replacement would have given them the funds to develop replacements for 25/45 cars.
I blame BMW for asset stripping Rover, but I also blame Rover for not realising the same thing as BMW did, selling off some of the luxury marques to raise capital for new models which could have seen them survive longer.
The writing however was on the wall, no matter if Rover survived or not, they would have eventually been swallowed up by something like Stellantis as the amount of cad manufacturers shrinks because of an uncertain future with EV etc.
Rover retaining the Mini could have been a game changer for them and BMW took it away from them.
As I have - and always will say - BL have an awful lot to answer for. And if a bunch of tits on a motoring show want to beat that company with a big stick well, their own management did that to them first.
BMW offered a gilt-edged chance to get back on track and, although the 75 was a good car, it was clearly 'retro' styled, shall we say, so only really appealing to an older clientele... who were only too aware of where Rover had come from. The very idea that someone in management thought that the marque could hark back to its previous successes like the P6 and not think of its failures, like the SD1 is eye-wateringly incompetent to me.
BL/Austin Rover/Rover's demise is not Top Gear's fault. They'd brought this all on themselves. All imho...
As an ex-Rover Group & MG Rover employee, and a life long enthusiast of Rover cars, I absolutely agree with you 100%. I will however say that Michael Edwardes did an incredible job putting BL, later Austin Rover on the right track. It's thanks to him that Rover survived into the 1990s. Sadly though, every successive manager/owner made increasingly large mistakes that ultimately led to thousands of brilliant and very talented people losing their jobs. It still hurts. But at least we still have the cars.
Rover made a big thing of their Britishness, history & heritage in the marketing of the new cars. It’s not really a surprise that young buyers saw Rover as a old fashioned company?
@@matthewgodwin3050 I was at Canley during an anniversary open-day (TR7 based?) in the early 90's and saw the leaps and bounds AR had made. After a successful 80's with the Maestro/Montego/Metro, the colab with Honda seemed like a really smart move. More than anything BL/AR needed reliability. Who cared if they were really Honda Ballades or Legends - they moved units. Not class leaders but in the running - still relevant. I loved the MG EX-E concept (that I'd always suspected Honda took for the NSX project as they are eerily similar) and 800 coupe (which is arguably my most favourite of the 'modern' Rovers). There was talent within those walls. It is really a crying shame what happened...
Your unions killed your auto industry greedy union and management.
Some of the most reliable cars I ever owned=
Rover SD1 V8 3.5 on LPG, cheaper to run than our diesel Renault 21 and whole lot more fun & reliable the V8 was awesome sound 🇬🇧 👍
Austin Maestro 1.3 170K miles never let me down 👍
The most unreliable cars I owned= Renault 11 turbo always failed to start when hot after motorway driving...
Fiat Strada rotted out in 18 months 🤔
The government
Maybe (just maybe) they tried to help. But the TopGear concept was based on sarcasm and stereotyping, and with an audience already suspicious and sceptic about English cars, any ironic joke was taken as evidence. I remember very well the comments about the Rover 75 interior looking like a British gentlemans club. A friend of me wanted a Rover at that time but I told him it looked old fashioned, based om the TopGear comments. But when I first saw it in real life (not many Rovers in Norway) it looked stunning, inside and out. And I wished I owned one…
You formed an opinion strong enough to express it to someone else about something you'd never seen based on a t.v. comment... that says a lot more about you than it does about top gear or rover.
Much as I disliked their format, I don't honestly think Austin-Rover's downfall is due to them. There was a lot of derisory talk about BL in those days (not all of it justified) and Top Gear just simply jumped on the bandwagon.
Phoenix was never going to work, for the reasons Clarkson set out in his Sunday Times piece. You can't run a mass-market car manufacturer on a shoestring. You just can't.
Hardly anyone seems to remember the Alchemy proposal, which would have seen MG continue as a low-volume manufacturer in the vein of Lotus or TVR - *under British ownership* - and was all-but concluded when the government stepped in to push Phoenix's case. The situation whereby BMW retained the Rover name and licenced it to MGR originated in that plan, the idea being to let Rover production continue until the cars came to the end of their natural lives (because Alchemy recognised the impossibility of replacing them), allowing for a gradual winding down of volume production at Longbridge rather than a sudden closure.
The pain didn't come from Rover's demise; the pain came from refusing to admit that it was dead.
I recall Alchemy very well. They did the research and realised they could not get a buyer or partner anywhere.
Rover committed seppuku without any help from outsiders. I remember in the late 1980s, Prince Charles bought a top of the line Rover car and went to pick it up himself. Not wanting to miss a trick, the Rover executives invited all the media they could and everybody turned out in force for the handover ceremony. Unfortunately for Rover, when Prince Charles drove his car away, it broke down less than a few miles from the showroom, and it had to be towed back to the showroom with some of the media still around. The whole incident blew up in the media and Prince Charles was not exactly pleased :)
It's why Top Gear could never work on ITV. If Clarkson had ridiculed the 1996 Vauxhall Vectra like he did on the BBC, they would have lost overnight millions in advertising. Rover in the latter years had little money for advertising so were always going to fail in comparisons by motoring journalists, whose salary was effectively paid by other car companies with big advertising spend.
Paid stooges
The Phoenix 4 killed off Rover yet the Chinese knew what an excellent car the Rover 75 V6 was & manufactured it as a Roewe 750 in China I love my 24 year old 75 regardless of Top Gear's snyde remarks - Already a classic in its own right & prices are on the increase They go like the P5s which now fetches £27 000 ! Never mind the Clarkson gang now is the time to buy Rover 75s ! Alex
Very easy to romanticise British Leyland cars - Rovers, Allegros, Montegos, SD1s, Mk1 800s. Try owning one in the eighties. Can see why you love Mk1 800s and 200 Coupes though, now they're such a rare sight, they're interesting in a way they never were thirty years ago.
I had the 160 VVC K-Series, I replaced the head gasket before it went, based on nothing more than media hype.
No is the answer, they were merely tapping into a pre-existing negative sentiment already held by much of the public towards a troubled company after decades of problems and bad press since the formation of BL. One cultivated by a sensationalist-hungry UK media which grew from being low-key and guarded (whilst constantly advising BL to sort problems) to increasingly openly confident in its criticism towards UK products in general and BL in particular (including successor companies), bordering at times towards outright oikophobia and celebrating the decline.
If Clarkson had his way, he'd have everyone driving Alfa Romeo's. Which, were and still are heaps of junk
No they’re not- and no, he would rather everyone drove vw golfs, like top gear magazine.
Considering he owner multiple Volvo's, I'm not so sure
@@damonrobus-clarke533 Come back bot, when you know what you're talking about
Top gear didnt kill them but helped a lot
I have always suspected that the Govt of the time and BMW conspired to finish off MG Rover for political and financial reasons. It was no surprise that when MG Rover went under the Phoenix Four came away with, shall we say, a good bung......
I was a producer on Men and Motors, which was a channel of many TV series. Not just a single weekly series. I was a fan of Rover too and would have challenged any presenter who gave an biased unbalanced criticism.
I worked with Richard Hammond a lot. I agree that the 75 had a retro twee interior that might not appeal to younger buyers, even though I liked it. It was a very well built car and if I remember right we said so.
I think some of Jeremy's comments didn't help but the real problems started earlier. The decisions you have highlighted. The failure to replace the Metro being the last nail for me.
Agree with you there.
The three things that killed Rover were:
Legacy
The British public simply do not base their opinions on cars on any logical assessment of current models. They base it on what their parent's generation tells them. Remember to repeat the mantra that modern VW models are ultra reliable because grandma owned a Beetle in the sixties that never broke down. Remember to repeat the mantra that all nineties Italian cars rust because uncle Eddy had a Lancia Beta in the early eighties that needed new sills. Rover suffered a lot from duff legacy models that their core market would never forget.
The K Series
Originally a small triple. Then stretched to be a small four. Then a medium four. Then all the way to 1.8 VVC. I actually worked with an ex rover engineer who told me the management were told, triple fine, 1.1 four fine, 1.4 getting close to the limits, 1.8 likely to cause problems, high output 1.8 really a stretch too far.
BMW
Creative accountancy. Make the internal price of minor parts expensive enough and some models can be made to look bad on paper. Rover actually made new models, Mini (BMW Mini), Range Rover (X5), R30 (1 Series) and had them all shipped over to Germany. Meanwhile Z-Axle parts for the 75 were very expensive. They were made to look bad so that BMW could get a generation of cars on the cheap.
I believe Top Gear has nothing to do with it. What more has, was British Leyland making the British car industry a joke altogether.
A later major problem was international pricing. The ZT was about £2000 more than the equivalent Audi A4, but was behind in terms of equipment, look and feel, performance and of course resale value.
Unions are responsible for the decline of the British manufacturing business
I do not mourn the loss of "Top Gear".
The problems started immediately after the war. German and Japanese manufacturers were building cars in new factories paid for by the Marshall aid plan as well as forging better working practices and industrial relations. Britain had a sprawling network of factories dating from the industrial revolution, outdated working practices such as piecework and a class system meaning that trade unionism caused too many issues during the crucial post-war era. British Leyland was only formed because BMH would've gone bust without the merger, and they were going bust because of poor practices and a failure to rationalise. The reason BMC produced the likes of the 1100 range with six different badges on was to keep dealership networks going - out of fear of the unions. By the time of BLMC you had a combination of bad management, overactive trade unionism, bean-counting and cars which were poorly designed and/or poorly built. By 1979 a tie-in with another manufacturer was needed to keep things afloat and whilst Honda were a good partner, they were ultimately relied on too much for development. BAe didn't care and BMW just wanted to eradicate the competition. It was a very slow, painful and inevitable death led by too many bad decisions and too much incompetence.
If they had made decent cars that were reliable, they would still be making cars. Let's assume top gear did kill rover then they did us a favour of they made a sub standard product.
I have to thank Top Gear for making me aware of BL. I eat up youtube videos about the British car industry and it's decline. It's fascinating.
The world has had the three musketeers….. the three Amigos…. And the three wankers!!!!
Which group is Clarkson, May & Hammond?????
Thank god The grand tour is finishing!!!
The three wankers are finally going!!!
Regards Ian 👨🎤🇳🇿👍🍸🍸
Top Gear didn’t kill Rover…..they were just the vultures and hyenas feasting on its (rotten) decaying carcass.
Aehm, my mechanic called my bro's SD-1 "un carcassone" (a big carcasse, heap of junk) in '92, in Italy, way before he saw any episode of top gear.
MG Rover didn't stand a chance. The brand Rover was associated with poor quality cars. The US market debacle with Sterling and its inability to become a quality volume maker in multiple segments meant that by the time Top Gear had influence the brand was doomed.
James May, Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson appear to be cocky self righteous individuals.
I owned a Rover 420 GSi Sport Turbo from new (back when BAE owned Rover) and it looked amazing in British Racing Green. It had wood, leather, chrome and a big spoiler on the back. ‘A mug’s eyeful’ as Lord Alan Sugar would say and perfect for the 1990s. Alas, the mechanical quality did not match the looks and it felt like the car spent more time off the road than on it during the time I owned it totally ruining the experience. The lack of quality and reliability is what killed Rover ultimately as this impacted sales and starved the company of much needed funds. There was one hope for Rover which was sadly missed and that was rather than selling to BMW, BAE should have sold Rover to Honda. Honda may have been successful but we will never know.
“I want something modern!” said James May, before dressing up like Biggles and flying off in his 1930’s Tiger Moth biplane 🙄
BLMC was a basket case from the early seventies on. Weird decisions like not making the Allegro a hatchback because it might steal sales from the Maxi, and too many models across multiple brands. It actually signed the death warrant for Leyland Australia at a time (1974) when a new Australian developed large car, the P76, had been introduced by them. Leyland Australia disappeared down the plughole of doom (the common nickname for the Leyland logo), and the Australian car market was left open for Japanese vehicles to fill the gap that was left with the demise of Leyland Australia. My late dad had owned an Austin A40 and a Morris 1100. I owned two Morris Mini 850s, a 1965 and a 1963. My youngest brother owned a 1974 Mini Clubman. After the death of Leyland Australia, none of us ever owned another Leyland vehicle. All those I mentioned were good cars. However, the company was poorly managed, and obviously it didn't get any better when sold off bit by bit to other larger companies. It actually saddens me to see the venerable MG name tag on a bunch of Chinese shitboxes.
If you remember the 1980's anything British was hailed as a 'World Beater' and was jingoistic nonsense in many cases.
I completely understand the Top Gear presenters trying to break away from that, but they went too far for laughs and the joke was so easy to re-use every time that it became as objectively incorrect as the previous fawning praise.
Yes the 'Top Gear Three' are guilty of making the brand 'un-cool'.
Car magazines of the day are as bad, BMW & Porsche winning every group test queered the pitch for every British car brand.
No, it wasn’t Top Gear; Rover cars were uninspiring at best!
Here in the US, we didn’t get Top Gear well into its run and by then, the failures of British Leyland/Austin Rover had them already dead here by then. Also, I would spend my summers in Italy as a kid in the 70’s and 80’s and I never saw Top Gear there either at the time. And the only BL products there were the ones sold by Innocenti. The first Maxi or Allegro was in 1980 when I visited London for the first time. These cars were hardly seen in general in Italy (and no, I never did see the barely sold Innocenti Regent in person).
The attitudes of the "Top Gear trio" were *foul.*
All three of them.
Sales would *ABSOLUTELY* have been better had their attitudes remained tasteful and sober.
James May in particular is guilty with regards to the 75 in his 1990s review of it.
At the time, I was *extremely* enthusiastic about that car, and was angry when he went and...did what he did.
A hatchet job. Nothing fairly critical about it being "old" (which I thought was pleasantly different in 1999 - cars at that time were becoming all "samey" - far less pronounced than today though).
It was very well styled, both inside and outside, and deserved praise for it.
Jason Barlow of Channel 4's "Driven" around that time, was much kinder about the car, and Quentin Wilson during the London Motorshow episode in (either 99 or 2000) was very positive about it (and the 25).
I'm very much a post-1991 Jeremy Clarkson persona disliker.
I felt that a lot of people - both back during his Top Gear days - and still to this day - are "influenced" by him.
Quite frankly, the man... scares me - has done ever since his personality change, and it was plainly apparent speaking to members of the public in the Top Gear studio about 20 years ago.
They had fear behind their smiles.
Can I just get that out of the way if nobody minds?? 😠
The cars themselves are perfectly good, *and* they reflect the character of the nation from which they are derived - reserved, respectable, classy - things that tourists of the *true* England like to see.
Jeremy and Co.s "bright idea" to be... awkward, turned away the very people that would've maintained momentum in the brand to this day.
Personally, I think there's a lot more which happened behind the scenes, and they were effectively instructed to diminish positives that the British used to be renowned for looking for - Top Gear, changed peoples' expectations to a higher level, and I've never seen that as a good thing.
Was perfectly happy before being *told* how to "assess" my potential purchases.
The 75 didn't gain good press on Australian media which at the time had no top gear influence. So it just wasn't that amazing, much like how the VF Commodore is a very nice car for the price vs 5 series etc. but it's not a twin cab ute in a market where Australia has gone from tradies being employed to self employed so they get nice tax write offs in buying utes, medium businesses do it too.
Yes Top Gear helped to kill Rover they always gave the cars bad reviews
not really, they gave mg rover cars good reviews a lot of the time, they just poked fun at them
Their 2007 BL road trip with the Rover SD1 Dolomite and Princess was probably one of the best episodes of Top Gear. But the piano on the Marina rolling joke was just churlish. The Marina really wasn't any worse than many of the cars of the 70s. 1970s Fords rusted as soon as rain fell on them and were not that reliable but Ford has always got a free pass. But what did Hammond choose to race in with his solo show. An MGB.
They didn’t destroy it but they did re-enforce the stereotype of them bein old man’s cars and naff to a large audience. They could have helped but old top gear (90s) tried and it didn’t help rover. Also, fifth gear quite liked the z cars
Topgear never killed Rover/MG, Upper management and the Government did all that by themselves along with the shoddy workmanship, Fact!! Even though the cars were great in concept and poor in execution. When BMW bought The Rover group I knew as a kid there was no way that BMW would stick by Rover, as Rover was a competitor and no way would the German company would invest in the compition, BMW got what they wanted, the mini, and Landrover/Rangerover,
Look at the new Mini that was designed and prototyped by the British ok with bmw money but look what they built a class leading car that at the time was sold above retail and a long waiting list, Alas the Rot set in when BMC bought all of the Rover, Austin, Jaguar, Morris, triumph back in the day
Rover killed themselves. Once manufacturers of good cars, quality control and product design slipped so badly, as their cars became un-sellable.
Clarksons Top Gear is blamed by lots in Luton for the loss of car production after his Vauxhall Vectra Review. Why did they mock cars for the masses, be diplomatic but don't rubbish everything at the expense of an entire industry.
I mean he’s not wrong the vectra was boring. Vauxhall died when they went from mk3 astras. Cavs etc to mk4 astras and the veccy B. Veccy c. Just lacklustre repmobiles
@@Binge420 I know the Veccy was considered boring but so am I 😁. I still had one after my Cavalier and it was a good car.
@@stephenjcuk7562 I had a veccy b gsi v6 estate was a fun car tbh but wasn’t standard. The vectra C was pure dogshite shite chassis the lot but I still prefer cavs senators Carlton’s etc
Clarkson didn't affect anything, he wasn't anywhere near as influential at that time.
The Vectra still sold well, but Clarkson wasn't wrong.
When you compare the Mondeo to the Sierra, it's a complete overhaul, everything is different.
Compare a Vectra to a Cavalier MK3, and where were the improvements?
Other than all Vectras have independent rear suspension (which only GSi/Turbo/4×4 models had), the Vectra in some cases was a step BACKWARD.
Compare the top of the range Vectra GSi to a Cavalier Turbo.
Cavalier Turbo had more power, 6 speed getrag gearbox instead of Vectras 5, 4WD instead of Vectras Traction Control, Leather Recaros instead of cloth Recaros in Vectra.
The Vectra needed to be more in all areas, and it also didn't help that every engine combination with the exception of the Vectra GSI v6 which had more power than a standard 2.5 v6, was available I'm the MK3 Cavalier first.
Mondeo had nothing In common with the Sierra at all, hence the difference being so stark.
The Vectra basically felt more like a facelifted Cavalier than a genuine new car.
@@Galahadfairlight it’s cos it was. Vectra A was a cavalier over here
Rover did not need the assistance of Top Gear to achieve its death as a company. There is a whole trail of mismanagement going back over 40 years culminating with BMW's disgraceful asset stripping exercise in the late 90s after which it had no chance of survival.
I gave up on Top Gear long before they resorted to physically destroying cars. I couldn’t watch and listen to the two narcissists continue getting off on the adulation of a not very thoughtful studio audience. To me the show became one long boring echo chamber for Clarkson and May. It was like they truly believed they were the fount of all knowledge worth knowing. Hideous pair, playing off one another like two bullies in school. Sometimes I wonder what was really going through Hammond’s head sitting there trying to find comments to support the direction of the show. Pathetic.
The British car industry was destroyed by lack of investment, poor management, poor industrial relations, idiotic government decisions, lack of patriotism, arrogance, many idiotic decisions, incompetent management, stupidity and bad press, if I left anything out then attribute these to that I couldn't care less.
You missed one major point they just made terrible cars that’s why they went out of business , even patriotic brits just gave up in the end on metro, maestro etc and bought proper cars like Corolla & Civic etc
Nah, it wasn't these three who killed Rover. Their issues came from much further back than that, with all the strikes and what-not. The biggest problem as I see it is the 1980s. A lot of car manufacturers were rolling out pretty poor cars, not just BL, but the attitudes of other countries were very different to ours. Fiat were pumping out horrible cars, but Italians bought them anyway. Same story with the French, who kept buying Renaults, Peugeots and Citroens. In this country, we were in the throes of Thatcherism and the "I'm all right, Jack" attitude, where we were all being bombarded with the idea that, to show we were getting ahead, we bought superior cars made in Germany - we were all being convinced that a VW Golf was better than anything made by the British marques, and that anyone who wanted to be anyone in the City would get a BMW or a Porsche 911. Couple that with the influx of the cheap tat being imported from the Eastern Bloc (Lada, Skoda etc.) which was providing no-frills motoring for way less than anything BL could manage meant that they had nowhere to go.
Without sales, the money dried up and left them with no pot of money to develop anything ground-breakingly new and, when they did manage to pull some funds together to make something better, they were hamstrung by poor decisions aimed at cost-cutting in key areas so they could spend on pointless nonsense. The Maestro could've been a lot better, but they threw money at a fancy electronic dashboard for the top models and did nothing to improve the A series engine in the lower spec models, save for a bit of rubber tubing acting as an "engine management system" which would perish over time and leave the car undriveable (as happened to me in Manchester).
But the biggest problem is that Rover were capable of making a great car and then spoiled it by trying to make it "traditional" in an era when that was precisely what people didn't want. People weren't buying cars for their wood effect dashboards any more, or the classic round headlights, boots and chrome noses. By sticking to the notion that Rover was still an upmarket brand, they shot themselves in the foot by ignoring what every other car maker was doing, and then charging a premium for it. And we weren't buying.
The Rover 75 was a really good car and should've been a big seller. But the insistence on harking back to the old design principles really wasn't the move they should've made. They didn't learn from the success of its predecessor, the 800. Compared to it's natural rival, the BMW, it was just too old fashioned and overpriced. Had they been a bit less fuelled by nostalgia, I reckon that car would've bought them a few more years, perhaps enough to get them into the black long enough to develop a proper replacement for the Metro instead of the hideous garbage they rushed in. And with a decent small car for people to buy, they'd probably still be here and in Longbridge today.
But all of that is nothing compared to what really killed them. Our media.
In France and Italy (and no doubt other countries) there was clearly some general nationalistic tub-thumping going on, where people from that country were encouraged to buy their own products irrespective of how bad they were. However, over here, we were basically pumped full of the notion that our product was garbage and we should buy German instead. So what we have now is Renault and Fiat doing very well for themselves, and our own companies are gone. Clarkson, Hammond and May played their part in this, but mostly after the horse had already bolted.
The French Government will do absolutely do everything to ensure their two car companies remain in business. Tony Blair could have gone to the EU to authorise state aid to keep Rover going or done exactly the same as the French Government do is ignore the EU and authorise state aid for Renault and/or PSA Groupe something they have done in 2008, 2013 and again in 2020. They also ignore EU procurement rules and openly favour cars and commercial vehicles manufactured by their two car makers which gives a steady stream of orders and some stability.
Tony Blair ? Maggie gave it away not him
@@greghayes5712 Tony Blair could have either petitioned the EU to allow state aid or just ignore the EU as the French Government have repeatably done to prop up their state and private industries. Tony Blair isn't to blame for the state Rover was in but he could have acted to save the business.
James May's first Top Gear appearance in 1999 was a review of the then-new Toyota Yaris; the Starlet was included in it as its predecessor. James May was previously a presenter on Driven (Channel 4) in 1998.
Men & Motors was a digital TV channel; the programmes on it that Richard Hammond was a presenter on from 1998 to 2002 were called Motor Week, Car File and others.
British-badge-snobbery didn't help MG Rover sales either, most people would rather finance something german to 'keep up with the jones's'...
Maybe BMC selling the Mini for a loss and not designing any new models is the reason we have no car industry.
I remember Jeremy Clarkson raving about the 75 at the Motorshow launch & referring to it as a baby Bentley
Firstly thank you Tom for another splendid production. I don't think the TG3 were responsible for Rover's collapse, the poisonous roots crept from the 70's with poor build quality and an ebb and flow of strikes. The dealers were complacent and cynical probably due to the siege of warranty claims and disgruntled customers one of which was me. How could a dealer expect a customer to take delivery of a new MGB GT with a bare metal scratch on the side. That's what I faced. On the negative side BL produced cars which were unappealing and boring on the positive side I grew up with P6 (still my favourite) P5 and SD1. The sad thing is the SD1 is a great car too but tarnished by BL quality. Now to the 75, I had a 1.8Turbo and still regret seeing it. Yes they were a bit of a gentlemans club inside but as was the XJ. I think the MG models were fantastic but never owned one. As to the City Rover well the nails were already being hammered in the coffin. In conclusion, I believe an arrangement with Honda would have been better.
The british press did nothing to support its national product: unlike the italian press, the french press and the german press. At the time, the Swedes just made damn good cars which sold themselves to a point. Even the Swedes ended up having to sell out due to lack of promotion by their own. Odd as it seems, one of the most enduring remnants of the british car industry is the Rootes group(Peugot) who took them over, developed the shit out of them and sold them as French so as to avoid the bad press.
Poor product planning killed MG Rover. Not replacing models in good time. Competing models, and cars that should have been hatchbacks, but weren't.
I think the question is a little out there.
These three aren't quite the cultural touch stone we may imagine. Not all car customers are motoring enthusiasts.
This rather reminds me of the railway enthusiast community saying "oh EVERYONE was sad when british rail scrapped the steam locos" when... no... because not everyone in an enthusiasts and a huge number of people were really happy to have them gone and be moving forward to new trains.
The death of Rover probably has a lot more to do with choices made with regards to their cars being used in large fleet functions such as policing and ability to offer a good product and service than 3 people on tv talking about them to an audience that frankly had a huge number of kids and teens watching who, last I checked, wont be buying new cars, mostly to parents who are enthusiasts or already have a car and again, wont likely be buying a car or a new car.
The top gear killing rover idea is a bit silly.
It's something I needed to respond to, I see it all over my comments so I thought about presenting the facts and then my opinion to see what everyone thinks
@@tomdrives have seen it elsewhere a little bit as well but good call on covering it.
A job well done.
I don't know if Top Gear has the same amount of pull that the American motoring press does, but over here, calling out the Toyota Camry for being dull for years on end didn't stop it from being among the best sellers in the U.S. American car buyers often buy independent of what our car magazines say.
The rover 75 is the one and only later model that stood out as a beautiful unique looking car, even today it looks the biz and will certainly be a modern classic!
Fantastic video Tom. Bit of personal analysis. I seem to remember Top Gear doing a segment in the news looking ahead to the launch of the City Rover. With Clarkson saying something along the lines of.. “why can’t we do it” (make a decent car) I think they were longing for Rover to have a renaissance but perhaps knew at some point or other they weren’t surviving. Finally, on James May’s differing opinions on the 75 when the two clips are compared together, I think that May liked the Rover 75 all along but back in 1999 he was trying to act a more modern motorist than he actually was to impress the producers of the show. After all he had replaced Clarkson and needed to get some backing. Whereas in new top gear he had the freedom to be a bit more eccentric
Thanks Matt, appreciate it and your comment some interesting points
First the death of Rover was DECADES in the making- long before Clarkson was on the air. Second the Rovers, despite them being aspirational luxury vehicles that had good features, looked like the average Camry or Accord.
Nothing to do with Top Gear, everything to do with poor management, poor decision making, poor quality, underspending and overspending (in some areas), too much rebranding, too many sell offs, too many company name changes, and too much union involvement and disruption.
Top Gear had little or nothing to do with the death of Rover. The rot set in in 1968 when BMH was forced to merge with Leyland (coach and truck makers) with the latter basically taking full control over the car division. Within BLMC you had several different car marques with some trying to sell to the same customers (Triumph v Rover in the 2-litre class; Triumph TR/Spitfire/GT6 v MG v Austin Healey for sportscars; Austin v Morris & etc) with rivalries playing a prominent part in which marques got funding for developing new models. Badge engineering created a whole world of confusion. What were you driving? Austin? Morris? Riley? Wolseley? MG? Some cars came out with the full range of marque identities with only differences in trim to show which one you had.
Add to that crippling import duties which made buying foreign cars ridiculously expensive resulting in British cars being 'protected' from foreign cars that were often better designed, better built and more satisfying to drive. When import duties were drastically reduced, we were finally able to sample what the rest of the world was driving, and thus began the Japanese takeover from companies like Datsun (as was) and Toyota. Also, militant trade union leaders who would bring everyone out on strike if someone from management even farted nearby meant that millions of pound of revenue was lost, money that could have been put to good use creating cars the customer would love to drive instead of just 'making do with'.
Bad management decisions, lack of funding, mediocre cars (for the most part), lack of quality control and a general apathy amongst the workers played a huge part in the downfall of BL and later incarnations. Even the last cars before the final demise of Rover, although good looking, were nowhere near as good as the competition. When you look at prototypes and what could have been made compared to what came out of the factory, BLMC & etc could have produced some fantastic cars but the money was not there, and neither was the willingness for management to take the plunge, instead relying on boring 'safe' cars that could be made cheaply (Morris Marina, basically a Morris Minor in a new dress).
Did Top Gear kill Rover? No, Rover (and its earlier iterations) killed Rover.
I always thought one of the worst decisions was deciding to go with the Rover brand. Apparently it was after some market research that indicated it was a trusted name, but it ignored the fact that it was so associated with the past and appealed to mostly older customers. No young person was going to buy a Rover, no matter how good it was.
@@nigeltant l bought my first P6 when l was twenty. It sold extremely well to the younger executive types, so much so that Rover couldn't keep up with demand in the early days.
More like Leyland and its management and to be honest an overall British attitude to customer service altogether of….you can either like it or lump it!
The rot was already well and truly in long before Clarkson and co came along, throughout the seventies and eighties things went from bad to worse with terrible quality issues and the depreciation factor of anything with a Rover badge on it told anyone that something was seriously wrong, after that it was all too little too late and bad case of trying to put lipstick on a pig!
A sad culmination of arrogance and complacency and hanging onto past glory’s! Which perfectly describes not just British car manufacturing, but in fact the country itself!
Top gear didn't kill rover, the start of its demise happened when the rover company sold out to Leyland.
I don't think that "Top Gear" killed Rover. I don't think they had that level of influence. The programme was popular but I also think we can think for ourselves.
Those guys weren't responsible for it, but we're at least complicit for its downfall.
I really liked the 75 and still do. My Dad had a top of the range connoisseur SE with basically everything Rover could throw at it and it still stands out 20 years later as an amazing car. If they had updated the tech and gave it a more modern look the 75 would have been a roaring success. Thing is though, the car has aged gracefully unlike the S Type and was misunderstood by the public in its day.
As a citizen of a former british colonial country. I find poetic justification that britain could not even control their own countries industrial.climate but thought they could control other countries.
The egg is on your face.
Blaming top gear is a pathetic gesture....they were not in charge of your work force.
Nobody blamed top gear in this video
I don’t think Clarkson necessarily killed Rover, but he didn’t help; over several years, weak BL management, the Union Barons, Political ineptitude, BMW and to some extent Clarkson killed Rover.
I lived in England,in the 60's-70s-apart from never-ending Union troubles,--their cars,-because of the weather,-salt on the roads,-seemed to "Dissolve"-into a brown,rusty soupy-"blanc-mange"--ending in a Vomit like secretion,-on the Garage floor !!-those Bombs were inflicted,(no matter what brand)-on an ''unsuspecting"-British-Public !!--(James May--"Trabant-World-2021)
Top Gear didn't kill Rover, they managed that all on their own. It might have been different if Honda had taken them instead of BMW.
The union killed British Leyland,then there was the build quality.
I thought the Rover 75 was a beautifully designed modern executive car. It was certainly not a retro design of a historic model.
Arrogance and greed killed Rover
Summed up in that indian rubbish the city rover and charging british people top dollar
I owned a 75 Connoseur from 2017 to 2023 and all I can say is this :
The Topgear Trio didn't have to play down Rover .........their own K- series 1.8 did the job perfectly !
Imagine if that otherwise great 75 would have had a Honda 1.8 engine.......it would have been still around .
Nobody thinks that TopGear’s trio killed off BL /Rover. BL was a textbook case study of poor management and investment used when I did an OU degree in the 1980s
Check my comments on all my videos
It was painfully obvious the only brand Clarkson really had any time for was Ford. I never really did get it. Anything Ford did was good, no matter what. He just gave Ford a pass.
100% was it NOT Top Gear, who killed Rover.
The entire British Carindustry killed hisself. 🤷
No, The government killed Rover when it sold it to BMW instead of its partner at the time, Honda. BMW just wanted to pick the Crown Jewels ( Mini and Range/Land-Rover) and dump the rest.
I find it amusing that in the upcoming finale special, they're using a Rover (an SD1 to be exact) as they're comedy backup car
Top Gear didn't kill rover.
German cars were a better option for the price.
The French made solid cars until around 2005.
Ford and Vauxhall were also offering very competitive pricing.
Top Gear didn't help,
Writing from Sweden a small market with fierce competition that can serve as a good example. British car brands started to fall off here in the fifties because they couldn't keep on par with the compitition. The same happened to the italians in the sixties and the French in the seventies. Today we have the Germans, Japanese, Americans (Tesla), and Chinese (Volvo and others). The Germans will be the next to go followed by the Japanese. They just can't keep up with the competition any more. It's allready reflected in the views of car guys and just staring to show in salesfigures.
I think the 75 is the most beautiful car ever created, inside and out. Thanks for another great video, cheers from Swweden :)
I disagree I have a volvo s60 the first one, I think they look beutifull I love it's great white shark look at the front and the subtle 240 lines and don't get me started on the seats and lovely 5 pot engine. The 75 was a great looking car but was ruined by that awful face-lift
@@chucky2316the P2 Volvo s60 you mean. Just bought one. One of the last run. Gorgeous looking car. Had the e39 5 series before that. Beautiful car but it was time for a change.
If we're talking about good looking cars , how about the Chrysler LHS / New Yorker ('93-'97) ?
They constantly hammered MG/Rover. If you didn't like them, just ignore them.
Haha imagine making the same car for over 10 years and then questioning someone who said the interiors were dated haha. I had a ZR facelift and it was barely any different to my dad’s 220 Tdi from the mid to late 90s. I had a 96 420 GSI too on a P reg, then later inherited dads ZS Tdi in 2011 and it was basically the same car 😂
Rover killed rover, years of poor build quality, no new models for what over a decade? Shody interiors. Blaming top gear is like blaming a reviewer having to give endless reviews for a company pumping out sub par products. Remember the old adage don't shoot the messenger.