When I was learning to drive I had my eye on a Maestro at a garage by where my aunt lived. She promised to buy it for me and I was thrilled! This was the mid 90's so these cars were still popular... ish! Anyway, my neighbour was into cars so she came along with us to check it out. Glad she did too, the thing was knackered, mayonnaise city, rusty in all of the wrong places, basically a deathtrap. Obviously my aunt did not buy it for me! I ended up getting a MKII Polo saloon instead, which I bought myself. I've only had Polo's since. Just find it funny you mentioned Polo's here! In 2009 the gearbox failed on the MKIII I'd bought off an ex who was also a massive Polo fan. My aunt said, "I once promised to buy you a car, I'll keep that promise now, get yourself a new car, I'll pay for it". I bought a '99 Polo and I still have that car! My aunt sadly died in 2016, I wish I could tell her that the car she bought me is going strong and keeping me safe. 😢
I drive a British Leyland car every day. New Zealand assembled Triumph 2500mk2, it is the greatest form of personal transport. Love you're videos, keep it it up!
Great series Tom, visited the British Car Museum at Gaydon today, saw the RDX60, great work in saving it Tom. Your knowledge and energy are to be commended.
There seems to be a recurring scenario throughout the years of Leyland Austin Rover. "Years ahead of the competition" But, we are not going to build it
I was born in 1975 and loved cars as a kid. Every new British car was exciting. I remember the launch of the Metro, Meastro, Montego, Rover 800, 200 etc. I had no idea then that the organisation was on borrowed time. It was only for political reasons they were allowed to continue beyond bankruptcy in 1974. Still many lost opportunities and poor governance beyond then but all such a shame.
there was an AR16 rifle, it was junk. AR is just an abbreviation for armalite a company founded by eugene stoner. i have owned ar7,ar15 and ar10 before jacinda ardern went all u.n and banned everything.
Always the accountants who cause problems. Accountants keeping themselves safe whilst other folk are thrown to the lions. The AR6 might have saved Austin Rover, a very attractive car. Great upload Tom.
Great video thanks. My father worked for Rover cars and the link between Honda and Rover should have been strengthened. Rover would still be around now as both companies worked as a team. Unfortunately the latter management team ruined Rover by taking money from the company, not investing. BMW destroyed Rover. All they wanted was the Mini as they knew it was a good seller and also wanted the 4 wheel drive system from the land river as their technological ability was then not as good. A sad period when Rover was destroyed by all sorts of issues. Government didn't help and really didn't care, still don't!!!!! Keep up the great videos!!!
It’s sad that Rover ended the way it did when they had the potential and know how to go on and make innovative cars the world had never seen.cheers Tom 👍
The 80s Metros Maestros Montegos had terrible build quality. Corrosion electrics interiors that dropped to bits.I know I owned numerous second hand. They always had good designers let down by the finished product.
I'm not sure about that. BMC cars of the sixties were notoriously unreliable and people loved them. If the car has enough personality people can forgive it a surprising amount but too much of BL's output was either ugly at first or characterless later.
@@user-s1o3nr532 pretty much everything was troublesome in the 50s and 60s, everyone else got better and better to keep up with the reliable Japanese cars.
Aluminium was an idea too many, but this shouldn't have been canceled. The planning is astounding! They needed 2 bodyshells, each of which can be built in 2 wheelbases, giving a Metro/Maestro and a 600/800. It isn't actually hard to do, they just refused or couldn't due to colossal indecisiveness.
Another great video Tom. Yet another tail of missed opportunity through continuous cut backs. By the time the.100 failed the Euro NCAP the R3 was out and perhaps would have made a good Metro successor rather than a replacement for the R8 200.
I had a B reg Maestro 1.3L from new. Never had any problems with it at all. Serviced every year until I sold it in 1995 with just over 38,000 trouble free miles on the clock. Only sold it as I bought a Rover 827SLi. No troubles with that either!
Rover was so innovate and did many firsts, they should have been the world leader in style and innovation, the k series engine was amazing for the time, many of their cancelled cars looked futuristic and stylish.
British engineering ingenuity and invention was never in question. It was just a shame it was ruined by management politics, unions and poor execution 🙄
Imagine Leyland as a British Volkswagen beater! A lot of fun to be had considering what a contemporary Triumph, Rover (and maybe even a Wolseley!) would be like. Great video, many thanks!
I am glad the Triumph name died, if it existed today it would be a Ching Chong electric SUV. Look at *MG* sad state of affairs. Love my BL cars, vastly underrated, and far better, technically, than comparative Fords
Yep, Volkswagen are great at building two or three chassis and two or three engines but you can buy them as Volkswagens, Seats, Audis and Skodas. All that money saved in engineering and development, just different styling and badges. You could buy a sporty Skoda five door estate car that was essentially an Audi TT underneath. But BL either went one way or the other. Early badge engineered Mini's etc were just the same car with a different badge, fooling no one. Or they'd have rivals like the Allegro, Maxi, Dolomite and Marina being totally different and costing far more because they all had different chassis, engines etc. Triumph building their own V8 for the Stag when Rover had a great V8 they could have used, and one that would be used by many sports car makers like TVR, not only wasted all that money developing it but killed the Stag because it was unreliable. The BL management should have put their foot down and told all their brands to cooperate and share one chassis and engine.
A massive missed opportunity. I always find it tragic that BL/Austin Rover had some fantastic forwards thinking designers and engineers who's ideas were hampered by mismanagement and constant financial difficulties.
Another good one Tom, The AR6, You can see the DNA of the Montego and Maestro in it and would have suited the 80's to a tee, With a few adjustments. The R6X looks like another opportunity lost (A recurring theme) That looked ready to go as it was and I think a good success story. In the end what did Rover do? They tried to sell to the UK that awful City Rover, The car that was from India and put together here, A truly awful car and showed that the money was just not there anymore. Look at Ford in the early 80's, They took a huge risk with ending the Cortina and replaced it with the Sierra, Their prototype called The Probe looked so weird at the time and Ford really got some stick but after refining it for the market ended up with a huge success.
I had a MK1 Metro. It worked but I soon went over to a Nissan. We have a Nissan TINO now 19 years old. Slight problem with the dash board but starts every time and can go in ULEZ. Had a 69 MGB GT which got sold with the First Wife. David and Lily.
Agree the ar6 was the last chance really. It is also worth mentioning that it was quite a bit bigger than the polo and micra at the time and this would have increased the appeal. The glass area and the rear styling was particularly good. It is hard to see on the prototype in gayden but this would have been a pretty car and is the same size as the current superminis.
Also Harold Musgrove admitted in hindsight that he should have pushed for a high-style Mini version (maybe retro-styled a la Nissan Be1/Pao), allowing for the usage of the 3-cylinder K-Series engine as well as to further enhance the AR6 platform and share costs. They could have also repositioned R6X as a city car and give use for the KV3 engine with it as well as the Mini.
Back in 1980 applied for a job at Cowley, caght the train down there from North wales, and got a taxi to the factory, on arival they where on strike nobody there, all office staff who where not on strike used to go home at lunch time, not a great start. Got offered the job, as well as a relocation package and somewhere to live could be arranged, sadly i turned the job down. Was going to be working on the 4 door Metro and a Maestro car, Roll on 10 years, first car i bought a Morris Ital, followed by 3 more, then 2 Maestro vans, wanted a Montego, but couldnt afford one at the time, them saved enough to buy a used Rover 75, due to go for a test drive a a few days later sadly BL was made bankrupt the next day, never did get one. One f my old customers now has a Rover 75, a lovely thing well looked after by him im so jealous.
By the late 90s the Metro was still selling in solid numbers to two main groups, elderly drivers who always went to the same Rover dealer and purchased more of the same and affluent families who wanted a small car for the Nanny to drive the children around in. The rest of the market had already been snapped up by the competitors with stylish cars like the Fiat Punto and the Renault Clio. The EURO NCAP results blew that remaining market out of the water as older drivers and families were spooked by the poor result. The consumer credit boom also also led to a change in car buying patterns as people started to by their cars new rather than second hand allowing them to be more picky. The frumpy old Rover 100 (Metro) was long over due a replacement.
My stepdad had a Austin Metro, it was only a few years old it went for its 2nd MOT and came back with a massive list of issues The floor was rusted out, the fuel tank was needing replaced. Never touched another one of their cars ever again.
The AR6 has so much of the later very successful Rover / Honda 200 about it... so it wasn't completely wasted. But it should have been a Metro replacement to compete with the still conventional Ford Fiesta. The problem was that a lot of the buying public still really liked the Mk2 Metros right through to the Rover Metro's introduction and beyond, and they were still selling ancient Minis for god's sake !
yet another fine idea and great looking car lost by BL/AR/etc. the AR6 could have been our 80s Daihatsu Charade, a car whos' advert I still remember well "100mph and 100mpg" (the petrol version got the speed, the diesel got the mpg). the more I learn about BL/AR the more I realise how they wasted a fortune in money and talent will very little to show for it.
Another missed opportunity, though the way the car market is today with competition from Asia and shift to electric if feels like it would be hard to survive today also. I worked at Longbridge in summer of '96 as part of the Rover Group grad scheme, was placed in the new west works that had been built for the Metro, so much optimism at the time with the BMW takeover. Also took my driving lessons in the then newish Rover Metro in '92, chose BSM for this reason as car mags said a better drive then Fiesta and Nova.
The build quality was the real killer, in the mid nineties I had a montego estate as a hire car, 1,100 miles on the clock and the fuel gauge didn't work but worst was wide spread rust inside the boot. The don't care attitude was the end
A Ford transit van full of us college students set off from StAustel to Longbridge it was 1984, and I remember two men folding metal tabs on metro bodies before the 300 million pound robot bay would jig and spot weald, walking around Longbridge robots would transport things between huge mechanised machines, I stepped out imfront of one and it automatically stopped, we also visited the austin mini assembly plant wher a rolling road would test the car before leaving, it is a shame that the metro was not developed as being a micro car it would have slowed global warming in its efficiency.
The actual AR6 prototype at BMH museum used a shortened Maestro platform with a length of 139.7 inches as well as a 1.6-litre S-Series, which suggests the Maestro/Montego platform could underpin a newer larger supermini as a supplement to the Metro rather than an outright replacement (as Peugeot 205 was to 104 with latter sold alongside former for another 5 years).
I seriously doubt that mpg claim, especially without a hybrid system. However, this car might've been successful regardless. Austin and Rover had so many shots at survival... it's a shame most weren't taken advantage of.
The first 3-cylinder BL car I came across was an Allegro driven by a chap I knew who worked in engine development. "They've just chopped a cylinder off the end. It's not bad. I had it up to 95 down the hill from Halesowen." Presumably the weight reduction resulted in an increase in top speed.😀
A reply to David Dunmore, I was there and I worked in Product Planning. Harold Musgrove fought hard and eventually resigned in 1986 when AR6 was cancelled. The company made no meaningful profits and Mrs Thatcher personally intervened not to help fund AR6, she wanted the K series engine cancelled too. Possibly if the money spent on the K series had gone into AR6 that was another solution but all future ARG products would then need Honda engines. It was very little to do with poor Management, perhaps you David could have done better? Thought not. VW are bankrupt now perhaps you can sort them out!
Many years ago I once described the team i worked in as herding engineers into the sheep pen of fiscal reality. The truth was that almost every car company had brilliant ideas - and models that would have been amazing - but at a cost that would have moved them away from then consumer spending. Our job was to do the numbers, how many you could sell against investment costs. Yes it was sad to see a project get killed but ultimately car companies are there to make money not be a centre of excellence for cars that then can’t recoup investment. I sometimes see projects I remember that are described as the world beater that never was - perhaps their planners got it wrong and they really were, but I suspect most of the time the actual economics just didn’t add up.
AR6 looked very promising. A missed opportunity? Missed opportunities is the story of the British car industry? Thanks for another interesting video 👍.
There was a 4×4 Metro in a similar layout to the Mini Moke which didn't make production nor did the 4×4 Montego. Missed opportunities. Both Honda and VW put in bids to buy the Rover Group.
Let's be honest. The Metro was based on the mini with the old motor and the awkward steering angle. I still remember the comments in review with disappoinment on the technological avances wrt the mini. The AR6 was goodlooking. Too bad that Honda was changed for BMW. Just imagine the sleek AR6 with Honda underpinnings
Yep, Honda really felt betrayed when that happened. The Metro also suffered because it had the Minis old four speed gearbox at a time many rivals had five speed.
The original merger from Austin and Morris etc to BMC started the rot. They were all competing in the same market. Using brand names to denote trim levels was madness.
The AR6 really did look good - and if t was built from Aluminium and had a good engine, it should have been a gamechanger. But this is BL/AR/Rover we are talking about - development probably would have been botched, and it would have been built badly. And anyway, the management were always useless. They really had some sh!t management - Stokes, Edwardes, and BAe served the company very badly, effectively destroying it by selling it to BMW. And even after then, the mob that revived it a while later were clueless, and little better than crooks.
Was a lovely little super modern car.. I was shocked when I seen on news Even in Australia in early 90s that BMW bought the Rover Group I always thought honda yes, did offer lesser bid to buy out Rover Group but would of been a much better fit for Rover combining both their various skills as Auto manufacturers.
This car looks like a Yugo Sana, a short lived hatchback when production had to finish in 1993 when the car factory was destroyed in the Yugoslavian war.
It's hard to believe that the nation responsible for the largest and most powerful empire in the history of mankind had such a clusterfuck and disastrous car industry.
Why is it that a common British industrial theme throughout history is Lack Of Investment? What makes the British industry leaders penny pinchers when our European and Oriental neighbours seem to be able to find the funds to invest and then conquer the world with their products?
Again, so much potential - but so mishandled. I still think the poor quality of BL, et-al, really did the company in. American cars of the “malaise “ era weren’t much better, but they learned, and quality improved . Thus , they survived. As for those “Unions “, the top people were out to destroy the industry, and sadly, the workers ultimately shot themselves in both feet [ and both arms]. 😢
BL/Rover produced absolute overpriced dross. My first motor when I passed my test in 1987 was a 1983 Y reg Metro 1.0 HLE with 40k on the clock bought for about £1200 from an auction. It spent more time getting repaired than it did on the road including 4 failed MOTs (a massive expense on all of them due to the long list of work needed) during the time I owned it, I have quite a few friends who also had BL/Rovers at the same time who also had major issues, in hindsight I would have paid a bit more for a VW or even a Ford or Vauxhall. In total contrast I eventually replaced it in 1992 with a 1988 F reg Nissan Sunny for about £3.5k with about 48k on the clock, in the 4 years I owned that it passed every MOT first time and only visited the garage for consumables like brakes, tyres and servicing, it still had the original clutch at 100k miles and never missed a beat all year round summer and winter. I would have kept it for longer but it was written off in a collision.
That AR6 could’ve been a success, as would the R6x metro - 2 cars that would look ahead of the time to begin with and be able to last a good long time in production with minor updates as opposed to cars that looked just out of date at the start and gradually got more and more ludicrous as a buying proposition as they hung around years too long.
The British cars my family owned thru the decades: from the 50's to the 90's Austin Westminster A110 6 cilinder (from the 50's Austin Cambridge A60 '65 Rover SD1 2600 '81 Rover SD1 3500 vandenplass '83 Rover 216 convirtible '93 Rover 216 GSI '89 Rover 414 Si '90 Rover 416 GSI '90 Rover 620 SLI '95 Rover 216 SE 80's Austin Mini 1000 Mayfair '86 Austin Mini 1000 early 80's Austin Mini Jubilee '75 Rover 100 '90s Austin Metro '90's Austin Mini special 1100 'late 70's Bedford CF350 2.1 diesel, dont know i guess from late 70's or early 80's Austin Morris Marina Van '75
Would I be right I thinking that the Metro was the most facelifted car of all time? By my count it had at least 5 facelifts, and 5 name changes - MiniMetro, Austin Metro, Metro (no branding), Rover Metro, Rover 100.
Leyland cars, by any name had a terrible reputation. It is sad to see a once great u industry gone down the tubes. The Metro, Maestro & Montego had huge reliability issues.
These prototypes are fascinating but we all need to remember that BL/Austin Rover screwed up every 'game changer' they ever released and would have done the same with any of these prototypes.
The manufacturing technique used on the Metro, Maestro and Montego was fundamentally flawed. They used a separate welded steel pressing for the A pillars one either side of the windscreen. This led to chassis flex as witnessed by common A pillar rust top and bottom. And worse, the A pillars just snapped off in collisions and crash tests. The answer was to adopt the complete side on pressings like Hondas. The AR models shown in this video all look to have thin A pillars suggestive of the separate welded pillar design. I hope not ?
I have never understood why British Leyland didn't produce under license the '74 italian Innocenti Mini designed by Marcello Gandini. In my opinion It would have been a better option than putting the Metro into production.
A proud owner of one of those AL YOU MIN E UM(For Americans benefit 😂) Jag x350 I must be lucky cos it's a pomme car that has been extremely reliable in its 5 years with me and so far way under budget! They're not all like that but the interesting thing is, this girl has been well looked after all of her 21 years, sorry I'm digressing from AR6 You shouldn't have mentioned Aluminium Audi and Jag Sorry! 😂😂
Great video, very informative and interesting. I’ve never heard of this car. Or the 100 mpg engine. But. Horrible looking car. Reminiscent of early protons.
I only became a rover fan by accident, most of my car ownership has come out of longbridge, lots of minis and metros then I bought a rover 216 cabriolet off Ebay for 300pounds I still have the car 10 years later and 5 years ago I bought a rover 214 sli registered a month earlier than my cabby, 32 year old motoring is better than buying an electric car
This car should have been built and would have been the platform for the new Mini in 2000. The spinoffs would have been incredible. Rover 110, MG midget, Rover Mini and the new Austin Metro. I can't watch these videos anymore!!!
The phrase 'Tories know the cost of everything and the value of nothing' could apply to British industry, energy, motor manufacturing, housing, public transport and utilities in terms of missed opportunities by the ideological obsession with unrestrained privatisation and free market economics.
When I was learning to drive I had my eye on a Maestro at a garage by where my aunt lived. She promised to buy it for me and I was thrilled! This was the mid 90's so these cars were still popular... ish! Anyway, my neighbour was into cars so she came along with us to check it out. Glad she did too, the thing was knackered, mayonnaise city, rusty in all of the wrong places, basically a deathtrap. Obviously my aunt did not buy it for me! I ended up getting a MKII Polo saloon instead, which I bought myself. I've only had Polo's since. Just find it funny you mentioned Polo's here!
In 2009 the gearbox failed on the MKIII I'd bought off an ex who was also a massive Polo fan. My aunt said, "I once promised to buy you a car, I'll keep that promise now, get yourself a new car, I'll pay for it". I bought a '99 Polo and I still have that car! My aunt sadly died in 2016, I wish I could tell her that the car she bought me is going strong and keeping me safe. 😢
What an amazing generous aunt!
I drive a British Leyland car every day. New Zealand assembled Triumph 2500mk2, it is the greatest form of personal transport. Love you're videos, keep it it up!
That car was not typical of BL or what BL car were to become. You have a nice car there :-)
Is it me, or do the prototypes look like Citroen models?
Much like a Citroën ZX
It’s funny, when I saw the thumbnail of this video, the first thing that came into my head was Citroen.
Great series Tom, visited the British Car Museum at Gaydon today, saw the RDX60, great work in saving it Tom. Your knowledge and energy are to be commended.
There seems to be a recurring scenario throughout the years of Leyland Austin Rover.
"Years ahead of the competition"
But, we are not going to build it
and if its get build, its a disaster!
but only for BL and a great asset for all none British car builders, giving them an example what not to do!
I was born in 1975 and loved cars as a kid. Every new British car was exciting. I remember the launch of the Metro, Meastro, Montego, Rover 800, 200 etc. I had no idea then that the organisation was on borrowed time. It was only for political reasons they were allowed to continue beyond bankruptcy in 1974. Still many lost opportunities and poor governance beyond then but all such a shame.
A car named AR16 would have been a home run over the pond
I thought that too
there was an AR16 rifle, it was junk. AR is just an abbreviation for armalite a company founded by eugene stoner.
i have owned ar7,ar15 and ar10 before jacinda ardern went all u.n and banned everything.
Like the look of the AR 6 i t looks up to date even now.
Ahh What if??? the tag line for most things in Britain im affraid:)
Ahh, what if we could just get up of our arse and do something? Maybe even something right?
Always the accountants who cause problems. Accountants keeping themselves safe whilst other folk are thrown to the lions. The AR6 might have saved Austin Rover, a very attractive car. Great upload Tom.
Great video thanks. My father worked for Rover cars and the link between Honda and Rover should have been strengthened. Rover would still be around now as both companies worked as a team. Unfortunately the latter management team ruined Rover by taking money from the company, not investing. BMW destroyed Rover. All they wanted was the Mini as they knew it was a good seller and also wanted the 4 wheel drive system from the land river as their technological ability was then not as good. A sad period when Rover was destroyed by all sorts of issues. Government didn't help and really didn't care, still don't!!!!! Keep up the great videos!!!
It’s sad that Rover ended the way it did when they had the potential and know how to go on and make innovative cars the world had never seen.cheers Tom 👍
It was the times Alan. Big industry was suddenly out of fashion and tha cars were given to a bunch of asset strippers
Sadly the unreliability of the 70s and 80s cars destroyed their reputation enough that a lot of people wouldn’t even give them a second chance
By that time people had given them 3,4,5,6…10 chances.
The 80s Metros Maestros Montegos had terrible build quality. Corrosion electrics interiors that dropped to bits.I know I owned numerous second hand. They always had good designers let down by the finished product.
@@paul7TM I agree, no wonder they collapsed. I was more upset at the Rootes group failing as they did make good cars
I'm not sure about that. BMC cars of the sixties were notoriously unreliable and people loved them. If the car has enough personality people can forgive it a surprising amount but too much of BL's output was either ugly at first or characterless later.
@@user-s1o3nr532 pretty much everything was troublesome in the 50s and 60s, everyone else got better and better to keep up with the reliable Japanese cars.
Aluminium was an idea too many, but this shouldn't have been canceled. The planning is astounding! They needed 2 bodyshells, each of which can be built in 2 wheelbases, giving a Metro/Maestro and a 600/800.
It isn't actually hard to do, they just refused or couldn't due to colossal indecisiveness.
And colossal losses.
Very interesting and well researched video, as always! Thanks for this :)
Another great video Tom.
Yet another tail of missed opportunity through continuous cut backs.
By the time the.100 failed the Euro NCAP the R3 was out and perhaps would have made a good Metro successor rather than a replacement for the R8 200.
I had a B reg Maestro 1.3L from new. Never had any problems with it at all. Serviced every year until I sold it in 1995 with just over 38,000 trouble free miles on the clock. Only sold it as I bought a Rover 827SLi. No troubles with that either!
Rover was so innovate and did many firsts, they should have been the world leader in style and innovation, the k series engine was amazing for the time, many of their cancelled cars looked futuristic and stylish.
British engineering ingenuity and invention was never in question.
It was just a shame it was ruined by management politics, unions and poor execution 🙄
Imagine Leyland as a British Volkswagen beater! A lot of fun to be had considering what a contemporary Triumph, Rover (and maybe even a Wolseley!) would be like.
Great video, many thanks!
I am glad the Triumph name died, if it existed today it would be a Ching Chong electric SUV. Look at *MG* sad state of affairs. Love my BL cars, vastly underrated, and far better, technically, than comparative Fords
Yep, Volkswagen are great at building two or three chassis and two or three engines but you can buy them as Volkswagens, Seats, Audis and Skodas. All that money saved in engineering and development, just different styling and badges. You could buy a sporty Skoda five door estate car that was essentially an Audi TT underneath.
But BL either went one way or the other. Early badge engineered Mini's etc were just the same car with a different badge, fooling no one.
Or they'd have rivals like the Allegro, Maxi, Dolomite and Marina being totally different and costing far more because they all had different chassis, engines etc. Triumph building their own V8 for the Stag when Rover had a great V8 they could have used, and one that would be used by many sports car makers like TVR, not only wasted all that money developing it but killed the Stag because it was unreliable.
The BL management should have put their foot down and told all their brands to cooperate and share one chassis and engine.
A massive missed opportunity. I always find it tragic that BL/Austin Rover had some fantastic forwards thinking designers and engineers who's ideas were hampered by mismanagement and constant financial difficulties.
Another good one Tom, The AR6, You can see the DNA of the Montego and Maestro in it and would have suited the 80's to a tee, With a few adjustments. The R6X looks like another opportunity lost (A recurring theme) That looked ready to go as it was and I think a good success story. In the end what did Rover do? They tried to sell to the UK that awful City Rover, The car that was from India and put together here, A truly awful car and showed that the money was just not there anymore. Look at Ford in the early 80's, They took a huge risk with ending the Cortina and replaced it with the Sierra, Their prototype called The Probe looked so weird at the time and Ford really got some stick but after refining it for the market ended up with a huge success.
Bit of Citroen too?
@dieselfan7406 Yeah I can see that too.
I had a MK1 Metro. It worked but I soon went over to a Nissan.
We have a Nissan TINO now 19 years old. Slight problem with the dash board but starts every time and can go in ULEZ. Had a 69 MGB GT which got sold with the First Wife.
David and Lily.
Agree the ar6 was the last chance really. It is also worth mentioning that it was quite a bit bigger than the polo and micra at the time and this would have increased the appeal. The glass area and the rear styling was particularly good. It is hard to see on the prototype in gayden but this would have been a pretty car and is the same size as the current superminis.
Citroen AX Diesel was on sale in the early 90 s with a consumption of 3.5 liter/100 km.
Also Harold Musgrove admitted in hindsight that he should have pushed for a high-style Mini version (maybe retro-styled a la Nissan Be1/Pao), allowing for the usage of the 3-cylinder K-Series engine as well as to further enhance the AR6 platform and share costs.
They could have also repositioned R6X as a city car and give use for the KV3 engine with it as well as the Mini.
Back in 1980 applied for a job at Cowley, caght the train down there from North wales, and got a taxi to the factory, on arival they where on strike nobody there, all office staff who where not on strike used to go home at lunch time, not a great start.
Got offered the job, as well as a relocation package and somewhere to live could be arranged, sadly i turned the job down.
Was going to be working on the 4 door Metro and a Maestro car,
Roll on 10 years, first car i bought a Morris Ital, followed by 3 more, then 2 Maestro vans, wanted a Montego, but couldnt afford one at the time, them saved enough to buy a used Rover 75, due to go for a test drive a a few days later sadly BL was made bankrupt the next day, never did get one.
One f my old customers now has a Rover 75, a lovely thing well looked after by him im so jealous.
By the late 90s the Metro was still selling in solid numbers to two main groups, elderly drivers who always went to the same Rover dealer and purchased more of the same and affluent families who wanted a small car for the Nanny to drive the children around in. The rest of the market had already been snapped up by the competitors with stylish cars like the Fiat Punto and the Renault Clio. The EURO NCAP results blew that remaining market out of the water as older drivers and families were spooked by the poor result. The consumer credit boom also also led to a change in car buying patterns as people started to by their cars new rather than second hand allowing them to be more picky. The frumpy old Rover 100 (Metro) was long over due a replacement.
My stepdad had a Austin Metro, it was only a few years old it went for its 2nd MOT and came back with a massive list of issues The floor was rusted out, the fuel tank was needing replaced. Never touched another one of their cars ever again.
The AR6 has so much of the later very successful Rover / Honda 200 about it... so it wasn't completely wasted. But it should have been a Metro replacement to compete with the still conventional Ford Fiesta. The problem was that a lot of the buying public still really liked the Mk2 Metros right through to the Rover Metro's introduction and beyond, and they were still selling ancient Minis for god's sake !
yet another fine idea and great looking car lost by BL/AR/etc. the AR6 could have been our 80s Daihatsu Charade, a car whos' advert I still remember well "100mph and 100mpg" (the petrol version got the speed, the diesel got the mpg).
the more I learn about BL/AR the more I realise how they wasted a fortune in money and talent will very little to show for it.
Another missed opportunity, though the way the car market is today with competition from Asia and shift to electric if feels like it would be hard to survive today also. I worked at Longbridge in summer of '96 as part of the Rover Group grad scheme, was placed in the new west works that had been built for the Metro, so much optimism at the time with the BMW takeover. Also took my driving lessons in the then newish Rover Metro in '92, chose BSM for this reason as car mags said a better drive then Fiesta and Nova.
looks like Zastava Yugo Florida
Here In OZ we got the Austin Tasman and the Austin Kimberly, then we got the legendary Leyland P76. I own a rare green P76 Targa Florio.
The build quality was the real killer, in the mid nineties I had a montego estate as a hire car, 1,100 miles on the clock and the fuel gauge didn't work but worst was wide spread rust inside the boot. The don't care attitude was the end
A Ford transit van full of us college students set off from StAustel to Longbridge it was 1984, and I remember two men folding metal tabs on metro bodies before the 300 million pound robot bay would jig and spot weald, walking around Longbridge robots would transport things between huge mechanised machines, I stepped out imfront of one and it automatically stopped, we also visited the austin mini assembly plant wher a rolling road would test the car before leaving, it is a shame that the metro was not developed as being a micro car it would have slowed global warming in its efficiency.
I will never forget my rover vitesse 3500. It was in 1984 and I was only 24 years young. My first real love. Still miss her😢. Greatings from Norway
I’ve got a 2600S, lovely cars the SD1s
@@tomdrivesYou must have found one made when the planets aligned. Mine bought at 4 years old was a disastrous mistake.
The actual AR6 prototype at BMH museum used a shortened Maestro platform with a length of 139.7 inches as well as a 1.6-litre S-Series, which suggests the Maestro/Montego platform could underpin a newer larger supermini as a supplement to the Metro rather than an outright replacement (as Peugeot 205 was to 104 with latter sold alongside former for another 5 years).
I seriously doubt that mpg claim, especially without a hybrid system. However, this car might've been successful regardless. Austin and Rover had so many shots at survival... it's a shame most weren't taken advantage of.
The first 3-cylinder BL car I came across was an Allegro driven by a chap I knew who worked in engine development. "They've just chopped a cylinder off the end. It's not bad. I had it up to 95 down the hill from Halesowen." Presumably the weight reduction resulted in an increase in top speed.😀
Very much like the Citroen BX in my opinion
All concepts apparently would be “game changers”
The reality was, they weren’t even in the game.
A reply to David Dunmore, I was there and I worked in Product Planning. Harold Musgrove fought hard and eventually resigned in 1986 when AR6 was cancelled. The company made no meaningful profits and Mrs Thatcher personally intervened not to help fund AR6, she wanted the K series engine cancelled too. Possibly if the money spent on the K series had gone into AR6 that was another solution but all future ARG products would then need Honda engines. It was very little to do with poor Management, perhaps you David could have done better? Thought not. VW are bankrupt now perhaps you can sort them out!
Many years ago I once described the team i worked in as herding engineers into the sheep pen of fiscal reality. The truth was that almost every car company had brilliant ideas - and models that would have been amazing - but at a cost that would have moved them away from then consumer spending. Our job was to do the numbers, how many you could sell against investment costs. Yes it was sad to see a project get killed but ultimately car companies are there to make money not be a centre of excellence for cars that then can’t recoup investment. I sometimes see projects I remember that are described as the world beater that never was - perhaps their planners got it wrong and they really were, but I suspect most of the time the actual economics just didn’t add up.
Το AR6 έχει τις ίδιες γραμμές με το Yugo Florida, ένα αυτοκίνητο που παρήγαγε η Σερβία στο Kragujevac...
AR6 looked very promising. A missed opportunity? Missed opportunities is the story of the British car industry? Thanks for another interesting video 👍.
There was a 4×4 Metro in a similar layout to the Mini Moke which didn't make production nor did the 4×4 Montego. Missed opportunities. Both Honda and VW put in bids to buy the Rover Group.
Let's be honest. The Metro was based on the mini with the old motor and the awkward steering angle. I still remember the comments in review with disappoinment on the technological avances wrt the mini. The AR6 was goodlooking. Too bad that Honda was changed for BMW. Just imagine the sleek AR6 with Honda underpinnings
Yep, Honda really felt betrayed when that happened. The Metro also suffered because it had the Minis old four speed gearbox at a time many rivals had five speed.
The original merger from Austin and Morris etc to BMC started the rot. They were all competing in the same market. Using brand names to denote trim levels was madness.
The AR6 really did look good - and if t was built from Aluminium and had a good engine, it should have been a gamechanger. But this is BL/AR/Rover we are talking about - development probably would have been botched, and it would have been built badly. And anyway, the management were always useless. They really had some sh!t management - Stokes, Edwardes, and BAe served the company very badly, effectively destroying it by selling it to BMW. And even after then, the mob that revived it a while later were clueless, and little better than crooks.
What was done to our proud motor industry is complete sacrilege!!!!
Almost like it was on purpose !!!!!!!
Love ur vids Tom
Love my BRITISH LEYLAND me
This looks some much like a yugo sana
Wow it seems it would have ha a sixteen valve engine,thanks for this video,but I should ask do you also love MG's?
Looks a little bit like Citronen AX
Was a lovely little super modern car..
I was shocked when I seen on news Even in Australia in early 90s that BMW bought the Rover Group I always thought honda yes, did offer lesser bid to buy out Rover Group but would of been a much better fit for Rover combining both their various skills as Auto manufacturers.
This car looks like a Yugo Sana, a short lived hatchback when production had to finish in 1993 when the car factory was destroyed in the Yugoslavian war.
It's hard to believe that the nation responsible for the largest and most powerful empire in the history of mankind had such a clusterfuck and disastrous car industry.
Why is it that a common British industrial theme throughout history is Lack Of Investment? What makes the British industry leaders penny pinchers when our European and Oriental neighbours seem to be able to find the funds to invest and then conquer the world with their products?
Started my working life in the mid-80's, quite a lot of this investment back then was often on display in the company car park.
Again, so much potential - but so mishandled.
I still think the poor quality of BL, et-al, really did the company in. American cars of the “malaise “ era weren’t much better, but they learned, and quality improved . Thus , they survived.
As for those “Unions “, the top people were out to destroy the industry, and sadly, the workers ultimately shot themselves in both feet [ and both arms].
😢
BL/Rover produced absolute overpriced dross. My first motor when I passed my test in 1987 was a 1983 Y reg Metro 1.0 HLE with 40k on the clock bought for about £1200 from an auction. It spent more time getting repaired than it did on the road including 4 failed MOTs (a massive expense on all of them due to the long list of work needed) during the time I owned it, I have quite a few friends who also had BL/Rovers at the same time who also had major issues, in hindsight I would have paid a bit more for a VW or even a Ford or Vauxhall. In total contrast I eventually replaced it in 1992 with a 1988 F reg Nissan Sunny for about £3.5k with about 48k on the clock, in the 4 years I owned that it passed every MOT first time and only visited the garage for consumables like brakes, tyres and servicing, it still had the original clutch at 100k miles and never missed a beat all year round summer and winter. I would have kept it for longer but it was written off in a collision.
That AR6 could’ve been a success, as would the R6x metro - 2 cars that would look ahead of the time to begin with and be able to last a good long time in production with minor updates as opposed to cars that looked just out of date at the start and gradually got more and more ludicrous as a buying proposition as they hung around years too long.
Not the first time they've done this, for those who remember the 9X...
The British cars my family owned thru the decades: from the 50's to the 90's
Austin Westminster A110 6 cilinder (from the 50's
Austin Cambridge A60 '65
Rover SD1 2600 '81
Rover SD1 3500 vandenplass '83
Rover 216 convirtible '93
Rover 216 GSI '89
Rover 414 Si '90
Rover 416 GSI '90
Rover 620 SLI '95
Rover 216 SE 80's
Austin Mini 1000 Mayfair '86
Austin Mini 1000 early 80's
Austin Mini Jubilee '75
Rover 100 '90s
Austin Metro '90's
Austin Mini special 1100 'late 70's
Bedford CF350 2.1 diesel, dont know i guess from late 70's or early 80's
Austin Morris Marina Van '75
Quite a history there, some of my favourites as well
Well done
Would I be right I thinking that the Metro was the most facelifted car of all time? By my count it had at least 5 facelifts, and 5 name changes - MiniMetro, Austin Metro, Metro (no branding), Rover Metro, Rover 100.
Yes I agree really bad management and marketing.my mate had a rover 100 gti (metro) great little car
It would not sell in Australia as the Daihatsu Charade with 1.0 litre was more popular since the demise of UK Motors in Brisbane.
I once saw ECV3 driving on the road (M50 Motorway)
short term ,short term to no term
Exactly this
Looks very mk2 Suzuki Swift like from some angles.
The management were short sighted, and the company should not have been privatised for a few more years.
Fiat punto front end styling cues in that metro replacement.
Oh what could have been !!
So many missed opportunities over the decades.
Looks similar to one of the models of Astra
Leyland cars, by any name had a terrible reputation. It is sad to see a once great u industry gone down the tubes. The Metro, Maestro & Montego had huge reliability issues.
These prototypes are fascinating but we all need to remember that BL/Austin Rover screwed up every 'game changer' they ever released and would have done the same with any of these prototypes.
I imagine if 100mpg was truly viable with such an engine, it would have seen the light of day.
The manufacturing technique used on the Metro, Maestro and Montego was fundamentally flawed. They used a separate welded steel pressing for the A pillars one either side of the windscreen. This led to chassis flex as witnessed by common A pillar rust top and bottom. And worse, the A pillars just snapped off in collisions and crash tests. The answer was to adopt the complete side on pressings like Hondas. The AR models shown in this video all look to have thin A pillars suggestive of the separate welded pillar design. I hope not ?
A real shame looks like it could have been a really good replacement for the metro , what were they thinking .
I have never understood why British Leyland didn't produce under license the '74 italian Innocenti Mini designed by Marcello Gandini.
In my opinion It would have been a better option than putting the Metro into production.
That ar6 looks like the yugo sana
A proud owner of one of those AL YOU MIN E UM(For Americans benefit 😂) Jag x350 I must be lucky cos it's a pomme car that has been extremely reliable in its 5 years with me and so far way under budget! They're not all like that but the interesting thing is, this girl has been well looked after all of her 21 years, sorry I'm digressing from AR6 You shouldn't have mentioned Aluminium Audi and Jag Sorry! 😂😂
@7.10 a bit Yugo Stanza shape!!!!!
The Leyland P76 was even more ahead of its time with aluminium body parts.
Ooh. New vid. Hi!
!!!
Great video, very informative and interesting. I’ve never heard of this car. Or the 100 mpg engine. But. Horrible looking car. Reminiscent of early protons.
Rover has gone and guess who's next? The AR6 reminds me of a goldfish bowl. The SD1 was beautiful but let down by unreliability.
I only became a rover fan by accident, most of my car ownership has come out of longbridge, lots of minis and metros then I bought a rover 216 cabriolet off Ebay for 300pounds I still have the car 10 years later and 5 years ago I bought a rover 214 sli registered a month earlier than my cabby, 32 year old motoring is better than buying an electric car
BL management had no vision, these cars could have let BL show it's potential with some innovative world beating cars.
think that austin rover in the 80s just imploded on itself what a loss
We all and millions absolutely hated the Metro. It was another BL Strike car trying to keep them going.
Yugo Florida anyone? 😁
We weren't the only ones to be screwed over by privatisation then.
Many of the issues listed were seen of problems of nationalisation at the time.
Looks too Citroeny
This car should have been built and would have been the platform for the new Mini in 2000. The spinoffs would have been incredible. Rover 110, MG midget, Rover Mini and the new Austin Metro. I can't watch these videos anymore!!!
The phrase 'Tories know the cost of everything and the value of nothing' could apply to British industry, energy, motor manufacturing, housing, public transport and utilities in terms of missed opportunities by the ideological obsession with unrestrained privatisation and free market economics.
From what I am hearing here the RX6 and others seem like lost opportunities to me
Yugo Sana
I can see that
@@tomdrives Especially in the rear design.
Could have called it the AR53 🤣🤣
I had a rover 200. It was terrible. Nothing like as good as the Honda concerto
once privatisation happened all the profit went to share holders. So no innovation just greed