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The British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC) was a vehicle manufacturing company formed in the United Kingdom in 1968 . Ultimately, it would become Nationalised as ''British Leyland'', often referred to as just ''BL''. It incorporated much of the British owned motor vehicle industry, but had a troubled history. In 1986 it was renamed as the Rover Group , later to become MG Rover Group , which went bankrupt in 2005, bringing an end to mass car production by British owned manufacturers - with MG becoming part of Chinese Nanjing Automobile and Rover disappearing completely, with its brand being bought by Ford . HISTORY BLMC was created in 1968 by the merger of British Motor Holdings (BMH) and Leyland Motor Corporation (LMC), encouraged by the Wilson Labour Government (1964–1970) . At the time, LMC was a successful manufacturer, while BMH was perilously close to collapse. The Government was hopeful LMC's expertise would revive the ailing BMH. The merger combined most of the remaining independent British car manufacturing companies and included car, bus and truck manufacturers and more diverse enterprises including construction equipment, refrigerators, metal casting companies, road surface manufacturers; in all, nearly 100 different companies. The new corporation was arranged into seven divisions under its new chairman, Sir Donald Stokes (formerly the chairman of LMC). While BMH was the UK's largest car manufacturer (producing over twice as many cars as LMC), it offered a range of dated vehicles, including the Morris Minor which was introduced in 1948 and the Austin Cambridge and Morris Oxford , which dated back to 1959. After the merger, Lord Stokes was horrified to find that BMH had no plans to replace these elderly designs. Also, BMH's design efforts immediately prior to the merger had focussed on unfortunate niche market models such as the Austin Maxi (which was underdeveloped and with an appearance hampered by using the doors from the larger Austin 1800 ) and the Austin 3 Litre , which was a car with no discernible place in the market. BMH had produced several successful cars, such as the Mini and the Austin/ Morris 1100/1300 range (which at the time was the UK's biggest selling car). While these cars had been advanced at the time of their introduction, the Mini was not highly profitable and the 1100/1300 was facing more modern competition. The lack of attention to development of new mass market models meant that BMH had nothing in the way of new models in the pipeline to effectively compete with popular rivals such as Ford's Escort and Cortina . Immediately, Lord Stokes instigated plans to design and introduce new models quickly. The first result of this crash program was the Morris Marina in 1971. It used parts from various BL models with new bodywork to produce BL's mass market competitor. It went on to become BL's mainstay for the next decade, eventually outliving its welcome. The company became an infamous monument to the industrial turmoil that plagued Britain in the 1970s . At its peak, BLMC owned nearly 40 different manufacturing plants across the country. Even before the merger BMH had included theoretically competing marques which were in fact selling substantially similar " Badge Engineered " cars. To this was added the competition from yet more, previously LMC marques. Rover competed with Jaguar at the expensive end of the market, and Triumph with its family cars and sports cars against Austin, Morris and MG. The result was a product range which was incoherent and full of duplication. In addition, inconsequent attempts to establish British Leyland as a brand in consumers' minds in and outside the UK, print ads and spots were produced, causing confusion rather than attraction for buyers. This, combined with serious industrial relations problems (principally, the company's relations with hard-line Trade Unions of the time); the 1973 Oil Crisis ; the Three-day Week ; high inflation; and ineffectual management meant that BL became an unmanageable and financially crippled behemoth whose Bankruptcy in 1975 was assured. Sir Don Ryder was asked to undertake an enquiry into the position of the company, and his report, The Ryder Report , was presented to the government in April 1975. Following the report's recommendations, the organisation was drastically restructured and the Labour Government (1974–1979) took control by creating a new holding company ''British Leyland Limited'' (BL) of which the government was the major shareholder. The company was now organised into the following four divisionsBL Booklet - Graduate opportunities with British Leyland:
In 1977 Leyland Cars was split up into ''Austin Morris'' (the volume car business) and ''Jaguar Rover Triumph'' (JRT) (the specialist or upmarket division). Austin Morris at first included MG but this marque was later transferred to JRT. Land Rover and Range Rover were later separated from JRT to form the Land Rover Group . In 1978 the company formed a new group for its commercial vehicle interests, BL Commercial Vehicles (BLCV) under managing director David Abell . The following companies moved under this new umbrella:
BLCV and the Land Rover Group later merged to become ''Land Rover Leyland''. In 1979 ''British Leyland Ltd'' was renamed to simply ''BL Ltd'' (later ''BL plc'') and its Subsidiary which acted as a Holding Company for all the other companies within the group ''The British Leyland Motor Corporation Ltd'' to ''BLMC Ltd''. In 1982 most of the car division became the Austin Rover Group marking the end of the Morris and Triumph marques although Jaguar and Daimler remained in a separate company called Jaguar Car Holdings. In 1984 ''Jaguar Cars'' became independent once more, through a public sale of its shares. Ford subsequently acquired Jaguar . In 1986 BL changed its name to Rover Group and in 1987 the ''Trucks Division - Leyland Vehicles'' merged with the Dutch DAF company to form DAF NV , trading as Leyland DAF in the UK and as ''DAF'' in the Netherlands. In 1987 the bus business was spun-off into a new company called Leyland Bus . This was the result of a Management Buyout who decided to sell the company to the Bus & Truck Division Of Volvo in 1988. In 1988 the remaining ''Rover Group'' business was sold by the British Government to British Aerospace (BAe). Many of the brands were Divested over time and continue to exist to this day. The heir to most of the volume car business was MG Rover which went bankrupt in April 2005 , only to resume production two years later - though initially with just a sports car and upper-range saloon built in both Britain and China due to the takeover of MG Rover's assets by Nanjing Automobile . TIMELINES Notes for the timeline table
Merged companies The car firms (and car brands) which eventually merged to form the company are as follows. The dates given are those of the first car of each name, but these are often debatable as each car may be several years in development.
Other merger events Several of these names (including Jaguar, Land Rover and Mini) are now in other hands. The history of the mergers and other key events is as follows:
Divestments
List of notable BL and BMC and related models (up to 1986)
Competing models In some cases, British Leyland continued to produce competing models from the merged companies at different sites for many years. However, any benefits from the broader number of models were far outweighed by higher development costs and greatly reduced economies of scale. Sadly, potential benefits associated with rationalising parts usage were lost, as for example, the company made two completely different 1.3 litre engines (BMC A series and the Triumph 1.3 litre), two different 1.5 litre engines (BMC E series and Triumph), four different 2 litre engines (4 cylinder O series, 4 cylinder Triumph Dolomite, 4 cylinder Rover and 6 cylinder Triumph) and two completely different V8 engines (Triumph OHC 3 litre V8 and Rover 3.5 litre V8). Examples of competing cars were:
Badge-engineered models In contrast to the continued development of competing models, British Leyland continued the practice of Badge Engineering of models which had started under BMC; selling essentially the same vehicle under two (or more) different Marque s.
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