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It seems to me that part of the reason why British Leyland suffered was because people no longer recognised the value of buying home-grown. Why, then, did this patriotic notion decline when they started to build cars that were better in relation to the competition than they ever had been? Case in point being the montego/maestro; far better cars in relation to opposition than allegro/marina but the British public refused to buy them in the same numbers.
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I'm too young really to have first hand experience, but I can relate my Father-in-law.
He owned a succession of Austins over the 70s and 80s. They were all terrible. Despite this, he stuck with British cars. His first brand new car he ever bought was an early Maestro. Despite him genuinely looking after the car it had rust holes that you could poke a fist through after less than 3 years.
It also, naturally, broke down and suffered various other maladies.
He then replaced it with a Belmont, followed by an Orion and a couple of Astras.
He's never looked back..
OK, the Astras were made in the UK, but by a US company following a German design.
He wouldn't buy a proper British car now, it wouldn't matter how good they might be. People have long memories when their pride and joy turns into a heap of rubbish before their eyes!
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"....far better cars in relation to opposition than allegro/marina...."
People had been put off by the awfulness of the Allegro and Marina and looked elsewhere.
I had two Maxis in the 1970s, both reliable - for me at least that wasn't the problem - but the design faults were all still there when I thought about a third Maxi.
BL must take the blame, not buyers' lack of patriotism. There was a complete lack of effort to make economies of scale when Austin/Morris merged with Jaguar/Rover/Triumph. I was a member of the Ryder team which investigated BL in 1975, and we found that there were something like 19 separate models (as opposed to Ford's 5) with far too little commonality of parts. And that was just passenger cars.
As a patriot I am still sad about it: in the 1950s Austins were much the most reliable mass-produced cars you could buy. My father's A40 had an OHV engine, a 4-speed gearbox, independent front suspension and an ability to start first time in the morning, something you didn't find with contemporary Fords, Vauxhalls and Hillmans.
Bad management and a bolshie workforce (connected of course) threw it all away in the 1970s and early 1980s. Later Maestros and Montegos (particularly the MG 2.0 EFI) were good cars, but by then the damage to their reputation had been done.
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Simple reason for not buying Briish - lack of quality and poor reliability. Only when Nissan came along and set up in Sunderland did the industry get the kick it deserved. But still only the Japanese manufacturers (Nissan, Honda, Toyota) can get it right.
I stopped buying British after buying my first Saab in the mid 1970s. Couldn't believe the quality of finish and, by comparison, the reliability over British made junk.
For a while Volvo got it right, then lost their way when they started doing things with Renault and then Ford.
Now? Honda or Toyota for me.... though I might consider a Skoda.
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BL/Fords/Vauxhalls (all new) from 1966 till 1995 & I suffered from quality and reliability- Bought Honda in 1995 - fantastic. MB 1997 was poor. since them till Now Japanese only.
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to answer the op's question, The other car makers moved on and developed better cars.
BL didn't have the cash to invest so most of the cars were rehashed (case in point Metro with the A-series engine - it should have got the K-series engine from the start).
BL should have pushed through the design of the AR6 (looks like a Citroen AX) as this really could have sold well and saved the company.
Unfortunately this radical designed car was for the chop as BL was changing hands at the time.
Also the K-series was reliable engine until it was scaled up above 1.4l size.
Rover by this time were in the last throws and Lotus took over the K-series for the Elise and fixed the problem with head gaskets, shock cooling when the thermostat opens.
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to answer the op's question The other car makers moved on and developed better cars.
That would be my view as well... in the 60s BMC produced some very good cars but in the 70s they went downhill very quickly... had the build quality been ok they might have got away with it, but it wasn't.
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BL's quality was consistent: carp.
As someone who drove a series of Rover 800s through compulsion, they were as carp as the Allegro I drove 20 years before.I vowed never to spend my own money on badly produced ill designed rubbish.
I never have and never will. So I will not buy a Mercedes produced from 1997 to c 2002...
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My dad had Austins in the 60's and Ford's in the 70's, all of which he said were unfailingly unreliable. He had a Cavalier 2.0 auto in '81 followed by an Audi 80, both of which he rated highly as company cars.
When he started his own company in '83, he put his money where he knew it would be safe - a Datsun Cherry, followed by Toyota Corolla est, followed by a Nissan Sunny est.
Today he completes the circle and now our family have either Korean in my mums case or Japanese ( and made there too ) cars. There is good reason for that.
People stopped buying British because 'being British' has become diluted over time so buying British as a preference is an isolationist attitude that doesnt suit a country that has become quite the opposite and has been since the 80's atleast. My generation have never known us as anything apart from an annex of Europe, not as a stand alone great nation that we may once have been. As such, we buy from whoever sells the best cars and say what youy like about the Japs, but they really have been very smart cookies when it comes to giving the world the cars it wants by and large.
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In the 1960s my father, whose work took him all over the country covering many, many thousands of miles, had three new Hillman Minxes (ranging from 1300 to 1600cc), a Super Minx and a Hillman Hunter - not one ever let him down and, in fact, I was so impressed I bought a secondhand 1725cc Minx that proved equally reliable over three years' ownership.
After that he moved on to an Austin 1800 (needed the space due to increasing weight!) which was capable of carrying the entire street population and a dog, followed by two Austin Princesses (the second one actually rusted on the roof). The three were reasonably reliable but flawed in various areas.
After that the only family car to live up to the Rootes Group's models was a secondhand Triumph Acclaim, which remained in the family until it was 13 years old and served the two offspring's needs with aplomb.
Edited by Stuartli on 12/08/2009 at 10:19
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I bought a new Maestro. Just touched the window winder (without even turning it) for the first time and the whole glass just fell into the door bottom.
It seemed like it had been fitted like that as some sort of practical joke.
I won`t bore you with the rest.
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"Why, then, did this patriotic notion decline when they started to build cars that were better in relation to the competition than they ever had been?"
Better than they had been, in relation to the competition, but still a long way short in key areas.
Case in point being the montego/maestro; far better cars in relation to opposition than allegro/marina
Indeed the Maestro was, dynamically and practically (it handled well, it had great space, it was comfortable) as good if not better than the competition. It was however a mechanical and reliability disaster and in relation to the competition a long way behind.
I know I had one. The problems started at 1000 miles when the rear shock absorbers went,
it was towed and recovered 6 times, had me lifting the bonnet at least 3 times a week to get it started, and at 68000 miles racked up a bill for a service of 680 quid, in 1985 money.
Thats why I have never touched a BL model since. I assume thats why the rest of the population followed me down that path.
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Young wives of Tory-voting middle-class professional men in the 1970s started to want BMWs and Volvos. It was a way to show two fingers to the bolshy, striking Britsh car workers at the time.
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I've recently started to buy British cars. My last bike was British, a CCM Supermoto which was huge fun and it wasn't difficult to improve on the dodgy factory electrics - my 7 year old son could have done better.
The Land Rover I had was British, a Series 3 V8 Stage 1 station wagon. It had integrity by the bucketload and driving it was fun although even its best friend wouldn't call it refined.
The 1958 Triumph special I've got now is British, made at a time when a few blokes built a car in a shed, they made some more and within 3 years the company went bust - in the proud British tradition.
I can buy this sort of thing because I don't really need a car for reliable commuting, we've got a proper car for getting us places, carrying the kids about, starting off your journey and being sure you'll get to the other end etc.
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I too served my time with BL from about 1963 to 1983, with a series of 1100s and Maxis, and a Triumph 1300 in between. None of these cars ever let me down; one or two moved on because of tinworm threat, but no problems worse than occasional fuel pump failures. The Maxi was well-designed, and often well-executed; I had five and some went on continental holidays. At the demise of the Maxi I just could not bring myself to switch to those nasty Maestros, and after a Cavalier estate (good), was persuaded (by the press, mostly) to get a 205. Never looked back.
I reckon BL's problem was quality control. Many of their cars were perfectly decent, but there were far too many Friday ones.
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BL were controlled too much by unions who held the company to ransome.
Their products were out of date and the whole ethos of manufacturing cars in Britain was old fashioned compared to the Japs.
Datsun and others had a quality product AND they hand the mindset to produce it quickly, efficiently and with pride unlike BL and others who lashed together old designs in between strikes whilst puffing on a fag hanging out the corner of their mouths.
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Maxi was a great car for 1969, but mediocre by 1981 (would probably still have taken one over a maestro tho) when compared to Mk3 Escort.
Other BL family cars were never IMO up with their Ford/VX competitors.
Jap cars in the 70s were mechanically excellent but rotted faster than BL.
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Because they were rubbish, of course. My first car in 1977 was a 2-year old Mini Clubman. It was utter rubbish, in and out of Mann Egerton's like a yoyo, cost us a fortune to keep on the road, and was covered in rust by it's third birthday. I remember once braking for a zebra crossing in a city centre and the car turned 180 degrees leaving me facing the wrong way. I spent many hours tarting up the body work so it looked almost respectable and traded it in for a new Polo as soon as the HP was paid off, and never looked back.
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Too many years of appalling/inconsistent building of what should have been some pretty decent cars.
I can tell you as a youth of the early 90's, the MG Maestro and Montego had oodles of desirability and street cred, particularly the Turbo variants, and both were much better drivers cars than the equivalent Astra or Cavalier according to the contemporary press. The MG Montego Turbo remains one of the fastest cars I have ever driven - driveable, gutsy and tidy handling if you were careful with the power out of slower corners. A much, much more involving and capable car than the mk3 Cavalier GSI 16v, IMHO.
I still maintain the R8 Rover 200/400 was as good as, or better than, anything Ford, Vauxhall or the French were knocking out at the time. The number of old H and J platers you still see around suggests they were more durable and long lasting too.
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The Montego wasn't a bad car at all - in fact quite a few of my then work colleagues bought them secondhand on my recommendation.
A number of them came from the Isle of Man and offered at a very reasonable price by a local used car specialist.
Like DP I enjoyed the turbo version.
I recall that Autocar gave a hearty thumbs up in its road test verdict when the Montego was launched.
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.. covered in rust by its third birthday.
I still think that Brits denigrate many things British with a strange sort of satisfaction. Most 1970s cars rusted - Japanese ones, Italian ones, not just British. Much steel was 'recycled', and rustproof paint processes just weren't used. But Brits also knock British food - French, Italian, Indian, anything foreign is better or more interesting. Home-grown food is 'rubbish'. Home-made films are 'rubbish'. I suspect there is a certain snob value in there somewhere.
BL just couldn't afford to compete effectively in the 1980s, for 'political' reasons already discussed. Ford and Vauxhall had bigger money available.
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Because it is very easy to get a bad reputation and very difficult to repair it. Not only that but we heard all too often that there was a new broom and all was well now, when the reality was far from the truth. Remember Jaguar and (Michael was it?) Edwards? So we stopped listening and we stopped buying.
JH
Edited by JH on 12/08/2009 at 19:40
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>>.. and very difficult to repair it>>
Bit like Fiat in the 1970s and into the 1980s, even though in 1979 the company linked up with Saab to learn how to protect its cars properly.
The two Fiat models I had in the 1980s (Miafiori and Regata) never had a spot of rust on them.
Ircidentally I recall a garage owner friend advising me in the late 1960s/early 1970s never to buy a car built in a hot country...:-)
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The short answer is UNIONS
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Why then did this patriotic notion decline when they started to build cars that were better in relation to the competition than they ever had been? Case in point being the montego/maestro; far better cars in relation to opposition than allegro/marina but the British public refused to buy them in the same numbers.
LOL. Have you driven a Montego or Maestro? I remember them appearing on the market, cheered on by a wildly optimistic, patriotic and hopeful motoring press.
As it turned out they were better than an Allegro or Marina, that wasn't difficult. But better than a Mk3 Escort or Sierra? Or better than an Astra or Cavalier? Or a Golf or Passat? Not to mention the various Japanese products which had already started to appear. Ok, they were also rubbish to drive, but made up for it by actually starting in the morning.
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It seems from today's newpapers that Lord Mendelsohn and his fraternal chums did very nicely out of the MG Rover collapse and he cannot explain satisfactorily how he could afford to pay off a £750,000 mortgage in a year and buy a £2,500,000 second home. Typical British corruption.
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I think the main reason for the switch from BL cars was the fact that the Japanese engines were so much better !! The engines being used in the 1970 cars were old engine technology.
I had a Metro and before it was 3 years old it needed a new front wing it had completely rusted through !!
But I still loved the first Morris Marina I had
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In the early eighties I worked for a local authority who used Marina, Ital and then Maestro vans. No two vehicles drove even remotely the same, even those from batches that were purchased at the same time. Fuel consumption and performance varied wildly from vehicle to vehicle, one had a headlight that filled up with water and some wag put a plastic goldfish in it (it still worked mind). Others could not be taken through the council car wash unless you wanted a shower, one used to burn it's plugs out every couple of months, another used to need topping with oil once a week or it would not even register on the dipstick and others had a fag packet jammed under the glass on the instrument panel to stop the horrendous rattle.
A change to BSM in '85 proved that Metros were of the same (lack of) quality. Car changing time was a nightmare, you'd just had your old one sorted so that it would start four mornings out of five and find that the next lot in were losing their exhausts everytime you did an emergency stop. We used to get them with hose clips missing or not tightened, electrical connectors loose or not connected and doors that had already dropped.
BL in the eighties were a complete joke.
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>>BL in the eighties were a complete joke.>>
With the notable exception of the Triumph Acclaim, built to Honda's expertise standards and with a lovely twin-carb 1.3-litre Honda engine, snappy steering and above average interior.
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I lived and drove through those years and I saw and felt what those cars were like. Once drove a Maxi, and I've never encountered a gearbox like that in the following 30 years.
One point which nobody's picked up on is that alot of BL stuff from that period just didn't actually look very good. My first car in the mid 70s was a Viva HC. Don't laugh, but I preferred that to something like a Morris 1100 because I didn't have to buy a pipe and slippers to go with it. A Cortina/Cavalier may have been basically a box, but it was a better looking box than a Marina or Austin 1800. One of the best cars I owned from that era was two (at different times) Opel Mantas. Superb for their time - the thinking man's Capri. And what was BL's option in that corner of the market? MGB or Spitfire. Not destined to appeal to the flared-trousered bandit-moustached denim-wearing young man of the 70s. Stag could've been good, but how many hairdressers were there around to snap them up?
But by the mid 90s they'd almost solved the problem and things were improving. I had a Rover 214 which looked good, went and handled well, reliability and build quality as good as anywhere else, and I didn't feel I had to be retired to own it; Great car. I would've bought its successor.
The BMW stepped in.
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LOL. Have you driven a Montego or Maestro?
Either of them with a 1600cc or bigger engine were perfectly decent steers in the context of the contemporary competition.
Typical BL - both launched before they were ready, both launched as dogs, but both became decent cars a few years down the line just as everyone stopped caring.
My uncle had two Montegos brand new - a D plate 2.0HL which did 60k with no issues at all, and then a G plate MG 2.0 efi in British Racing Green which I remember being fast, smart, and also reliable. This was unfortunately stolen and written off by local joyriders at 2 yrs old, but again had given no trouble up to then.
The other one I knew of, a C plate MG Turbo, was progressively modified throughout its life and ended up with well in excess of 200 bhp courtesy of MotoBuild. I drove it while it was still standard, and thought it was a lovely car. Fast, tractable, predictable handling and plenty of driver involvement. As I said elsewhere, a far more capable car than any hot Vauxhall of the era.
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I think that the baby-boom generation were much less concerned about where their cars came from than their parents generation. I think it must have something to do with the 'if it feels good, do it' attitude that proliferated amongst that generation in th 60's and 70's. Instead of sticking with the (very reasonable) home-grown products and supporting the national interest, they selfishly went to which ever manufacturer they fancied.
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Instead of sticking with the (very reasonable) home-grown products and supporting the nationalinterest they selfishly went to which ever manufacturer they fancied.
Perhaps they were fed up of the home built junk that the British car makers selfishly expected everyone to keep buying just because they were British.
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Instead of sticking with the (very reasonable) home-grown products and supporting the national interest they selfishly went to which ever manufacturer they fancied.
Where on earth did this notion come from that buying your own country's products is patriotic, even if they aren't the products you want?
The market mechanism is there to pass feedback from the customers and potential customers to the manufacturers to tell them about your product preferences.
It's like filling in a questionaire "Do you like this product? Would you buy the same again? Were you satisfied with the quality, delivery time, etc ?"
Why would you want to deliberately falsify your answers in order to tell the producers you liked something when you didn't?
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When I was young buying British was seen as getting quality and folks were more keen to buy our own goods. seems to me that in the seventies the Japanese started to get into the motorbike market in a big way and when i went to buy a BSA Bantam the salesguy almost laughed. you began to nitce Datsuns and Hondas etc and they soon got a reutation for reliabiblty and gradually British cars were seen as old fashioned and rustbuckets....alla my Viva and Victor...and the dealers didn't seem to care. Depress yourself and investigate how many indusries have gone to the wall in the last 30 odd years. Carpet firms, car companies, motorbike makers, musical instruments, clothes. Make goods? we hardly made a fuss.
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Take one British car industry, make its cars terminally unreliable and naff.
Then import some German/French-designed American cars with British-sounding names that used to design vehicles in the UK. Make these cars better in every way than the true British cars.
Persuade everyone that these foreign cars are less foreign than the other "imports".
Watch as the patriotic, but ill-informed Joe Public flocks to said American cars.
Bye-bye British car industry.
And we still see it today. A German-designed, Belgian-bui;t car (say a Vectra) is "British", but a British-built car (say a Primera) is "foreign". And you get blank looks when you try to explain this to people.
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I just think that other nations were/are more supportive of their home-grown motor industries. The French buy Peugeots & Citroens, the Italians buy Fiats and the Germans buy Mercs, Beemers and VW's. Why then, did the British public not support their own car industry while they had the chance? BMC/BL actually made some very fine cars and the Austin/Morris 1100/1300 was a best seller throughout the 60's. The reason BL couldn't afford to develop its cars better during the 70's and 80's was because the great British public were too busy buying fashionable foreign imports. I blame a lack of national identity among the baby-boomers!
Edited by Hector Brocklebank on 13/08/2009 at 18:50
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In view of the comparative quality of the products from strike-ridden production lines in a country where engineers are valued less than lawyers, doctors and accountants [thus ensuring the brightest and best often do not embark upon the training.....and even when they do they change to other careers when they realise which side the bread's buttered] the question should surely be.....why did people buy British for so long?
I suppose because for many of us patriotism influenced the decision.
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My guess is that the root cause of the problem was/is that professional engineers aren't accorded as high a status and salary in the UK as in, for example, Germany. As a consequence, car manufacturers don't attract the highest calibre of staff and therefore aren't able to design high quality cars. People stopped buying British cars simply because they weren't as good as the foreign competition which employed high calibre staff.
Edited by L'escargot on 13/08/2009 at 19:34
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For most of my professional career thus far, I've avoided working directly in manufacturing. However, I have worked in companies which are, frankly, Dickensian in the way they treat engineers.
In one case in particular [the BR member cub leader knows the firm!], despite the engineering being technically interesting, there was no way I was going to spend any more of my career being treat in that way. I left, to lower pay, but, to much better conditions and returned to being treat as a human being by my employer.
I have little sympathy.
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As a consequence car manufacturers don't attract the highest calibre of staff and therefore aren't able to design high quality cars. People stopped buying British cars simply because they weren't as good as the foreign competition which employed high calibre staff.
Its a long time since I heard such an ill informed comment about British engineers vs other professional people.
Being a professional Engineer is a calling - having a love for machines/buldings/electrics. An Engineer wouldnt do any other job. Its probably on the autistic spectrum.
Shakes head in disbelief.
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>>Its probably on the autistic spectrum.
This is probably true.
However, I sincerely hope that Number_Nipper doesn't catch it from me!, and that he should do something more productive with his life than go into engineering in the UK.
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I think you might be right.
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