Ten years ago this spring, Britain’s MG-Rover Group went in administration, and a large element of the British Leyland story reached its final chapter. Whilst this is not directly attributable to the CityRover, this car helps tell a key part of the last days.
In 2000, BMW effectively broke up Britain’s Rover Group, which was essentially the last remnant of British Leyland. BMW had bought Rover from British Aerospace in 1994, but by then Jaguar had been floated off separately, and subsequently bought out by Ford, the truck businesses had been sold to DAF of Holland and later absorbed by PACCAR, and the many various (often not true motor industry) offshoots had been sold away too. Rover Group was the cars, the Land-Rover and the Range-Rover.
BMW kept Mini (sorry, MINI) and the Cowley, Oxford facility and associated supply facilities; Ford bought Land-Rover and the UK development facility and design studios, and started to build up the Jaguar Land-Rover group. That left the large and underutilised Longbridge, Birmingham factory and the ageing range of cars, the Rover 25, 45 and new BMW developed 75 it was producing, or was about to produce actually, as production was transferred from Cowley as part of the separation. (All are coming to CC, soon.)
With the alternative of closure in the same month as important local elections, some national and regional government brokerage and BMW support enabled a management consortium, known as the Phoenix Four and led by John Towers, CEO of Rover back in the 1990s, to take control of Longbridge under the business name of MG Rover, or MGR.
I won’t go into the full story of the struggle, decline and final failure of MG-Rover today, but alongside the ever present battle to produce a replacement for the 25 and 45, both Honda Civic based, by the way, using a cut down 75, was the need to maintain volume for the dealer chain across Britain and what remained of the export markets.
MGR had to reach out to acquire something to build up this volume. There was no time, or more importantly budget or even many valid building blocks in the MGR stock room to work with, so a collaboration was the only choice. Many candidates were assessed, all except one outside Europe. The European candidate was Fiat but the product offered was the Stilo, Fiat’s Golf and Focus competitor.
MGR had to look east, to China, Malaysia and India. China was actually more interested in a partnership that took Rover’s technology (some of it Honda influenced, some it of BMW influenced) to China. Malaysia offered access to the Proton range, notably the supermini sized Savvy and compact Gen-2.
But India proved to be the chosen one, due to a combination of the automotive ambitions of the Tata Group, and to the product being offered.
The Tata Group is one of India’s largest industrial businesses, with interests in iron and steel, locomotive and railway rolling stock, and heavy commercial vehicles among other things. The company had a range of pick-up trucks and fairly basic but sturdy SUVs as well, some with traces of Mercedes-Benz from partnerships, originally established in 1954.
During this time, India’s car market had been opened up; and the international players had all been keen to move into this most promising of new markets. The quaint idea (mainly held in Europe) that the Indians built and drove nothing but old British cast-offs like Hindustan Ambassador (a licence built 1955 Morris Oxford), the Hindustan Contessa (1972 Vauxhall Victor) or even the Standard 2000 (a Rover SD1 derivative) is an outdated one, thanks to the wave of new (and non-Indian) cars entering the market on the sub-continent.
Tata billed the Indica as India’s first indigenous car (India-car, get it?), although there was significant input from outside India. The engine came from Peugeot, under a licence agreement and the styling was by Idea of Italy, who also styled the Fiat Tipo hatchback. But, otherwise, the engineering was all Tata.
The first cars were on the Indian market in 1998, and gained an initial reputation for unreliability and for poor quality. Tata addressed these with the V2 cars launched in 2001, and the car was successful in India. Tata still had some available production capacity though.
In 2002, Tata and Rover reached a very simple agreement. Tata would build, in Pune north of Mumbai, a variant of the Indica, badged as a Rover and sold to MGR in a completed form. Production started in September 2003.
MGR had little time or budget to make many changes. There were new bumpers and a Rover-esque grille, a gently revised suspension to suit the better quality European roads and revisions to the 85bhp Peugeot 1.4 litre engine to meet European emissions regulations.
Naming the car was either inspired or blatant plagiarism. CityRover may have defined the car’s place in the Rover range and the market, but the common format to the stronger image of the Land-Rover and Range-Rover is also obvious. Let’s just say that Jaguar Land-Rover, after MGR failed, acquired the rights to the Rover name, and have no plans to use it. Incidentally, MGR were not allowed to produce a 4×4 of any sort under a Rover badge, as part of the agreement with BMW.
On the road, the car got a reasonable score. It was pretty roomy for its size – the height of the car helping accommodate people. It was a good cruiser, and had a reasonable ride/handling compromise. The quality, or more fairly the perceived quality, though was not high. The plastic mouldings inside the car, for example, were cheap and flimsy to the touch, the equipment list pretty short and there were many rough edges inside and out that counted against it, the gear shift being perhaps the worst of these. The Indian link (unfairly, of course) did not add to the image.
MGR’s dealers in the UK had been calling out for such a car since the Rover 100 (nee Austin Metro) had been discontinued in 1997. Dealer volumes had dropped significantly, and a volume car at a blatant good value price was exactly what they wanted. So, when they heard from MGR that the car would be offered to the retail market at £4995, the dealers’ ears pricked up. But in reality the car was priced at £6500 to nearly £9000 in the UK market. Cars like the then new Fiat Panda, (a Fiat 500 in working clothes), Skoda Fabia, Hyundai Getz, Daewoo Matiz and Ford Ka (a compact Fiesta derivative) were all available at similar prices, and the competition was clearly going to the tough. The CityRover was not a truly bad car, by any means, but it was not good enough to sell at an equal price against this competition.
Rover compounded this with an almost total lack of advertising and promotion. Indeed, it got more promotion from the Trades Unions objecting to the captive import process than in any other way. In 18 months, MGR sold around 6000 cars, a far cry from the 30-40,000 a year predicted at one time. The saloon and estate versions of the Indica and already in production in India, never made it to the UK. Indeed, in early 2005, MGR had a series of modifications to fix some of the issues, but these cars only ever made it to the UK after MGR’s demise and were sold at on at complete fire sale prices by the administrators. This car is one of those, first registered a year after MGR collapsed.
Clearly, this car was a missed opportunity for MGR, with ambitious pricing, perceived poor quality and a lack of marketing effort against more modern and strong competition. Fundamentally it was not a bad car, and maybe a true bargain price would have saved it.
But it would never have saved Longbridge or the British industry as we knew it.
Just another not quite right car, from the not quite right car company. Whatever possessed BMW to get involved in that mess? Were they unable to buy Landrover without Rover cars?
Ironic then that Tata now own Land Rover and Jaguar (bought from Ford).
The reasons BMW bought Rover?
well, not because Rover was a competitor to BMW.
There was some technology interest around the Land-Rover and Range-Rover, there were ambitions to expand the reach of BMW into more areas of the market, such as SUV and below the existing BMW range, and crucially as a defence against VW takeover of BMW.
Of course, we know it didn’t work, but BMW came out of it with the MINI and £1.5 billion from Ford for Land-Rover.
We may not say it very loudly, but the UK has a lot to thank BMW for. Neither MINI or land-rover would be anywhere near where they without BMW’s involvement, and neither would the UK be building 4 cylinder engines either for the MINI, 1, 2 and 3 series.
Excellent write-up up, Roger!
Thanks for taking the time and shedding some light on this long forgotten car.
Living close to a Rover / MG / Jaguar dealership back in 2000 I remember how weird it was to see this car coming totally out of the blue. There was no anticipation built up for this on.
And then it seemed like it was gone as fast as it came. I dont even remember ever seeing one in person.
The same old story,not good enough and there were plenty better cars to be had for the same(or less) money.A sad end to a once great car maker.There’s a lot of similar themes(not enough money for a completely new car,use as much of an obsolete model as possible and hope no one notices, something BL were experts in), with many other car makers.Few people are going to be fooled by a cheap car in drag(the Packardbaker was a good example nearly 50 years previously).
Thanks Roger for another great read.
Sorry Gem, but Rover has never been a ‘great’ car maker by any means. Some good models alone, long looong ago, do not make a good car maker. Rover had been a sorry left-over of the equally sorry Leyland bankrupty inventory with no proper, home developed product line or research and development to speak of for decades. Still rebadging Hondas till the very end. Not sure what drove the Phoenix Four in their endeavours to save this dead enterprise, probably selfless ‘Britain-rules-the-waves-nostalgia’. Not unlike SAAB, that was dead long before its eventual demise.
I’d suggest there were some great cars in Rover’s history.
Thinking postwar, the 2000 P6 and the SD, the LAnd-Rover and the Range-Rover are all on the list, as well as thevstillbirn P6BS sports car. OK, the SD1 was a BL product, but it was essentially ‘Heritage Rover’ with David Badge styling and the Buick V8.
After that, nothing truly memorable though
Carolus Magnus – you’re opening a debate about what makes a “great” car maker, and I wonder how far back you’re actually looking.
The “Phoenix Four” were essentially asset strippers, “selfless” is definitely not the word. They ran the company into the ground while paying themselves big salaries and building massive pension pots.
I watched a documentary featuring Towers during his first spell at Rover. He came across not just as a standard clueless management type, but actually extremely dim.
Thought that I’d chosen too negative a tone for some, but I am glad that you correct me there. Thanks for picking up my other point. Indeed, all too often and easily car makers are called ‘great’ for no other reason than… Well, that’s the question. A couple of good ideas in the past maybe. Rover itself hadn’t been an independent manufacturer with proprietary resources for ages. Hardly more than a badge in the BMC-Leyland portfolio since the early eighties. And many people will happily contest the alleged brilliance of the SD. A beautifull car it was, but also underdeveloped from a technological point of view. Its only home developed products were the original Mini and Land Rover, both half a century old and already owned by other parties. Outside the UK, the Rover demise occured largely unnoticed.
“Outside the UK, the Rover demise occured largely unnoticed.”
You’re probably quite correct there. Although some Aussies with British sympathies may have wanted the new incarnation of Rover to succeed (and one bloke I know actually went so far as to buy a 75), so far as the majority of us were concerned, Rover vanished when Leyland Australia imploded back in the seventies. Although some later models were sold, if you knew where to find a dealer, they’re a very rare sighting today.
Always interesting to read about cars we never saw!
I dont think Ive ever seen one of these though plenty of Rhondas survive here and 75s are still fairly common quite a few came into NZ ex JDM imported by Rover dealers no less my BIL had a couple as company cars as well as smaller Peugeot diesel engined Honda derived cars.
Looking at the pictures, I thought for sure we were going to read that this was a lightly re-styled FIAT product.
It also goes a fair way to explaining how Tata wound up with Land Rover-Range Rover.
BTW, the story goes that the CEO of BMW in the 80s-90s had a fondness for British sports cars. While another story says BMW bought Land-Rover to gain insight into building the best luxury 4x4s. I suppose it’s possible BOTH are true as BMW bought and turned around the MINI brand and at one point (perhaps they still do?) BMW owned the rights to the Triumph brand as well as a few other, more obscure brand names from the BL portfolio.
Incidentally, the Chinese are building and marketing an MG sedan that went on sale in Europe about a year ago….so something occurred to MGR that got MG into Chinese hands.
The Chinese bought the tooling from the bankruptcy court and hired the workers back for a few weeks to disassemble the tooling for shipment to China. A sad end. The MG name came with it. The current Chinese owners have stated that MG stands for modern gentleman. A sad end.
Thanks for the writeup. Given how totally broke Rover was by the time these came to market, it is amazing that the City Rover happened at all. Getting a third world car through the certification process of a major country must have been quite a dance of Indians spending money to be in UK and Rover engineering expertise.
It was ashamed that it didn’t work. A small amount of extra money might have kept Rover going. The eco system of engineering, manufactoring, and design that comes with a full line automaker is so much better for a country than just a foreign owned assembly plant. Once gone almost impossible to bring back.
I’ve never been inside a CityRover, though I’ve seen a few of them around – always I have to do a double take – is it some French or Italian grey import? Oh no, it’s a CityRover.
I agree with Roger, it was much too little, much too late. It also attached the Rover name to a bottom of the heap car when, even towards the end (at least until Project Drive), there was some cachet, some memory of quality, attached to the marque.
If they’d done it properly, and made a virtue out of its low price, and built an unapologetically cheap car as a counterpoint to the overpriced MINI, maybe a name from the vaults would have earned more column inches – Austin Seven or Morris Minor, for instance. Or – with a nod to its Indian heritage – perhaps Austin Ruby!
A bargain price by itself never saves anything, in the long run. A modicum of quality and a degree of fitness to the marketplace ultimately have to coexist. Yugo and Hyundai are examples of both ends of the concept. It took Hyundai a long time to climb out of the rut of “cheap, crummy little car.” Yugo never did.
“During this time, India’s car market had been opened up; and the international players had all been keen to move into this most promising of new markets. The quaint idea (mainly held in Europe) that the Indians built and drove nothing but old British cast-offs like Hindustan Ambassador (a licence built 1955 Morris Oxford), the Hindustan Contessa (1972 Vauxhall Victor) or even the Standard 2000 (a Rover SD1 derivative) is an outdated one, thanks to the wave of new (and non-Indian) cars entering the market on the sub-continent.”
They were wrong. Everybody knows that folks in India drove Maruti 800s
Rover didn’t release any preproduction examples for the press to test drive; Top Gear got around it by sending James May to a dealership posing as a customer with an elaborate set of hidden cameras. Unfortunately, a quick glance around YouTube doesn’t find it but it’s worth seeking out if you haven’t seen it already.
Agreed!
Fascinating, as always, Roger, thank you 🙂 I’d actually forgotten this existed, and have never seen one – Rovers were sold in New Zealand right up until the bitter end, and every model was available except the CityRover. Having seen plenty of Tata Indicas whilst in India a few years ago though, I know we didn’t miss much in not getting the CityRover!
One thing though: MG still goes on, mostly Chinese made but also with some models assembled in Lobgbridge for the UK market. And they are making some really good looking cars, at least.
We also get the UK-assembled right-hand-drive new MG6 in New Zealand; they are indeed good looking cars, especially the hatch. The MG3 has recently been launched here too, someone local bought one, it’s got standout styling. Interior in both the 3 and 6 is heavy on the cheap plastic though.
MGR were paying as little as £3500 per unit for these turds and selling them for £7500 to £9000! People brought them and fight to keep them running.