Tell me about British Leyland
Discussion
iSore said:
You could say Gerald Palmer was a better designer. He had his work of genius (Jowett Javelin) and designed some other intresting stuff, some of which was too advanced for BMC's crude manufacturing techniques. The MGA Twin Cam engine and the Riley Pathfinder are two. The Z Magnette was his and what a cracking thing that was. BMC replaced that with a f
king A60 based Farina shed. It wasn't just Issigonnawork? but BMC's generally clueless management.
Palmer was a great loss to BMC (he was chucked out on very spurious grounds by Len Lord in order to free up a space at the top for Issigonis to bring Issigonis back from Alvis). The Javelin proves that he had the same capabiltiy for forward-thinking and innovation as Issigonis but he had a more grounded, less self-centred outlook on the process and was willing to work with and around other people. Palmer was always willing to adapt this thoughts for the need of project at hand, while Issigonis looked on each car as an ultimate expression of his artistic endeavour. So when Palmer was given a free hand he came up with the Javelin. It is worth pointing out that the Javelin had all the features that Issigonis had wanted to put into the Minor (torsion bar suspension all-round and a boxer engine) but was curtailed on cost grounds (and William Morris' grouchiness). And Issigonis and Palmer were close colleagues and friends in the Morris drawing office, so you wonder how much cross-pollination of ideas went on between them. But when Palmer had to work within limits he was able to use his own original ideas but adapt them to the purpose at hand, so you ended up with very good, very well-designed, very effective and very reliable cars like the MG Magnette and the Wolseley 6/90, and modernised versions of Issigonis' Minor and Oxford. king A60 based Farina shed. It wasn't just Issigonnawork? but BMC's generally clueless management.An ideal situation, I think, would have been to bring Issigonis back as 'chief engineer' or something, under Palmer as technical director. Issigonis didn't quite have the seniority in 1955 to have a spot on the board but Palmer did. Palmer seemed to be one of the few people that Issigonis would at least tolerate and Palmer understood Issigonis' working methods and how to get the best out of him. The result may have been a more cohesive and less idisyncratic range of cars which still had a technical edge over the competition. Or Issigonis may have walked out in about 1960 when he felt his genius wasn't being given its full credit. Either way I have a feeling it would have been better for BMC (and so BL) in the long term.
Sebastian Tombs said:
I formed a theory some time ago that Austin should just have been closed down some time during the late 60s. If you take Longbridge out of the equation - the weak management, fragile engineering, incompetent product planners, blind designers, militant workforce, terrible labour relations, the hoovering up of all the cash to feed the out-of-control Longbridge beast, etc, then the rest of the BL organisation was probably good enough to survive.
Austin was where the rot set in. It had a very modern single-site factory (Longbridge after its 1950 redevelopment) but that was about it. Engineering wise it had excellent engines (what would become the A-, B- and D-Series) but otherwise was pretty old-fashioned, still using seperate chassis for most of its products and hydro-mechanical brakes with fairly stodgy body design. But worst of all was the financial management (or complete lack thereof). Austin had almost no way of accurately accounting for how much each individual car cost to make and affixed almost entirely arbitary overhead costs to its calculations. Because Austin controlled almost its entire production chain (with very little reliance on external suppliers) it had very little incentive to trace costs because it never actually purchased most of its components - it just shipped them from one end of Longbridge to the other. Component costs were worked out based on the piecework value paid to the people who fitted them (how much they got paid per task performed) plus the rule-of-thumb overhead cost. So long as Austin as a whole was profitable there was no incentive to root out which parts of the operation lost money or could be made more efficient, and there was almost no way to find that out in any case. If profits began to dip they either upped production or readjusted the final price of the cars to make up the difference. It was a 'method' rooted in the days when Herbert Austin was hand-building cars in a shed, not a global modern company.The Nuffield Organisation was the complete opposite. It had a very inefficient production chain (something like 15 factories scattered around the Midlands, most of which were fairly old-fashioned) but its cars were generally a decade or so ahead of their Austin counterparts in terms of engineering and design, with the exception of the engines which were either old-fashioned sidevalves or expensive and unreliable OHC units. And Nuffield was incredibly well-run. Because William Morris began by assembling cars from entirely bought-in parts he had had very strict financial management and cost-control in place from day one, and that had been maintained as the business expanded. In 1950 Nuffield not only knew exactly how much each car cost to build, but how much each part of each car cost. It had an accurate account of its overheads and even factored in costings throughout the production chain for future warranty expenses, which Austin never did. They knew to the penny exactly where their money was being spent.
Unfortunately BMC was not a merger, but more of an Austin takeover. William Morris was getting old and had no heirs to pass the business to. He had semi-retired in 1937 and was much more interested in giving away is personal fortune to his charities. His main concern in the negotiations was that BMC would continue to honour the funding commitments to the Nuffield Foundations that he had put in place. By contrast Leonard Lord was out for blood, having been William Morris' protege until they had a falling out in 1938 (mostly when he learnt that Morris' retirement would not be total and he wasn't going to get the big seat just yet) and he went off to Austin, vowing to 'tear Cowley apart brick by bloody brick'. He took a few key Morris managers with him, all of whom had also felt hard-done-by Morris, so there was a lot of personal animosity at Austin when they got their hands on Morris.
This meant that Morris engineering and design was almost completely sidelined, with the Cowley design office becoming a testing and development outpost while all the real work was carried out at Longbridge. Even when management tried to play fair, the shambles of Austin's methods meant that it wasn't an equal fight. In 1952 there was a big project to pick which designs and parts from each side of the new business were going to be standardised. Complete Nuffield and Austin drivetrains were laid out in semi-assembled 'skeleton' form in the Longbridge styling studio, with paper tags attached showing the final, finish, total cost of each component. Unsurprisingly the Austin parts, with numbers picked largely from thin air based almost entirely on how much they cost in wages, came out abour 30% lower than the Nuffield equivalents, which were priced up to account for their raw material costs, their transport costs, their machining costs, their fitting costs, wage costs of assembly, profit margin and warranty expenses. Which is why, as well as the (much better) Austin engines the Morris Minor and Oxford received the (much worse) Austin gearboxes and rear axles, while the Austin Cambridge never received the excellent Morris front suspension (with telescopic rather than lever arm dampers) or the superb Morris rack and pinion steering.
Unfortunately, with Austin management dominant in BMC all these slapdash accountancy methods were carried over to the new company and a lot of them were inherited by BL.
AppleJuice said:
Why didn't BL slim down/re-engineer the engines to create a common range of powerplants:
...and trim down the number of brands:
BMC did, by adopting Austin engines and drivetrains throughout the range. The exception was the new six-cylinder C-Series engine to replace all the big-capacity engines inherited from Austin and Nuffield, which was designed by Morris Engines. While based on bad financial numbers, BMC's rationalisation plan was actually very sensible. By 1960 they had three standardised ranges of mass-produced car (the three 'Farina' platforms) all sharing common parts (with the Morris Minor being the exception). The sports cars all used running gear from the corporate bin. ...and trim down the number of brands:
What Leonard Lord never had the guts to do (and which he should have done) was slim down the number of badges. And he never did that because he didn't want to fight with BMC's dealer network. Because BMC inherited both the Austin and Nuffield dealer chains there was a lot of duplication, with even small towns having two or three BMC franchises. The distribution networks remained the same, so one dealer in town would sell Austin Cambridges while across the street one would sell Morris Oxfords (the same car with a different badge). Former Austin dealers sold Austin-Healey Sprites while ex-Nuffield dealers sold MG Midgets.Former Austin dealers sold Austin A40s, former Nuffield ones sold Morris Minors. At least Austin only had one badge. Nuffield also had to provide MG, Riley and Wolseley models, and all three were broadly the same. Certainly there was little real difference between a Riley and a Wolseley apart from those deliberately created by BMC marketing.
Riley should have been axed as soon as the Pathfinder ended production, if not before. The old difference between a Riley and Wolseley was that a Riley was bespoke, with its own chassis, engine and running gear, while a Wolseley was just a posh Morris. Once the Pathfinder ended production they were both just badge-engineered versions of standard BMC designs, making the more expensive Riley pointless. It's not surprise that ditching Riley was one of the first things that BL did when it was created.
But the dealers always needed things to sell. The massive dealer network gave BMC unprecedented national reach, and Lord knew that if he axed half the dealer chain those outlets wouldn't go away. They'd just change franchise to a competitor and take a lot of their customers with them - this is exactly what happened when BL did prune the dealer tree and a lot of the ones made redundant used the opportunity to take on a Datsun or Volkswagen franchise. So when a long-standing customer came in to trade in their Austin 1300 they drove out in a Datsun Cherry and never gave BL a second look.
As for why BL never grappled with the problem, if always had bigger fish to fry and when you are losing market share it's very hard to pitch to your shareholders that the solution is to close down half your dealer network.
Rationalising the product line was always going to result in job losses, which in the atmosphere of the time were always going to cause massive problems with the trade unions. When BL was created the incoming financial director, John Barber, identified 30,000 jobs that could be immediately made redundant by dropping parallel engine/transmission/component lines and amalgamating factories (there were bits of Coventry where a factory on one side of the street made bearings for Austin-Morris, while on the other side was a completely seperate factory, with duplicate overheads, building bearings for Triumph). The document he drew up proposed that those 30,000 job cuts would be acheived by natural wasteage, an agreed redundancy plan with the unions and redeploying workers between different sites.
The problem was that the document was leaked to the press before it even reached the BL board. The unions were always going to fight making 15% of the workforce redundant, but they were certainly going to fight any plan coming from John Barber. Because before he was at BL Barber had been the architect between the merger of AEI and GEC in 1967. That had also led to immediate 'rationalised' redundancies with a package of payments and rolling redundancies that had been agreed by the unions in advance due to it being better for the long-term health of the new company. And within a year that agreement had been broken by GEC management, which simply sacked most of the workers identified for redunancy overnight. So the unions as a whole were very sceptical of planned redundancy agreements, and especially those involving John Barber. When his BL proposal was made public they immediately called a strike action which crashed BL production to a halt. Donald Stokes was forced to retract a proposal which hadn't even been officially discussed by the board, giving a major moral and political victory to the unions and putting both workers and management on the defensive.
Sebastian Tombs said:
This was John Egan's belief and experience too. The workers wanted to do a good job. The union shop stewards on the other hand wanted to sabotage everything they could.
When Michael Edwardes took over he was given a standing ovation by the shop floor at the SU Carb factory after he promised to break the power of the shop stewards. And when he sacked 'Red Robbo' the Longbridge workforce supported the dismissal 14,000 to 600 votes. It's telling that when Tony Benn introduced Worker Representation to the BL board in 1976, the shop stewards vetoed his original idea, which was to implement the German system whereby the rank-and-file of each trade union represented within the factory would vote for a member of a committee which would gain representation on the board with voting powers. The shop stewards insisted that one of them would be elevated to board membership, chosen by the shop stewards voting amongst themselves. The actual worker had no say in who represented them, thus making the whole thing a farce.
Edited by 2xChevrons on Tuesday 20th February 15:20
Dr Jekyll said:
There is a rumour that the last Rover design of all eventually became the 1 series BMW.
The R50 Mini was the last Rover-designed car to be put into production. AFAIK the E87 etc was an all-BMW effort, although it may - or may not - have been influenced by the R30:
^ Opel Signum, anyone? ^
AppleJuice said:
Dr Jekyll said:
There is a rumour that the last Rover design of all eventually became the 1 series BMW.
The R50 Mini was the last Rover-designed car to be put into production. AFAIK the E87 etc was an all-BMW effort, although it may - or may not - have been influenced by the R30:^ Opel Signum, anyone? ^
) so for something almost identical to have cropped up in BL first seems to be beyond coincidence.Palmer was sacked on the pretext of some mild road test criticism of the Wolseley 6/90 gearshift. Which, when you consider that the 1959/60 Mini was basically unfit for purpose (they were junk) was very unfair.
A guy that rarely gets a mention is Joe Edwards. He nearly got the top job at BLMC, was a skilled manager with the ear of the workers but wouldn't report to Stokes. By all accounts he seemed to know what the problems with BMC were and how they could be fixed.
Stokes is often and incorrectly thought of as the villain of the the piece but Christ, would you want his job?
A guy that rarely gets a mention is Joe Edwards. He nearly got the top job at BLMC, was a skilled manager with the ear of the workers but wouldn't report to Stokes. By all accounts he seemed to know what the problems with BMC were and how they could be fixed.
Stokes is often and incorrectly thought of as the villain of the the piece but Christ, would you want his job?
swisstoni said:
AppleJuice said:
Dr Jekyll said:
There is a rumour that the last Rover design of all eventually became the 1 series BMW.
The R50 Mini was the last Rover-designed car to be put into production. AFAIK the E87 etc was an all-BMW effort, although it may - or may not - have been influenced by the R30:^ Opel Signum, anyone? ^
) so for something almost identical to have cropped up in BL first seems to be beyond coincidence.
More safely than this:
Ali G said:
There should be a lot of love for Triumph 
2500 straight six twin carb estate - lovely.
BMW is the German Triumph these days.
"If only!"
Here Here! Although my old Triumph was built during the "dark days" in 1971, it was still a good car at 37 years old (when I had it). It's a shame the 2000/2500 range didn't get further development. Who knows what could have been?2500 straight six twin carb estate - lovely.
BMW is the German Triumph these days.
"If only!"
Triumph Man said:
Ali G said:
There should be a lot of love for Triumph
2500 straight six twin carb estate - lovely.
BMW is the German Triumph these days.
"If only!"
Here Here! Although my old Triumph was built during the "dark days" in 1971, it was still a good car at 37 years old (when I had it). It's a shame the 2000/2500 range didn't get further development. Who knows what could have been?2500 straight six twin carb estate - lovely.
BMW is the German Triumph these days.
"If only!"
I'll admit there is a bit of BMC bias in my classic car preferences, but I've always found the Standard-Triumph/Leyland side of the business to be the seat of some of the most stereotypical awfulness. Triumphs really plumb the depths of terrible build quality and they are always full of corner-cutting and cheapness.
The concept of a 2500 Estate is great, but that straight six has a bottom end that will last 50,000 miles, thrust washers that were underspecced when they were designed for an 803cc four-pot, a radiator about 25% too small, a gearbox that was designed in 1949 (and feels it) and it won't have power steering. Then you have the Herald (looks good, nice gearchange, tiny turning circle, but rattly, flimsy, underpowered shoe of a car with stupid rear suspension), the Spitfire (same but more so) and the Vitesse and the GT6 (more so). All with rough all-iron OHV engines with weak bottom ends and fragile clutches.
The V8 and the Triumph slant-4 are more of the same. Why have angled head bolts? Why put the water pump at the top of the engine? Why only a simplex timing chain? Why position the engine so nearly half the fan is sitting below the level of the radiator so it does SFA? Why mount the steering rack on rubber mounts which perish?
The TR2-6 are solid, well-designed cars, as are the FWD Triumphs (1300 and 1500) and the pre-facelift 2000s but a lot of Triumph stuff is badly-designed, under-engineered nastiness. By contrast the BMC stuff is rarely a case of bad design but more bad execution (not to excuse things like the Mini's leaky floors, and they lost of the plot towards the end with the MGC, the Austin 3-Litre and the Maxi). The Farina trio, the MGB and Spridget, and even the FWD stuff (once past teething problems) were all sound designs let down by bad build quality. You don't find fundamentally bad engineering like the Triumph OHV's thrust-washers or crankshaft oilways in, say, the BMC A-Series, or cheap corner-cutting like the Herald's rear suspension in the Mini,
saaby93 said:
Dr Jekyll said:
Raygun said:
Another company that comes in for harsh criticism is Lucas but in reality they weren't that bad at all especially compared to what Italian electrics were like.
Praise indeed.Didnt they do Aerospace too?
ETA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Industries
wiki said:
In 1976, the militant workforce within Lucas Aerospace were facing significant layoffs.
Lucas Aerospace became Goodrich
LucasVarity was bought by TRW.
TRW was bought by Northrup Grumman for its space & defence division/contracts.
Northrup Gruman sold the automotive arm to the blackstone group as "TRW Automotive" including saddling it with all the debt from purchasing the whole company
TRW Automotive was bought by ZF two years ago.
As an aside, there's a few legacies from the BL days still evident in the UK automotive industry such curry being served in the canteens on Thursday (BL legacy I believe!)
Olivera said:
A friend's dad bought a Datsun 120Y estate brand new in the late 70s, it was scrapped after 11 months due to catastrophic and terminal rust. The driver's seat had gone through the floor and the entire underside was rotten.
He replaced it with a 4 year old Marina - no such issues.
Nice 'story' mate He replaced it with a 4 year old Marina - no such issues.
Great thread.
The 70s were the nadir. We had a couple of allegros, vile things especially once we got them at about eight years old. The Marina is a well documented dog. Yes, all 70s cars were a bit rubbish and rusty compared to now but honestly, what way round was your head to actually want an allegro versus a mark 2 escort or a chevette? Let alone the Japs. There seems to be more love for the Maxi and Priness but I have never driven either; the Princess certainly looked OK; and the SDi was quite ground breaking but I believe also prone to serious problems with it's new electrics?
Some better stuff in the 80s, the Metro was the first proper supermini and really revolutionary when it came out in 80. Problem was they were still trying to flog essentially the same car as the Rover 100 until 1998 when it was withdrawn after spectacularly failing the new NCAP crash tests.
I personally disliked the 213/ Maestro but the mid 80s escort was not much better; the Montego was a good work horse, especially in estate mode. And the 800/ Sterling was properly luxurious. The 600 though was my favourite, a joint effort with the Honda Accord I did monster miles in one and it was a good place spend many motorway miles. Looked pretty smart in the mid 90s as well, IMO
The last ones are apparently worth avoiding due to penny pinching as the finances detrioriated, but there are beards on here with much more info on this than me.
The 70s were the nadir. We had a couple of allegros, vile things especially once we got them at about eight years old. The Marina is a well documented dog. Yes, all 70s cars were a bit rubbish and rusty compared to now but honestly, what way round was your head to actually want an allegro versus a mark 2 escort or a chevette? Let alone the Japs. There seems to be more love for the Maxi and Priness but I have never driven either; the Princess certainly looked OK; and the SDi was quite ground breaking but I believe also prone to serious problems with it's new electrics?
Some better stuff in the 80s, the Metro was the first proper supermini and really revolutionary when it came out in 80. Problem was they were still trying to flog essentially the same car as the Rover 100 until 1998 when it was withdrawn after spectacularly failing the new NCAP crash tests.
I personally disliked the 213/ Maestro but the mid 80s escort was not much better; the Montego was a good work horse, especially in estate mode. And the 800/ Sterling was properly luxurious. The 600 though was my favourite, a joint effort with the Honda Accord I did monster miles in one and it was a good place spend many motorway miles. Looked pretty smart in the mid 90s as well, IMO
The last ones are apparently worth avoiding due to penny pinching as the finances detrioriated, but there are beards on here with much more info on this than me.
saaby93 said:
overunder12g said:
I bought a new TR7 in 1977
Picage
linkage
http://www.littledoggarage.com/tr77581.html
My Mum inexplicably loved the Maxi. She really wanted a hatchback, so she put up with the gearchange and with its frequent breakdowns. She had a green 1500, then a yellow 1750. She still had the yellow one when I was learning to drive. The gearstick's connection with the gearbox was uncertain and distant.
She had Minis before, which were OK. The Maestro that replaced the Maxi was not actually a bad car. It was a heck of a lot more reliable.
My Dad's BL experience was not great. He had a 2500PI in the middle of the oil crisis that was simply uneconomic to run on its mandated 5* petrol. He ordered a launch SD1 V8, which was so delayed that he cancelled it and bought an Audi 100 (he was replacing an Audi Coupe). His last BL car was a SIII XJ6 4.2. He wanted an XJ12, but was scared off by the fuel consumption. The Jag was a beautiful car in British Racing Green with black leather, but it was a bit of a dog. There would often be loose screws in the footwells. It was replaced by a 735i, the only thing about which we didn't like was the velour seats.
She had Minis before, which were OK. The Maestro that replaced the Maxi was not actually a bad car. It was a heck of a lot more reliable.
My Dad's BL experience was not great. He had a 2500PI in the middle of the oil crisis that was simply uneconomic to run on its mandated 5* petrol. He ordered a launch SD1 V8, which was so delayed that he cancelled it and bought an Audi 100 (he was replacing an Audi Coupe). His last BL car was a SIII XJ6 4.2. He wanted an XJ12, but was scared off by the fuel consumption. The Jag was a beautiful car in British Racing Green with black leather, but it was a bit of a dog. There would often be loose screws in the footwells. It was replaced by a 735i, the only thing about which we didn't like was the velour seats.
Gassing Station | Classic Cars and Yesterday's Heroes | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff