RE: MG Rover closes its doors
Monday 18th April 2005
MG TF -- going cheap?MG Rover is no more. As you will know by now, the Longbridge car company has shut its doors, making 5,000 workers redundant, with more to come.
MG Rover closes its doors
5,000 redundant as government sets up inquiry
MG TF -- going cheap?
The government is to set up an inquiry to find out what went wrong but the answer is likely to boil down to a basic issue: MG Rover, two once-proud British marques, wasn't making cars that enough people wanted to buy. And the much-touted rescue deal from the Chinese Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) simply didn't happen.
Company administrators PriceWaterhouseCoopers, reckoned that the company was losing £20m to £25m a month and had liabilities of some £800m when it collapsed on Friday, after SAIC withdrew.
Today, the boss of Rover's parent company Phoenix Holdings, John Towers, denied irregularities, and sad he'd been the victim of character assassination. He said that accountants had been over the books and found nothing. This followed news that trade secretary Patricia Hewitt is ordering the City of London's top accounting regulator, Sir Bryan Nicholson, to set up and manage the inquiry.
At stake is an alleged £400m hole in the company's balance sheets, with come commentators suggesting that the money was used to pay the company directors large salaries and pensions.
There is a possibility that the immediate redundancy of the rest of the workforce may be avoided as the government has pledged £6.5m to pay salaries for a week. However, PH wishes those whose livelihoods depended on MG Rover the very best of luck.
From a buying perspective, the cars themselves are likely to fall in value but parts are available and will remain so, as MG Rover sold its parts business to Caterpillar some time ago.
Discussion
As I understand the situation, it's possible to resurrect the MG name. Would be nice if there was the prospect for a range of maybe two compact, semi-affordable sportscars to take on MX5s, or even S2000s and the upcoming Boxter tin top? Front-engine, rear-drive. If it could escape the bloat factor, could be a minor success...
A terrible shame. It would have been more excuseable if their cars were truly crap, but they weren't. I'd love to have a 75 or an SV-R in the garage. And those coupe concepts that debuted only a little while ago... the 75 coupe and the TF coupe.... those were among some of the most attractive shapes I've seen in a long time.
A regeneration of the MG brand would be good but this time some newly designed models rather than a bodykitted Rover 25, 45, 75 with a bright paintjob! I wasn't really a fan of the new MG range when it was released and thought what they did was a mistake but i'm sure they are nice enough to drive.
Does anyone else get the feeling that John Towers is being scape goated. I get the feeling that the government is getting bad publicity for not helping and that is the last thing a government can afford is bad publicity before an election. Quick blame John Towers then we cant be blamed for not assisting.....
Very quick and very efficient. (Didnt they do this to an innocent Dr. at the time of the gulf war)
Just reading between the lines...
Very quick and very efficient. (Didnt they do this to an innocent Dr. at the time of the gulf war)
Just reading between the lines...
gooby said:
Does anyone else get the feeling that John Towers is being scape goated. I get the feeling that the government is getting bad publicity for not helping and that is the last thing a government can afford is bad publicity before an election. Quick blame John Towers then we cant be blamed for not assisting.....
Very quick and very efficient. (Didnt they do this to an innocent Dr. at the time of the gulf war)
Just reading between the lines...
I agree but Towers is not blameless! The Unions should of looked at the longtime future of the area. The workforce was one of the best and cannot be blamed this time. The Alchemy bid was the only way forward 5 years ago.
The enquiry will certainly not find anything wrong with the government handling of the situation either recently or 5 years ago.
In my view MG Rover had a good range of cars, with the possible exception of the 45/ZS, but suffered an image problem - particularly with the press who were quick to criticise. By all accounts the ZT260 is a great drivers car, which with a different badge (eg bmw) would have been very desirable.
What went wrong and who was to blame? The answer starts with Donald Stokes in the 70's and more recently includes BMW, Stephen Byers and Tom Walkinshaw. Trouble is, it is probably too late unless MG can be saved as a sports car manufacturer.
In my view MG Rover had a good range of cars, with the possible exception of the 45/ZS, but suffered an image problem - particularly with the press who were quick to criticise. By all accounts the ZT260 is a great drivers car, which with a different badge (eg bmw) would have been very desirable.
What went wrong and who was to blame? The answer starts with Donald Stokes in the 70's and more recently includes BMW, Stephen Byers and Tom Walkinshaw. Trouble is, it is probably too late unless MG can be saved as a sports car manufacturer.
fiat-500-uk said:
I agree but Towers is not blameless! The Unions should of looked at the longtime future of the area. The workforce was one of the best and cannot be blamed this time. The Alchemy bid was the only way forward 5 years ago.
A business man does work in exchange for money or goods. John Towers is a business man. He never said he was a charity or would work as a charity. I know very little of how Towers ran Rover so I will not comment on his management decisions / style. I believe he owned the company (along with his consortium) so he could, withinn reason define his "salary" as long as it was properly accounted for.
This is not really the point, my objection is that as soon as the governement are found to be lacking they will find a scapegoat. I believe that Towers is the current scapegoat / sacreficial lamb.
I think what I want most out of a government is for them to take responsibility for thier inactions / actions.
At the time Towers and his companions took over Rover they where the only party in town and they each put up Personal Gaurantee's for not insubstantial sums. Yes he probably did pay himself a fair whack and I do feel sorry for his work force but without him they would have been out of work a long while ago, sometimes business's fail despite everyones best efforts. Towers getting hammered in the press is just going to put off the nest Peter Wheeler or whoever who decides to rescue a failing car builder.
andyps said:
What went wrong and who was to blame? The answer starts with Donald Stokes in the 70's .
Too true!
The unions shafted Austin in the '70s and the only chance they had of a decent recovery was when Honda wanted to buy 49% of them in the '90s and again the union refused to sign up for flexible working so the Japanese walked away.
Since then they've been on a slipery slope I'm afraid and it was just a case of when.
I have every sympathy with the people about to loose their jobs and I speak as a supplier who they owe several hundred thousand but I do think it was inevitable.
If the Alchemy bid had gone through there would have been more job losses at the time but it was at least a realistic plan and we probably would still have MG as a sucessful business.
This is the inevitable consequence of a company that was systematically asset stripped by every company that owned it from the mid 1980's onward.
BAE systems owned the company when I went to work for the Rover network in 1990. They sold off much of Rover/BL's property holdings and absorbed the revenues into their own companies. Thank you Mrs Thatcher, very kind of you....
There were a lot of very good people in the company, taking Honda castoffs and making desirable cars out of them (Rover 200/tomcat/ cabrio, 400 & tourer, 600). True we did still have the Maestro/Montego/Metro, but, mostly they died soon. They also developed the MGF, which was so nearly brilliant, but for the quality....
Where have we heard that before?
Then came BMW, fantastic we thought. A company that really knows about investment in the future by product development. And so they did.
They funded the New MINI and the Range Rover, then took the benefits and rolled them into the BMW range. MINI is a huge success under the BMW umbrella. The Range Rover provided the knowhow and experience for BMW to develop the X5 range, another massive success. Then they were able to sell off Range Rover and cover most of the costs of the "English Adventure".
I soon went BMW, I could see where this was going, the BMW developed 75 was a pretty good car but was never going to cut it long term. Bear in mind also that most volume sales in the last 4 years have been driven by Emissions legislation in the corporate markets, BMW are right on top of that game. Rover didn't even seem to know the game existed.
The ZR/ZT 260 was a great idea that just didn't have a market. As for the bloody Italian built special, with the dreamland price tag, or the indian built hatchback for more than a Fiat Panda, Perhaps we best forget them.
There will be a good location for the "missing" £400 Million
I am gutted to see Rover go under, but the Company hasn't had proper guidance for years. I left in early 1996. Nearly every car that they had then is still on sale today. That is negligent in the extreme and insulting of the buyers of Rover cars.
That is what brought BL down in the first place.
Phoenix simply saw an opportunity to do some more asset stripping, and took it.
BAE systems owned the company when I went to work for the Rover network in 1990. They sold off much of Rover/BL's property holdings and absorbed the revenues into their own companies. Thank you Mrs Thatcher, very kind of you....
There were a lot of very good people in the company, taking Honda castoffs and making desirable cars out of them (Rover 200/tomcat/ cabrio, 400 & tourer, 600). True we did still have the Maestro/Montego/Metro, but, mostly they died soon. They also developed the MGF, which was so nearly brilliant, but for the quality....
Where have we heard that before?
Then came BMW, fantastic we thought. A company that really knows about investment in the future by product development. And so they did.
They funded the New MINI and the Range Rover, then took the benefits and rolled them into the BMW range. MINI is a huge success under the BMW umbrella. The Range Rover provided the knowhow and experience for BMW to develop the X5 range, another massive success. Then they were able to sell off Range Rover and cover most of the costs of the "English Adventure".
I soon went BMW, I could see where this was going, the BMW developed 75 was a pretty good car but was never going to cut it long term. Bear in mind also that most volume sales in the last 4 years have been driven by Emissions legislation in the corporate markets, BMW are right on top of that game. Rover didn't even seem to know the game existed.
The ZR/ZT 260 was a great idea that just didn't have a market. As for the bloody Italian built special, with the dreamland price tag, or the indian built hatchback for more than a Fiat Panda, Perhaps we best forget them.
There will be a good location for the "missing" £400 Million
I am gutted to see Rover go under, but the Company hasn't had proper guidance for years. I left in early 1996. Nearly every car that they had then is still on sale today. That is negligent in the extreme and insulting of the buyers of Rover cars.
That is what brought BL down in the first place.
Phoenix simply saw an opportunity to do some more asset stripping, and took it.
flooritforever said:
In my view MG Rover had a good range of cars, with the possible exception of the 45/ZS...
The 45 maybe, but ever driven a ZS 180? They are very very good. And even people such as Jeremy Clarkson and Tiff Needell have said so.
No I haven't, and I am sure they drive well. I was really refering to the image of them pre the last face lift. It was a car which never appealed to me from when it was introduced as the Rover 400 - in particular I never liked the dash, but from the last face lift this was OK - I would actually consider one of those.
As regards the Maestro/Montego which have been mentioned, they were very good cars in terms of handling and performance. In the case of the Montego it was a much better drivers car than either the Cavalier or Sierra which were the direct competition then. Again though, the image was no good. I had a couple of Montegos as company cars and really enjoyed them, my Mum had a 2.0efi MG Maestro and that was a great car, bags of torque, great to drive, crap image. Even the great LJK Setright said they were at least asa good as the Golf GTi.
Oh well, I'll have to boycott Chinese manufactured products. Tough for the nipper, as most kiddies toys are made there now - but then I'll have more dosh to spend on wine and nice bits for the Griff.........
Seriously, I feel for the MGR workers, who did as much as they could to keep the ship afloat, and now face an uncertain future.
Seriously, I feel for the MGR workers, who did as much as they could to keep the ship afloat, and now face an uncertain future.
danmangt40 said:
A terrible shame. It would have been more excuseable if their cars were truly crap, but they weren't. I'd love to have a 75 or an SV-R in the garage. And those coupe concepts that debuted only a little while ago... the 75 coupe and the TF coupe.... those were among some of the most attractive shapes I've seen in a long time.
<fireproof overalls on>
most of their cars were truly crap, they kept tarting up the same old rover 200 from 1994, it became the rover 25 in year 2000, and then the MG ZR or whatever etc, god awful tat it was when it came out, let alone now.
They didn't keep things up to date, you can't change the headlights on a car that's 10 years old and call it "new"
rickos said:
A terrible shame. It would have been more excuseable if their cars were truly crap, but they weren't. I'd love to have a 75 or an SV-R in the garage. And those coupe concepts that debuted only a little while ago... the 75 coupe and the TF coupe.... those were among some of the most attractive shapes I've seen in a long time.
<fireproof overalls on>
most of their cars were truly crap, they kept tarting up the same old rover 200 from 1994, it became the rover 25 in year 2000, and then the MG ZR or whatever etc, god awful tat it was when it came out, let alone now.
They didn't keep things up to date, you can't change the headlights on a car that's 10 years old and call it "new"
Which ones exactly have you driven, and how did they compare to the similarly priced competition? Or is styling more important to you that having a "drivers car"
Also, how long has the 3/5 series BM been in production, getting minor facelifts now and again?
Unfortunately Brit's now seem to live in a society where foreign products are deemed superior and more fassionable than our own, despite the face that we have the best automotive engineers in the world.
Pete
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