British Leyland

[sayers]

This is kind of a series question and I was not sure where else to post... so. I have run into some MG owners. They have gone on about how MG was the only car division in the BL group that was making money and supporting the other car divisions (rover, triumph, etc. ) I thought that I had read somewhere that it was Land Rover that supported the others, is this right. If so, does anyone have any knowledge if this is printed somewhere so that I can maybe get a copy. thanks in advance.

[Dubv1980]

Thats a tough question, and I imagine it changed depending on what year you were talking about. Well for one thing, Land Rover is profitable now, and is helping to prop up Ford. I know it was profitable for Rover prior to the BL merger and I imagine it was profitable for BL too. I think MG was the most successful of the BL "car" brands, as they never had the labour trouble that Triumph and the others had. Good question.

Chris

[Mad_Dan_Eccles]

This is kind of a series question and I was not sure where else to post... so. I have run into some MG owners. They have gone on about how MG was the only car division in the BL group that was making money and supporting the other car divisions (rover, triumph, etc. ) I thought that I had read somewhere that it was Land Rover that supported the others, is this right.

MG may well have been one of the few profitable divisions, but I'm not sure how consistent this was over all the various models or over the years.

For example consider the 1000/1300 series cars which were good cars for the time and market they were aimed at and sold in the millions. However due to pricing pressure from cars like the contemporary Ford Escort, BL found it necessary to sell every one at an average of a ten pound loss. What I don't know is whether this figure relates to just the base Austinmorris Model or also the "premium" Wolseley, Riley and MG versions

Land Rover were consistently profitable in the BL years - in the middle 60s they reportedly had a 1/3 market share *worldwide* and while that declined over then next 15 years they never suffered from a serious shortage of paying customers, which is what plagued other divsions. The problem for Land Rover and was that their profits went into propping up the other operations so no real money was made available for improving the Land Rover product for far too long.

To be fair to BL, the old Rover Company also found that L-R profits could be used to good effect in funding development of cars like the P6.

Documentation for much of this is to be found in old BL annual reports, but to fully substantiate it would reuire an accountancy team

[sayers]

thanks for the help.