British Leyland
The British Leyland Motor Corporation Ltd. ( BLMC ) and later British Leyland Ltd.. (BL), BL plc, Austin Rover Group and Rover Group, generally known as British Leyland, was a listed British conglomerate with a focus on the automotive industry. It was created in 1968 as the culmination of a wave of mergers of various competing vehicle manufacturers and 1975 had to be saved from collapse by nationalization in spectacular fashion. The rapid decline of the Group is mainly attributed to a number of unfavorable factors in the highly competitive as image-laden car sector.
It consisted of various manufacturers of cars, trucks, tractors, forklift trucks, military vehicles, various machines and sheet metal parts, refrigerators and printing products with more than 170,000 employees and made a large part of the British car industry out.
As part of the nationalization of the company has received numerous public funds to a considerable extent, was repeatedly renamed and restructured and eventually sold over the course of the 1980s successively to different investors. Above all, the passenger car sector has been significantly reduced.
History
Formation
The formation of British Leyland was the culmination of a long wave of mergers British automobile manufacturer. This showed in the first two postwar decades, despite steadily rising sales figures in many cases only small profits, because the product portfolio of many different models was carried out with only small numbers of what the rationalization of production hampered greatly. So at that time was particularly on the part of the British government to Harold Wilson hope to be able to counteract this negative trend by government pressure on corporations to merge into larger units to achieve higher volumes.
British Leyland was established in January 1968 by the merger of two car companies, notably the Leyland Motors Ltd.. ( " Leyland ") with the much larger British Motor Holdings Ltd.. ( "British ", abbreviated BMH ). Both companies had at that time already a number of acquisitions and mergers behind. So Leyland, originally a very successful manufacturer of commercial vehicles mainly, the premium manufacturer standard Triumph (1961 ) and Rover (1967 ) had taken over.
The British Motor Holdings, originally British Motor Corporation (BMC ) was back in 1952 resulted from a merger of the two rivals Austin and Morris and was associated with a 40% market share of the UK's largest automaker. Furthermore, the Group in 1965 was expanded to include the company Pressed Steel, the largest supplier of body panels and pressings of the British car industry, and in 1966 to Jaguar Daimler, a small but highly profitable and internationally successful niche manufacturer.
The path to bankruptcy (1968-1974)
Soon after the merger of the two companies turned out that only Leyland and Jaguar profitably worked, the area Austin / Morris and thus most of the passenger car sector but was on the verge of collapse. Factories and vehicle models were completely outdated, and the development of subsequent models was lack of funds largely remained. These two just launched models had proven to be a great failure.
Immediate and very hectic few new car models were then developed. Besides the fact that these new developments complement the model range, but could not replace, they proved again as mistakes. The vehicles were technically immature, very poorly finished and did not meet the customers taste, what the group quickly earned a bad reputation. The passenger car market share and thus the utilization of the factories took a few years off rapidly.
To make matters worse, that a number of established car brands were brought together under one roof by the merger, which had previously been partly bitter rivals, so that there was considerable rivalry within the group. Together with the Group-wide developments was opaque and doppelgleisiges for the customer product portfolio. This ultimately failed, the attempt to establish the name "British Leyland " as a unified umbrella brand.
Purpose, the group was very confusing and difficult to perform. Apart from the various competing sub organizations owned British Leyland at peak times on 40 different production sites, which were distributed over the whole of Central England, so that the production logistically complex and inefficient designed.
The problems in the passenger car sector led, in combination with überfordertem and completely zerstrittenem management, substantial bad investments, extremely problematic relations with the trade unions and chaotic conditions in production, the rapid decline of the entire group. The end of 1974, the Group was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Nationalization, refurbishment and re-privatization (1975-1988)
Since the government did not want to risk the uncontrolled collapse of the Group, with over 170,000 employees and the corresponding rise in unemployment, she opted for its nationalization. The company, which now British Leyland Limited ( BL) and later BL plc said, should be restructured on a proposal from a government commission to go, and the car sector through massive investment of over 1.5 billion ( as provided for in 2013: 9 billions ) British Pound Sterling modernized and expanded.
However, the expansionary plans in the passenger car sector proved very soon to be completely unrealistic. Instead, the Executive Committee under Michael Edwardes (1977-1982) had to take the path of consolidation and shrinkage. The product range has been streamlined and almost all brands have been gradually phased out until 1986 basically only Rover remained. In addition, the unions were overthrown with the support of the Thatcher government, replaced large parts of the middle management and production concentrated in a few locations. Many factories have closed and laid off tens of thousands of workers. Through a joint venture with the Japanese automaker Honda, it was also possible to catch up with the technological gap and bring relatively quick -to-date and at least relatively attractive vehicle models with high production quality on the market.
This process was accompanied by the gradual sale of almost all other business areas. The bus business was sold to Volvo, Jaguar went to Ford, the truck production at DAF, the van division became independent under the name of LDV, and the Department of Military Vehicles ( Cars Alvis ) was delivered to United Scientific Holdings. The sale of the remaining car division to the British Aerospace ( BAe ) in 1988 finally marked the end of the era of operating under the name now as Rover Group BL as a state-owned company.
However, the remediation car division observers it was only partially successful in spite of all efforts. Still, the factories were not fully utilized, which was mainly due to the lack of export orientation of the company. Because the share of the UK car market had declined by 1987 to almost 15 %, and the lack of expansion of the dealer network, especially in continental Europe did not allow to compensate for the lack of sales on the domestic market through exports, as was the case with other manufacturers.
Participating companies
Here is a list of companies and brand names that were united under British Leyland. The date corresponds to the date on which the name was used for the first time. Often this information is not clearly determined. The list is broken down by the current owners of the trademark (as of 2009 ).
Trademarks today: PACCAR Corp..
Trademarks today: BMW
Trademarks today: Nanjing Automobile ( Group) Corporation
Trademarks today: Tata
Trademarks today: BAE Systems
Trademarks today: BSA Regal Group
Trademarks today: British Motor Heritage
Trademarks today: FIAT
Combinations
Spin-offs
The main models of BL and BMC to 1986
Trivia
- Because of these difficulties and quality problems, the name British Leyland in the German language was often British verballhornt misery.
- CEO Michael Edwardes described his time at British Leyland in a book as " apocalyptic experience ".