(first posted 9/25/2015) From the late sixties on, BL and Austin-Rover consistently struggled to find any meaningful and lasting success. To be fair to them, they did try. How about the Austin Allegro – technically advanced with modern, styling? The Morris Marina – a no-frills, high-value offer to beat Ford? The Princess – space, comfort and style? Or the Austin Maxi – space, flexibility, but compact? All failed, to one degree or another. Rover’s relationship with Honda was a key turning point, and with the first Rover 200 (SD3), that elusive success finally began to blossom. And with its successor, the R8 Rover 200 series, one can make a plausible case that in 1989 Rover had finally found genuine success. Would it last?
The key challenge for the Rover 200 series (214, 216 and later the 218 and 220) was that it had to replace both the 1983 Austin Maestro and the 1984 Rover 213/216 SD3. It was the second time BL looked to reduce its multiplicity of models in a similar size/price range. Just as the 1984 Austin Montego and Honda based 1981 Triumph Acclaim, had been part of a plan to reduce the BL range from three mid size cars to two, the 200 range, with the very closely related four door 414 and 416 versions which would replace the 1984 Austin Montego, was intended to reduce this to just one, and gain benefits from the increased focus of the volume. BL was finally starting to getting serious about its problems with overlapping models.
But by 1987, BL had to face the fact that the Maestro and Montego were not a success, in sales or profits, and that the Rover 213/216 SD3, based on the 1983 Honda Civic, was outselling them both by 1987. Austin-Rover needed to a mimic the image and pricing strength of the Golf, not the Vauxhall Astra, and achieve higher prices from lower volumes. Austin-Rover’s partnership with Honda was the key ingredient to make this possible.
Austin-Rover had another trump card as well – the long waited K series engine was finally ready. This was a 1.4 litre twin overhead cam four cylinder 16V engine with some innovative features in its construction was initially a 1.4 and soon grew to 1.6, 1.8, and later 2.0, and even a 2.5 litre V6 variant as well . It was quickly and widely recognised as smooth, reasonably quiet, powerful for its size and economical. It later gained a reputation for head gasket failures as well.
The K series enabled Rover to differentiate the car from the Honda, claim more ownership of the engineering, and make more money from it than they would have otherwise. Presumably because of the excellence of the K-Series engine, the British power units would arguably no longer be a weak link in the engine range; the K series was more than capable of standing toe to toe with the Honda engine, except for the head gaskets. Honda would supply the 1.6-litre engine for the 216 and 416 versions.
Visually, the new 200 is an almost perfectly scaled-down Ford Scorpio Mk1 (above) which had appeared four years earlier, from its nose,
to the blacked out pillars and glassed over C and D pillars to give the “floating roof” effect that the Scorpio had pioneered (above), as well as the crease along its flanks and its tail and tail lights. Quite the faithful tribute. Even the black rub strip down the side was just like the Scorpio’s.
The 200 is one of the cars that you could use to nominate Roy Axe as a superb copier or over-rated designer.
Because of the strong engine range and the Honda link, Rover felt that they would be in a position to back up their ambition of producing a “premium” range of medium sized cars.
After the £250 million expenditure on the K-Series engine, Austin Rover had no resources to produce their own gearbox, so following the example of the Maestro and Montego, which used a VW gearbox, the company outsourced a unit; this time from Peugeot. Unlike the installation in the earlier cars, however, Austin-Rover expended much effort in refining the package, producing their own well-engineered linkages and strengthening the casing in order to cope with the extra torque that the K-Series engine produced, compared with the Citroen AX and Peugeot 205.
Although the R8 Rover 200, like its predecessor, was heavily based on the then-current Honda Civic (gen4), the 200 and the Honda Concerto were an off-shoot of that car. The Concerto/200 had a longer wheelbase (100.4″ vs. 98.4″), which allowed them to be positioned a class higher. Also, Rover wanted some specific changes, the biggest one being a different front suspension design. The gen4 Civic introduced a double-wishbone front suspension that was widely praised in the US for its adroit handling if somewhat harsh ride.
Rover wanted a conventional strut front suspension, undoubtedly because it was cheaper, and likely made it easier to give a softer rider, more consistent with the premium image desired for the 200. The European Concerto also had the strut suspension, while the Japanese market Concerto used the Civic’s double wishbone front suspension.
The British Concerto (above) differed from the 200 by using Honda engines exclusively, except for the low volume diesel version, and having the typical visual differentiation you would expect, mainly in the front end, and sides, while the basic greenhouse upper structure was essentially identical. It was, however, assembled for the European market by Austin-Rover at Longbridge.
Although there are some differences (and the obligatory “wood” strip), the interior has a decidedly Civic-esque look. The combination of a modern efficient twin cam engine, good looks, good driving dynamics, modern interior and real (not just assumed) Honda-matching quality produced a car that had appeal to many who would not previously considered a BL or a Rover product, or had moved on from the brands. Was this sense apparent in the advertising?
This was a car that Austin-Rover worked effectively with Honda to produce a car that was arguably best in class. It was launched in October 1989 and was swiftly judged to be a technical success. The contemporary road tests tried very hard to conceal the fact that they hadn’t expected it, and maybe couldn’t believe it. But the verdict was pretty clear – Austin-Rover had a car that deserved to be compared with the best in its class.
It was followed in April 1990 by the four-door 400 series, which shared a very large amount of the engineering; all four doors and everything forward of them. This was not quite the star the 200 was – it seemed to be slightly small for what Rover wanted it to be (it was smaller than the Montego) and less well qualified to take on the larger Ford Sierra and Vauxhall Cavalier than the 200 was to take on the Escort, Golf and Astra. Austin-Rover had seemingly done their usual trick of slipping between the competitors’ size templates.
One variant to note is the Rover 416GTi – fitted with the twin cam Honda engine and a full British wood and leather luxury interior; it was the top of the range at the time. It was also a slightly contradictory package, with a high-revving engine and low gearing matched to a luxury, not sports interior, and with a GTi, rather than, say, the previous car’s Vitesse badge, or indeed almost anything else. It was not a true Golf GTi competitor, but more of a brisk Rover in the old-school sense.
The R8 was the first mid-market car for which Austin-Rover did not need to make any excuses – it was class competitive straight out of the box and showed that Austin-Rover could not only still produce a fully competitive mid market car, their first since the ADO16 a quarter of a century earlier, but that they could do so whilst leading market trends – things like the 16v twin cam engine, independent rear suspension, soft feel interior finishes and actually being brave enough to charge a premium over the centre of the market for the badge and sophistication. Any comparison with the lack-lustre 1990 Ford Escort could only go one way. The wood effect trim was influential as well, but we’ll let that pass….
Over the next four years Rover produced a total of six body styles for the R8 – five door and three door hatchbacks, the four door 400 saloon, a small estate badged as the 400 Tourer, a Coupé, known as the Tomcat and which came with unusual removable glass roof panels, and a convertible Cabriolet – a range that few could match. Apart from the 5 door hatch and 4 door saloon, the variants were specific to Rover and not shared with Honda. Some versions used Honda engines, as well as the 2.0 litre Rover M16, from the 1986 Rover 820 and Peugeot diesels. Rover later installed a turbo charged version of the M16 2 litre, to go Golf GTi chasing.
The drive train from the 1.6 and 1.8 litre cars was also used in the mid-engined MGF sports car of 1994, as well, and the K series engine saw service in the Rover Metro from 1990. All in, over a million copies were built at Longbridge (953,000 Rovers and 126,000 Hondas) in 6 years, numbers directly comparable with less closely related Maestro and Montego, and sold at a higher price. Like the SD3, sales were still rising when the car was replaced in 1995.
One noteworthy point about these Rover only variants is that they were produced using “soft” tooling, designed only for limited production runs, but significantly cheaper than regular tooling. It was the first time Rover had tried any such practice and the trend of reducing cost on tooling with a risk sharing partner, would feature strongly in Rover’s later history.
This car showed that Rover, could have a future, as something better to drive, that could be credibly perceived as being more upmarket, and priced commensurably more, than say a Ford, Vauxhall, Peugeot or Toyota, provided there was an additional layer of technical achievement and sophistication to go with the wood trim and Rover badging. Rover followed this up with a full range of body styles based on the same floor pan, before such trends really became commonplace.
There were two gentle freshening ups of the car, first in 1992 with larger front indicators, as seen on the feature car, and in 1994, the famous Rover grille was added to the 200, having been on the 400 since 1992. You may consider this an improvement, if you wish.
This is the last car from BL/Austin-Rover/Rover that can be considered an outright success, and the lack of a truly credible follow on is arguably a direct contributory factor of MG-Rover’s ultimate failure, and on that can be laid at the door of British Aerospace (BAe, now BAE Systems) and Margaret Thatcher’s government. Its success did enable BAe to sell Rover to BMW for a lot more than they paid the Government for it, though.
That is also the first clue to the key point in the next chapter of this tale. BAe did not invest heavily in new products – Austin-Rover’s advanced replacement proposals for the Metro were watered down, the Rover 600 was a licence agreement project, not much more complex than the Triumph Acclaim agreement, the Rover 400 HH-R had much more limited Rover input than its predecessor and the Rover 800 was revised, not replaced like its Honda Legend cousin. And ultimately, the implications of that policy came home to roost.
I shoulda got the clue there was a convertible around the corner from me, these were the cars my BIL got issued when he was at Rover City the diesel engine version of this car Pug engines were fitted the 1750 or there about bottom of the XUD range, funny how the Japanese and Brit versions differ, a nightmare for Kiwi owners of Jap used imports.
Very smart motors in their day. A friend of mine got one near to when they first came out; the ambiance was a huge step up from his previous Chrysler Horizon. The doors sounded solid when shut and the interior not only looked, but felt good. I always thought they looked like an alternative modernisation of the original Mk.III Ford Escort, but I can see what you mean about the Granada/Scorpio. On that basis the 400 saloon was more of an Orion rival than a Montego replacement, but without the gawky looks.
I never noticed the similarity between the design of the Rover 200 series hatchback and the design of the Ford Scorpio hatchback until now – interesting!
The resemblance is incredible. Actually, from the front three-quarter view, this Rover looks a bit to me like a Scorpio crossed with a U.S. 2nd-generation Ford Escort 5-door (based on the Mazda 323).
I owned a ’92 214GSi in the in ’90s, and can safely say it was the most unreliable car I’ve ever owned (trumping a variety of Alfas and Citroens!). I needed something more reliable and economical than my BMW 528i, and was seduced by the bright, modern and airy interior, the good ride / handling compromise, the sharp looks etc.
In the three years I owned it, I probably had six good months out of it, due to the three failed alternators (one shearing it’s bolts in the block), two failed gearboxes, and various other gremlins (but never a head gasket!). In the end I gave it away to a friend who ended up scrapping it, at less than eight years old. Such a shame, as it could have been a good car.
The bad side (assuming there is one) of these cars is that they were the final proof that the old BL-Rover/MG was incapable of producing a competitive automobile on their own. Rover had to be teamed up with a more competent manufacturer to be able to survive.
Unfortunately, they were sold to the wrong outfit. British Aerospace was interested in making money, but not terribly interested in developing automobiles. And those brief, shining Honda years would give way to BMW ‘management’ (aka, lets produce a nice car, but nothing that could compete with the mother product, and, strip out the really good marques while we’re at it).
And then it got worse.
BAE Systems is a big player in the US aerospace market, because, to paraphrase Al Capone, “That’s where the money is.” Its management is firewalled from the parent company to keep US-Only program info away from those treacherous Brits☺.
Re the Japan?/Britain connection, while Japan looked to Britain in the past for naval & automotive inspiration, it also went the other way: the RN’s Sir William Pakenham was on board an IJN warship, as observer, during the Russo-Japanese War. His report motivated development of the HMS Dreadnaught.
Interestingly, the HMS Dreadnought, which was built and launched in 366 days and was the spark for the naval race which was a contributing factor to World War One (the Kaiser had belligerent dreams of naval dominance), was refitting during the Battle of Jutland and was deemed too slow and unprotected to be with the Grand Fleet. Ironically, for most of the war she was relegated to coastal defense duties as the leader of the pre-dreadnought battleships she’d rendered obsolete. Her only success was to ram a U-boat.
The conceptually identical USS South Carolina came shortly after the Dreadnaught, but lacked a steam turbine & was 3 knots slower. That was a gutsy choice on Britain’s part.
The 15″ gun introduced on the Queen Elizabeth class was another gutsy move, approved by Winston Churchill, who risked his career for it. It was Britain’s last & biggest battleship gun.
HMS Furious mounted two 18 inch guns in WW1. She was later coverted into an aircraft carrier on which my father served in WW2. They flew off their swordfish to attack Tirpitz, ferried Spitfires to Malta. It had quite an eventful life that ship.
I thought the “That’s where the money is” line came from bank robber Willie Sutton, in response to being asked why he robbed banks.
I can’t look at one of these without thinking of Keeping Up Appearances.
“Richard, dear, mind the lorry…”
“Minding the lorry Hyacinth”
I have to think nobody would ever call a kid Hyacinth after watching that show!
Nice cars, drove them a lot in the early 90s. For reasons best known to themselves management at work replaced them with awful Montegos after 2 years.
What a come down from the P4, P5, P6, and SD1. Prime Ministers rode in those. The Bucket woman rode in these.
The Civic was a good car, perhaps this generation the best of all. So a twin cam, a softer ride, and Scorpio/ Cutlass/Saturn styling and a strip of wood make it better right. No, not to me. I perhaps would not be so negative if they called it an Austin or a Morris.
Even then, Ford and Vauxhall would have cars adopted to British markets needs from their international platforms. Austin/Rover could have done something actually designed for UK with a unique feel. This then unique offering could be exported in a way that Vauxhall or English Ford could not giving other markets a new option where before there was none. Quality and labour would always be a challenge, but with management talent and tight financial controls it could have worked. We will never know that answer as Austin Rover had already surrendered.
Thanks Roger for the detailed write up.
I always thought Richard and Hyacinth drove a Triumph Acclaim and not a Rover? The car driven by the Buckets looked like the older/more “square” Civic clone of the mid 80s and not this car.
As far as Rover not being able to engineer or design a car on their own, that makes it sound like they couldn’t build a car without significant input from another car company because the ability just didn’t exist. Not to defend Rover or BL, but the available funds were VERY limited. It might be more accurate to say that the Austin Allegro proved BL was incapable of designing a decent small car on it’s own.
BTW, if you think of BL as the U.K.’s AMC, this series of Rover is their Hornet/Concord/Eagle.
I think you’re right, the ‘Bouquets’ had a Rover 213 or 216 Vanden Plas, which was based on the Honda Ballade (booted Civic).
The Acclaim was off a 2nd gen Civic. The Buckets’ car was a Rover, a badge engineered 3 gen Civic. Austin Rover, ex BL and future Rover Group was the last truly domestic British volume manufacturer. That they by the eighties were not able to field a uniquely British offering left a new generation with fewer choices. The same is happening now in Sweden with Saab gone and Volvo fading into the abiss of the Geely parts bin. Cars from different countries used to reflect where they came from. I was a big fan of that. I don’t want American cars copying Japanese, or French cars copying German and when Chinese cars mature, I want them to reflect on Chinese ideas, not bad photocopies of someone else.
This car isn’t their Hornet, it is their Alliance. And for that they do not win a Medallion from me.
Beat me to it, John C! This was Rover’s AMC /Renault Aliance/Encore. (But I do like those.)
Indeed…
One of my favorite episodes is the one in which Hyacinth and Richard take a Rolls-Royce for a test drive.
I’m not familiar enough with British cars to pick out the specific model but I was getting a Ford vibe from the pictures before it was mentioned in the text.
I’m the former owner of a 1970 Rover 3500S. In so many ways it was a great car, other than reliability and assembly quality. I never drove it as a daily driver, the risk of being stranded was too great.
In two sentences you have just defined the post-60’s British car industry.
The few Honda-Rovers sold here in New Orleans looked awesome when introduced, esp the interiors. More than a few, with an updated version of the classic color of British Racing Green, with caramel colored leather interior and a uptown classy fake(?) wood dashboard, caught my eye.
Unfortunately, they quickly succumbed to the dreaded English disease of the ghost of Lucas electronics.
Three years later they were found moldering in back of various auto repair lots.
Apparently Japanese technology could not overcome English electronics “tradition”.
That speaks more of american mechanics incompetence than anything Lucas may have done, Honda electrical gremlins are quite common.
The gremlins must be asleep in mine; I had none in my ’88 Accord which I kept for 150kmi & 16 yrs, & none in my ’10 Civic either. I know of no one who’s had problems on this front.
The Japanese had a tough nut to crack: American racism, Pearl Harbor, & the Bataan Death March. They had to be good.
I do blame Honda for putting their oil-filter on the rear of the engine, facing the firewall. Toyota does better than this.
The electrical gremlins in my 18 year old Civic seem to stem mostly from deterioration of plastics….a common Honda problem as the car passes 10-15 years of age. The “tabs” on the headlight housing get fragile with age. And I had the plastic parts in the brake switch and the neutral start switch crumble recently. Both easily fixed. What I can’t fix, though, is the dome light switch on the driver’s door.
And one more point: if the electrical system is reliable, the competence of mechanics makes no difference, for they have nothing to deal with aside from the battery & charging-system checks, which any parts store flunkie can do.
Yet electrical systems that give little to no trouble at all to most owners always seem to fail for American owners, Why is that? I put it down to incompetence by the people called on to make the repairs.
Gee, my experiences with American cars….in America is that most folks can’t or won’t replace light bulbs. Not that I blame them as manufacturers seem to make it harder and harder to change a bulb.
More “involved” problems? I had a 78 Zephyr that developed a charging system problem that no mechanic seemed to be able to diagnose. Of course, the car had 150,000+ miles on it, and one of those integrated voltage regulators/alternators. A Pontiac J2000 with a “similar” problem needed a new alternator. I had to convince the mechanic I even had a problem as once again the problem could not be duplicated by the mechanic.
And that’s about it in 45 years of driving and the experiences of my large extended family are similar…so yeah, those American cars are filled with electrical gremlins….please note sarcasm.
In my experience, problems with American cars are NOT usually electrical in nature. Transmission or engine? Maybe, but most electrical problems are usually linked to the emission controls/various on-board computers.
Electrical systems aren’t like engines, requiring periodic maintenance, other than batteries & charging-system checks. If they’re good, they can be ignored (as I did with my Hondas, being a Dumb American). If they’re bad, then they need attention.
Not much on ownership of British cars, but heavy on British motorcycles, and the “dreaded Lucas disease” is invariably way overstated. Most people who put great faith in the “prince of darkness” belief are invariably forgetting: 1. Said components are forty years old, plus. 2. Almost invariably, problems with Lucas after supposedly “fixing” the problem are due to the usual shade-tree mechanic fudging the repairs due to either not knowing how to fix it properly, or refusing to spend the necessary money to do the repair properly.
No, Lucas electrics weren’t as good as the Japanese equivalent. That’s because Lucas quit developing their components which, at one time, were state of the art. And let the Japanese walk all over them.
The only Rovers I’ve ever seen are those huge square monstrosities which seem to be a response to the Humvee. I’d have been very curious about a small one, but I’m sure the consumer magazine which shall not be named would have savaged and pummeled this car over the defects.
I know from previous pieces that Roger is no fan of The Grille, but I seem to recall they were added to the 200 as a result of dealer/consumer insistence. There was a moment, in about 1992, when Rover’s reputation was at probably its highest point since BLMC was created in 1968. The R8 200/400 were good cars, period; the 600 was handsome, if uncertain of its role in the market; the 800 was the best-selling executive car in the UK; the Mini had been re-Coopered and was cool all over again; and Land-Rover’s Discovery was pointing the way to a whole new market. And for the Rover marque, the grille and veneer strips drew all of this together.
Of course, it couldn’t last, for all the reasons cited above, specifically being serially owned by the wrong people. The R8’s replacements were decidedly worse, in a replay of following ADO16 with the Marina and Allegro. The 600 drifted into oblivion. The 800 became an old laughing stock. When the 75 was introduced, it was a fine car in many ways, but occupied a curious styling/size niche, and was torpedoed at birth by BMW.
Rewind to 1992 and posit a full partnership with Honda – then what might have happened?
That’s a pretty neat précis of the last 15 years of Rover.
Thank you! I realised I’d left out the Metro/100, which by 1992 was far from a market leader, but had been updated and had a useful market niche.
We left the UK to live in the US from Jan 94-Jun 96. When we left, Rover was looking good. When we came back, it was pretty much doomed. It all came apart so quickly.
I have read the Granada Mk3 (aka Scorpio) comparisons before and tend to agree with this when you look at the 5-door hatch. The 3-door hatch borrowed more heavily from the Sierra 3-door – not the standard model or the Cosworth versions that had a huge rear window – but the XR4i bodyshell that had a C-pillar at 45 degrees running through that rear window. Borrowed from Ford who apparently were inspired by the Porsche 928.
Surprisingly, the Rover 200/400 Turbos were quicker to 60mph than the Sierra RS Cosworth (and nearly as quick as the Sierra RS 500 Cosworth).
Meanwhile at the time these Rhondas were on the market Honda was rebadging Landrover products for the JDM until Isuzu offered them its range of SUVs, and the badges are laughable Honda twin cam technology stickers on a Honda Horizon refer to the Isuzu twin cam V6 its powered by.
Pssst Bryce… those rebadged Land Rovers were a sympathy move by Honda for a partner who was buying a lot of technology from them… a polite way of giving Rover a discount and a break. A chance to wiggle into the Japanese market without the almost impossible task of luring in dealers.* The rebadging was sort of an unstated promise to Japanese customers that the electrics had been gone through and that no matter what sundry problems a Japanese customer had with his Rover, Honda would assure parts and service availability.
Toyota did a similar thing for GM somewhere around the time GM started buying V-6 engines to put in Saturn SUV’s. Those were called Toyota Cavaliers. They did sell a few of those, although at what final price I have no idea. I’ve actually seen one on the street in Tokyo, but never any of the Honda-ized Land Rovers.
https://global.toyota/en/detail/7908018
*I suppose YANASE might have brought in a few for those who hadta have one but not any number of actual Rovers.
We only got the wishbone-suspended Honda Concerto down here, and it wasn’t considered anything special, being a bit bumpy and over-priced. A pity we didn’t see any 200 series at all.
You do have to wonder why BL mucked about strengthening Pug ‘boxes, given that Hondas were pretty much the best FWD ones in the business. Must have been a cost consideration.
Surely there was dubious behavior involved in British Aero getting Rover for 150k GBP in 1988? They sold it on to BMW in just 1994 for 800K GBP, and one reason for the sale was that Rover was costing BAe too much money! Typical of such coat-of-paint, rip-off ownership that they spent bugger-all on development. BMW don’t make many mistakes, business-wise: can’t help thinking they were duped too. No doubt the interim owner heads were acclaimed as brilliant visionaries, winners, philanthropists, wonders of the world etc in their time. Pity about those loser Rover employees for whom there was no company at all within ten years, huh.