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Rover and its Struggle with Identity

The Rover 200 on the left and the 400 below are examples of the direction Rover has taken in the last few years. Currently, Rover is experiencing a great deal of uncertainty but this section refers mainly to the last couple of years.

As the western world becomes wealthier in general, larger sums are being spent on cars.

These increased amounts spent on cars, be they business or domestic, mean greater sales of slightly more up-market vehicles such as the BMW 3 series in preference to the traditional medium sized cars like Ford Escorts. In order to tackle the changing market, Rover have looked back to earlier successes to bring through the suggestions of heritage and history in new models. The first detail to note is obviously the grill. It was noticed that the more prestigous car marques always carried through a variation of their trademark grill in their latest models. Companies like Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Rolls Royce rarely stray from this procedure, if ever.

Rover are using the MG brand to
revive the affordable British Sportscar

The characteristic grill and traditional form of earlier Rovers was lost in the seventies and eighties. As sweeping measures to consolidate and modernise the British car industry in the seventies went ahead, Rover simply became another marque lost in the all-encompassing British Leyland. In the eighties, Rover regained some of itsoriginal company structure, producing however, some very uncompetetive vehicles. For example, the Maestro, a medium sized hatchback produced until about 1991, was terrifically ugly and badly engineered. When it was launched, it came with a 1.3 litre variant which originated as a Morris Minor engine many decades before.

The recent launch of the Rover 75 represents, more than ever before, the desire of Rover to strengthen the brand. In fact, because of the very grave nature of Rover's finances, the 75 has been nicknamed the 'last chance saloon'.

The future of Rover will be determined over the next year or two. Hopefully the backing of BMW and carefully considered design of future vehicles will generate success for Rover.