The Oncoming Storm's ideas are excellent and make a lot of sense, but there are still a number of problems. The major reliability problems (the gearbox problems with the Maxi, the Stag's horrible V8 engines, electrical problems, corrosion) haven't been handled here, and while that product list is much better, it does not solve the many problems BMH had. It was dying by 1968, and while the engineers were not fools, the management wasn't good, the incredibly-militant workforce is a big problem, antiquated facilities (and poor siting) are an issue and there is no way in hell you will get Tony Benn to accept tens of thousands of layoffs at BMH at the time when the Wilson Government was promoting the "affluent society" and Benn himself sees the option of forcing BMH and LMC to merge as a solution to BMH's problems.
You need a wholesale revamp of what happens there, which to be blunt simply isn't possible in the 1960s and 1970s because of government interference and industrial action. You can fight all ya like, but such huge reductions in workforce will ultimately collapse the company as the workers will end up on strike for months on end, and they are also likely to really not a give a crap about what they were doing. The Iacocca idea is interesting, though I don't think Lee would ever be hired by a British car company that is falling apart, and Chrysler laid off thirty thousand workers during Iacocca's first few years, which in 1970s Britain simply isn't possible for a company in BL's position. You need things going earlier than that.
I think the best bet, honestly, is to see BMH fail earlier, and LMC simply refuse to get involved. Leyland had the ability to survive and prosper, whereas BMH needed a lot of help. (This still requires getting Benn out of the way, which is a big job in itself.) BMH declares bankruptcy in 1969, and the Wilson government bails them out conditional on them finding help. If you want Iacocca in this, now is where to do it - say he gets fired over the mess with the Pinto and license-badged Mazdas. He gets hired by the crumbling BMH in 1972 and begins the process of rebuilding.
The Oncoming Storm's idea of Morris as the volume car brand and Austin as the more trendsetting, avant-garde car brand makes a lot of sense and Iacocca was a king of badge-engineering. We could also have the idea of the Mini-Max, which was in gestation by the mid-1970s, come to BMH with Iacocca and his associates. Lots of BMH's old workforce is loudly against the idea of a group of Americans running the company, but the work goes on in any case. Jaguar is sold off in 1974 to oil company owner Victor Gauntlett in order to help raise capital. By 1975, BMH has been reduced to the Morris, Austin and MG, with Austin-Healey under Austin, Vanden Plas as a trim level and Riley and Wolseley gone altogether. The Marina and Allegro are still regarded as poor cars, but a series of new products are produced by BMH in the latter half of the 1970s, and in 1980 the Austin Voyager hits the scene, creating the modern MPV.
The problems of the competing Austin and Morris brands see the latter phased out in the latter half of the 1970s and early 1980s. The Maxi is replaced by the Austin Genesis (a better Maestro) in 1978, while the Allegro is replaced with the second-generation Allegro, which is front-wheel-drive, in 1980, while the angular MG Chaser sports car is introduced in 1981 to replace the loved but obsolescent MGB and the Austin Voyager is a massive hit right from the start. The 1983 Renault Espace is a rushed response to the Voyager. Iacocca is also well aware of the Mini's being a status symbol, and the 1982 Austin Metro replaces most versions of the Mini, leaving the Cooper version to become a symbol over time, which the Mini does very well through the 1980s. By 1983, BMC is back to flying high, and they aim to return the luxury car markets, though this happens in the years to come. Iacocca leaves BMC to take over Chrysler Corporation in 1984, but he leaves behind a completely-rebuilt company which, despite its production being half of its 1960s output, is still a quite profitable company and a major export earner for the UK.
Leyland, by contrast, goes from strength to strength in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Triumph is a sporting brand of sports sedans and sports cars, with the excellent TR series of sports cars being the flagships until the introduction of the Stag in 1970. The Stag's original 3.0-liter V8 fails miserably in testing and as such the Stag goes with the proven 3.5-liter Rover V8. The Stag engine, however, doesn't die - after extensive development, it reappears in 3.4-liter form in a British version of the Leyland P76, which appears in Britain in 1973 using the same 16-valve cylinder head as the Dolomite Sprint. Rover's long-selling (and highly-successful) P6 is replaced by the SD1 in 1975, which is one of the best-selling European luxury sedans of the 1970s and 1980s. The TR7 is introduced in 1975 with an electronically-fuel injected version of the Triumph straight-six, making 152 horsepower, along with the Dolomite Sprint's awesome 16-valve four-cylinder engine as an option and convertible versions available right from the start, with the Triumph-Leyland V8 first appearing in the car in four-liter form in the 1978 TR8, which is at launch one of the fastest cars of its time made in the UK. The Land Rover Range Rover, introduced in 1970, adds to the list of great cars produced by LMC in the 1970s. They are not immune to the industrial unrest that plagued Britain in the 1970s, but they see much less of it than the horribly-troubled BMH.
The 1970s prosperity of Leyland and the reorganization (and subsequent success in the 1980s) of BMC was added to by Britain's long list of smaller makers, which got turned somewhat on its head in 1978, thanks to Chrysler's huge financial problems. Reliant, which had been moving on with the building of the infamous three-wheeled economy cars and then with the much-better Scimitar sports coupe, entered into the real car world with the luxurious Reliant Ambassador luxury sedan (OOC: The FW11) in 1978, followed by buying pieces from the remains of Chrysler Europe and Peugeot sold them off in the late 1970s and early 1980s. By 1983, Reliant was producing four cars - the supermini Kitten, the small-mid size Sunbeam (the design of which was bought from Peugeot-Citroen in 1981), the handsome Scimitar and the large sedan Ambassador - and all were selling, to the point that by 1983 Reliant was the third-largest automaker based in Britain behind BMH (which always remained #1) and Leyland. Reliant's success and the continued success of their cars sees the Scimitar replaced in 1986 with the Reliant Princess (OOC: No Leyland Princess in this world) and the Kitten grow the "Atomic Kitten" high-performance hatchback in 1983.
Jaguar and Aston Martin, both owned by Pace Petroleum owner Victor Gauntlett, grew through the 1980s as well, as Aston Martin sank badly to the point that the company nearly fell apart in the early 1980s. Gauntlett, however, was such a level of enthusiast that he sold off Pace Petroleum to help fund Jaguar and Aston Martin's improvements, and brought on board several big investors in the 1980s, including Microsoft co-founded Paul Allen. Gauntlett's efforts also saw him promote his car companies incessantly, and Allen, who rapidly became an enthusiast for automobiles during his time involved at Jaguar Aston Martin, also being involved. Michael Edwardes joined Jaguar Aston Martin in 1985, and the team now in place grew to become very successful indeed. Allen and Gauntlett's personal pushing led to the development of the Jaguar XJ220 and Aston Martin DB7 in the late 1980s, while the continual improvement of the Jaguar passenger car line in the 1980s led to increasing sales for the company.
By 1990, while the Thatcher era saw manufacturing job losses in the millions, it in fact saw auto industry employment increase. BMH's 1980s successes were an example of a stunning turnaround, and by 1990 the British car industry could rightly boast that the Rover SD1, Triumph 3500, Jaguar XJ6 and Reliant Princess luxury sedans were the best in the world, while the Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit and its Bentley Continental sibling never not had the ability to claim that. Reliant scored a huge coup when they began selling the Reliant Kitten in India in 1984, with the Ashok Kitten being the natural sales rival for the Maruti 800 in India - and the Kitten, long considered the more fun car of the two to drive, turned out to be the more popular of the two cars, selling over one and a half million models in India between 1984 and when it was phased out in 2005. While the 1980s were a good time, Jaguar Aston Martin needed financial help and Reliant faced problems with aging models.
Well aware that Reliant had bought most of the Chrysler Europe, it was perhaps more than a little ironic that when Chrysler sought to return to Europe in the late 1980s, they chose to do so by buying Reliant outright, which they did in January 1992, where Reliant became Chrysler Britain. Reliant may have lost its position as an independent company - but that didn't mean anything, as Chrysler retained its entire workforce, and several of the cars Chrysler developed in the 1990s for worldwide markets began their lives on the design boards at Reliant's extensive facilities in England's West Midlands. Likewise, GM's expanding of operations in Europe in the 1980s meant that GM got more involved, and their purchase of Lotus in 1987 allowed the Hethel-based company to develop a series of excellent new cars in the early 1990s - and led to rumors of GM looking to purchase Jaguar Aston Martin.
That didn't happen - instead, Jaguar Aston Martin got a massive cash injection from Peugeot Citroen in 1992, allowing the company to develop the new Jaguar X300-series XJ and the S250-series XS mid-sized sedan, followed by the BMW and Triumph-baiting XF sedan, which entered production in 1998.
TBC....
