WI/PC Expanded British Leyland/Japan Automakers Co-op

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
In the late 70's BL's Triumph division co-operated with Honda of Japan in producing cars. in the form of a British built Civic, the Triumph Acclaim got into the top 10 sellers in the UK which Triumph have never done before.

How plausible would it be for Triumph to expand this co-operation to create a full range of cars with Honda, and for other BL marques to co-op with other Japanese manufacturers.

What i'm thinking is Austin continues with it's Metro, Maestro & Montego development for it's range of cars for the 80's.

The Morris division on the other hand co-op's with the Nissan/Datsun brand for a full range of cars for the 80's. At the time Morris was only producing the much maligned Marina.

Regards filers.
 
The big question would be, what's in it for the Japanese?

Why would they wish to co-operate with a highly inefficient nationalised industry, with terrible employee relations, and old, inefficient factories filled with obsolete technology?

In OTL, Nissan decided it was far better to build a new factory and take on a completely new workforce they could work with to do things their way rather than the British way, and it would appear that it worked out pretty well for them.
 
In the late 70's BL's Triumph division co-operated with Honda of Japan in producing cars. in the form of a British built Civic, the Triumph Acclaim got into the top 10 sellers in the UK which Triumph have never done before.

How plausible would it be for Triumph to expand this co-operation to create a full range of cars with Honda, and for other BL marques to co-op with other Japanese manufacturers.

What i'm thinking is Austin continues with it's Metro, Maestro & Montego development for it's range of cars for the 80's.

The Morris division on the other hand co-op's with the Nissan/Datsun brand for a full range of cars for the 80's. At the time Morris was only producing the much maligned Marina.

Regards filers.

That's more or less what happened IOTL. The big difference is that the cars had had Rover badges on them instead of Austin, Morris or Triumph.

I half remember from watching TV documentaries about the history of the company that the long term plan was for a merger with Honda or to be taken over by the Japanese company.

However, the British Government wanted to be rid of BL. It asset stripped, I mean sold off the profitable parts of the company, such as Jaguar, Unipart and Leyland trucks.

This left Land Rover and the volume cars division which by the middle 1980s was called Rover, which IIRC it tried to sell to Ford, but (also IIRC) the Government had to back down because of the public outcry.

Then it successfully sold Rover to British Aerospace on the condition that BAe didn't sell the company for 5 years. Five years later it sold the company to BMW.

At the time there was a TV documentary called When Rover Met BMW and it showed how thoroughly Rover had adopted Honda's methods down to the managers wearing overalls instead of suits.
 

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
The big question would be, what's in it for the Japanese?

Why would they wish to co-operate with a highly inefficient nationalised industry, with terrible employee relations, and old, inefficient factories filled with obsolete technology?

In OTL, Nissan decided it was far better to build a new factory and take on a completely new workforce they could work with to do things their way rather than the British way, and it would appear that it worked out pretty well for them.

Could the UK government invest in a completely new plant for each marque - Triumph, Morris & Austin on the understanding that after a certain timescale, let's say, 10 years each Japanese manufacturer would have the option of buying that said mark.

It all depends on if the UK Govt has the finances or not, but they did manage to fund a new plant at Solihull for the Rover SD1. Would they be willing to do this for a long term return.

As for Austin, let the 80's range carry on until 1990 then co-op with Mazda, but this might have problems with Ford as they had a share in Mazda. Would Ford allow this?

While we're on the subject, what about Rover. Could an earlier co-op with BMW (badge engineered 3, 5 and 7 series) allow the brand to remain viable through out the 90's and into the next century, again with the option of buying the brand completely after a 10 year term.

Regards filers
 
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