Throughout the British automobile industry, there is a name that has far-reaching influence and is destined to go down in history. It is the famous "Rover".
Rover's original English name is Rover, which means "Wanderer". Its logo is taken from the images of Viking warships and sails. Perhaps because of the curse of the name, Rover's Viking warships have been drifting all their lives.
Founded at the end of19th century, it witnessed the process of automobile industry from scratch and from weak to strong. In the course of 100 years, Rover experienced the glory of Rolls-Royce and tasted the pain of displacement until it finally fell apart.
And it is just a microcosm of the decline history of British cars.
From Bicycle to Queen's Car
1877, rover company was established and devoted to the research and development of bicycles. At that time, the shape of bicycles was various, and the most mainstream shape was that the front wheels were big and the rear wheels were small, lacking comfort and safety.
Rover Company pioneered the design that the front wheel and the rear wheel are the same size, which laid the embryonic form of modern bicycles. Since then, bicycles have been optimized around this style for more than 100 years.
At the time of the second industrial revolution, the global productivity developed rapidly, and the concept of "automobile" was brewing. No one expected that this bicycle factory would become the representative of the automobile industry of the British Empire in the future.
1886, the "Mercedes-Benz I" developed by Carl Benz successfully applied for a patent. Rover, with a keen sense of smell, decided to join the automobile industry. Eighteen years later, 1904, the first car-rover? 8? Drive off the production line.
Rover Motor Company suddenly became one of the first automobile manufacturers in Britain from a bicycle factory. 19 14, the sarajevo incident set off the fuse of world war I, and rover also ushered in the first wave of explosion.
As the saying goes, heroes are born in troubled times. Rover signed a cooperation agreement with the British government to provide allied soldiers with cars and motorcycles as war preparation materials. This windfall made Rover rich.
1934, rover brand-new model P 1 went on the market, which is a four-door four-seat sedan and is famous for its pure British style. Since then, the value of Rover has skyrocketed, and the P series has also been regarded as the most classic car series of Rover.
P5 released by 1958 is the pinnacle of this series, with elegant aristocratic feeling. After the change, P5B even once became the car of Queen Elizabeth and Margaret Thatcher, and the scenery was the same.
But who would have thought that Rover's car throne was driven by fate and began to wander.
Centennial rover? Destined to drift
After World War II, in order to enhance the international competitiveness of the automobile industry, Britain merged Rover, MG, Jaguar and other well-known automobile brands into Leland Automobile Group in an attempt to recreate an "imperial empire" in the automobile industry.
However, this practice is counterproductive. Most brands of Leland Automobile Group, including MINI and land owned by Rover at that time? Brands such as Rover have gradually disintegrated and changed hands.
After group merger, nationalization and re-independence, Rover has been reduced from a noble queen's car to a civilian brand, and everyone has disappeared.
1994, first-rover? On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the birth of "8", Rover was sold to BMW Group and began a wandering journey in a foreign land.
However, the honeymoon between Rover and BMW was not satisfactory, and BMW lost patience after six years of continuous losses. Finally, in 2000, BMW Group broke it down into three parts: returning Rover to the British government, selling Land Rover to Ford in the United States, and keeping only the MINI brand. So far, MINI is still under the BMW Group.
Rover, who returned to Britain, merged with another century-old brand MG to form MG-Rover Automobile Company. However, at this time, the general trend has gone, and the combination of strength and strength has failed to save the defeat. In 2005, MG-Rover went bankrupt and the Rover brand was transferred to Ford. The production line and MG brand were bought by Nanjing Automobile, which became the first case for domestic automobile brands to acquire foreign automobile brands.
In 2007, Nanqi Group was fully acquired by SAIC, and Rover's production line and MG's famous brand evolved into SAIC Roewe and SAIC MG respectively. After many twists and turns, he is my brother and finally settled down in China.
Besides, Ford, with deep pockets, transferred Jaguar and Land Rover to India's Tata Group in 2008. The once-popular Rover brand was almost equivalent to a bag, which caused great shock in the automobile circle at that time. At this point, the rover finally fell apart.
Is vagrancy the fate of British brands?
As mentioned above, the Rover brand is only a microcosm of the decline history of British cars, and Jaguar is not the only one who shares the same misery with Rover.
Throughout the famous British brands, aston martin has changed hands with Ford and Prodrive; ; Bentley and Rolls-Royce were included in Volkswagen and BMW respectively; Vauxhall is now a subsidiary of French PSA; Lotus and local taxi business were acquired by China Geely Automobile Group. ...
It is true that the annexation between brands is a chain reaction brought about by economic globalization. These British brands are veritable "Oliver Twist" in the automobile industry. They witnessed the outbreak and decline of the British Empire's automobile industry, and were finally caught in the torrent of the Atlantic Ocean, rushed to all parts of the world, and merged into the rolling torrent of history.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.