Rover

Rover was a British manufacturer of Bicycles, Motorcycles (see below) and Cars.

• 1878 The company was founded by John Kemp Starley and William Sutton in 1878. Starley had formerly worked with his uncle James Starley (father of the cycle trade) who began in manufacturing sewing machines and switched to bicycles in 1869.

• 1883 The first Rover was a tricycle manufactured by Starley and Sutton Co of Coventry, England in 1883.

• 1885 In the early 1880s the cycles available were the relatively dangerous Penny-Farthing and high-wheel tricycles. John Kemp Starley made history in 1885 by producing the Rover Safety Bicycle - a rear-wheel-drive, chain-driven cycle with two similar-sized wheels, making it more stable than the previous high wheeled designs. Cycling Magazine said the Rover had 'set the pattern to the world' and the phrase was used in their advertising for many years. Starley's Rover is usually described by historians as the first recognisably modern bicycle.

• 1888 John Kemp Starley made an electric cars, but it never was put into production.

• 1889 The company became J. K. Starley and Co and in the late 1890s, the Rover Cycle Co. Three years after Starley's death in 1901, the Rover company began producing automobiles with the two-seater Rover Eight to the designs of Edmund Lewis who came from Daimler.

• WW1 During the First World War they made motorcycles, lorries to Maudslay designs and not having a suitable one of their own, cars to a Sunbeam design. Bicycle and motorcycle production continued until the Great Depression forced the end of production in 1925. The business was not very successful during the 1920s and did not pay a dividend from 1923 until the mid 1930s. In 1929 when there was a change of management with Spencer Wilks coming in from Hillman as general manager. He set about reorganising the company and moving it up market to cater for people who wanted something "superior" to Ford and Austin. He was joined by his brother Maurice Wilks, who had also been at Hillman, as chief engineer in 1930. Spencer Wilks stayed with the company until 1962 and his brother until 1963.

• 1920 November. Exhibited at the Motor Car Show at Olympia and the White City with a lightweight car weighing 9 cwt and seating two persons.

• In the late 1930s, in anticipation of potential hostilities which would become World War II, the British government started a re-armament programme and as part of this "Shadow Factories" were built. These were paid for by the government but staffed and run by private companies. Two were run by Rover, one at Acocks Green, Birmingham started operation in 1937 and a second larger one at Solihull started in 1940. Both were employed making aero engines and airframes. The original main works at Helen Street, Coventry was severely damaged by bombing in 1940 and 1941 and never regained full production.

• 1940 In early 1940 Rover were approached by the government to support Frank Whittle in developing the gas turbine engine. Whittle's company, Power Jets had no production facilities and the intention was for Rover to take the design and develop it for mass production. Whittle himself was not pleased by this and did not like design changes made without his approval but the first test engines to the W2B design were built in a disused cotton mill in Barnoldswick, Lancashire, in October 1941. Rolls-Royce took an interest in the new technology and an agreement was reached in 1942 that they would take over the engines and Barnoldswick works and in exchange Rover would get the contract for making Meteor tank engines which actually continued until 1964.

• After the Second World War, the company abandoned Helen Street and bought the two Shadow Factories. Acocks Green carried on for a while making Meteor engines for tanks and Solihull became the new centre for vehicles with production resuming in 1947 and would become the home of the Land Rover.

• 1950 Designer F. R. Bell and Chief Engineer Maurice Wilks unveiled the first car powered with a gas turbine engine. The two-seater JET1 had the engine positioned behind the seats, air intake grilles on either side of the car and exhaust outlets on the top of the tail. During tests, the car reached top speeds of 140 km/h, at a turbine speed of 50,000 rpm. The car ran on petrol, paraffin or diesel oil, but fuel consumption problems proved insurmountable for a production car. It is currently on display at the London Science Museum. Rover and the BRM Formula One team joined forces to produce a gas turbine powered coupe, which entered the 1963 24 hours of Le Mans, driven by Graham Hill and Richie Ginther. It averaged 107.8 mph (173 km/h) and had a top speed of 142 mph (229 km/h).

• The 1950s and '60s were fruitful years for the company, with the Land Rover becoming a runaway success (despite Rover's reputation for making up-market saloons, the utilitarian Land Rover was actually the company's biggest seller throughout the 1950s, '60s and '70s), as well as the P5 and P6 saloons equipped with a 3.5L (215ci) aluminium V8, the design and tooling of which was purchased from Buick, and pioneering research into gas turbine fuelled vehicles. In 1967, Rover became part of the Leyland Motor Corporation, which merged with the British Motor Holdings to become British Leyland. This was the beginning of the end for the traditional Rover, as the Solihull based company's heritage drowned beneath the infamous industrial relations and managerial problems that beset the British motor industry throughout the 1970s.

• 1970 Rover combined its skill in producing comfortable saloons and the rugged Land Rover 4x4 to produce the Range Rover, the first car to combine off-road ability and comfortable versatility. Powered by the ex-Buick V8 engine, it had innovative features such as a permanent 4 wheel drive system, all-coil spring suspension and disc brakes on all wheels. Able to reach speeds of up to 100 MPH, yet also capable of extreme off-road use, the original Range Rover design was to remain in production for the next 26 years.

• 1976 The Rover SD1 of 1976 was an excellent car, but was beset with so many build quality and reliability issues that it never delivered its great promise. A savage programme of cutbacks in the late 1970s led to the end of car production at the Solihull factory which was turned over for Land Rover production only. All future Rover cars would be made in the former Austin and Morris plants in Longbridge and Cowley, respectively.

• 1981 Austin Rover Group was formed in 1981 as the mass-market car manufacturing subsidiary of BL. In the 1980s, the slimmed-down BL used the Rover badge on a range of cars co-developed with Honda. The first Honda-sourced model, released in 1984 was the Rover 200, which, like the Triumph Acclaim that it replaced, was based on the Honda Ballade. (Similarly, in Australia, the Honda Quint (known in Europe as the Quintet) and Integra were badged as the Rover Quintet and 416i.) In 1986, the Rover SD1 was replaced by the Rover 800, developed with the Honda Legend. By this time Austin Rover had moved to a one-marque strategy and was renamed simply Rover Group. The Austin range were now technically Rovers, though the word Rover never actually appeared on the badging — there was instead a badge similar to the Rover Viking shape, without wording. These were replaced by the Rover 400 and Rover 600, based on Honda's Concerto and Accord.

This was to prove to be the turn-around point for the company, steadily rebuilding its image to the point where once again Rovers were seen as upmarket alternatives to Fords and Vauxhalls.

• 1994 The takeover by BMW saw the development of the Rover 75, before the infamous de-merger in 2000. BMW retained the rights to the Rover name (and the associated portfolio of brands such as Mini, Triumph and Austin-Healey) after it sold the business, only licensing it to the Phoenix consortium while it was in control of Rover.

The BMW management knew that Rover needed a new product lineup to be competitive with Opel/Vauxhall, Volkswagen, Ford and the other leading mainstream volume manufacturers. The 75 was the first part of this lineup. The MINI was the second. To replace both the 200 and the 400 with a more direct successor to the 1980s 200 was the Rover 55 (R30 project) intended to combat the Opel Astra, Ford Focus and Volkswagen Golf in the competitive and lucrative European small family car segment. This high volume semi-premium vehicle was cancelled in 2000, just as the Rover group was sold. The BMW 1-Series is considered by some to be the result of this project. BMW has the rights to the R30 project's engineering and design.

• 2005 The company continued as the MG Rover Group but production ceased on April 7, 2005, when it was declared insolvent. In July 2005 the entire company was sold to the Nanjing Automobile Group, who indicated that their preliminary plans involved relocating the Power-train engine plant to China while splitting car production into Rover lines in China and resumed MG lines in the West Midlands (though not necessarily at Longbridge), where a UK R&D and technical facility would also be developed.

Motorcycles

Rover produced motorcycles in 1899, from 1903 to 1906 and from 1910 to 1927.

• 1899 Having already got its roots in the cycle industry, the company first experimented with power and exhibited a machine at the Richmond Show. They built a tricar in bath-chair form, with twin rear wheels and the driver and De Dion engine fitted between them. At the front was a single small wheel and a seat for the passenger.

• 1903 After a gap of a few years a well-designed machine appeared. This had a single 2.25hp engine with a mechanical inlet valve and spray carburettor. The frame had two down-tubes, to increase rigidity, and braced forks.

• 1904 The engine increased to 3hp and there was also a 4hp forecar with the option of a water-cooled engine. It had two-stage chain transmission and included a clutch.

• 1905 The frame changed to a single downtube and a 2.5hp lightweight was added. The forecar remained on the list, with wheel steering as an option.

• 1906 The range continued for the year, but then the firm turned its attention to cars for a while.

• 1908-1909 Their involvement with the trade continued with the supply of complete cycle parts to the British branch of MAG for the Motosacoche Motor Unit.

• 1910 They returned late that year with a model designed by John E. Greenwood. It had a rear-mounted Bosch magneto, B and B carburettor, belt drive from an adjustable pulley and Druid forks.

• 1912 Spennell's lists them at Garfield rd, Coventry (Tel. 518) and as manufacturers of motorcycles

• World War I. They kept going throughout the war by supplying private owners (until 1916) and the military. They made minor changes including the option of Armstrong or Sturmey-Archer three-speed hub.

• 1917 They added a 654cc JAP V-twin model for service use and that, together with the single, comprised the post-war range.

• 1921 All except a TT model now had chain drive.

• 1923 The twin was dropped and a neat lightweight with a 249cc engine appeared. It had ohv and looked very modern as the three-speed gearbox was a unit enclosed by the crankcase.

• 1924 That model alone continued for the year.

• 1925-1926 The lightweight was replaced by a 345cc version which ran on for a few years.

• 1927 Was the last year of Rover motorcycle production.

National Motorcycle Museum exhibits:-

• 1925 Rover 250cc

Sources of Information

• [1] Wikipedia
• The British Motorcycle Directory - Over 1,100 Marques from 1888 - by Roy Bacon and Ken Hallworth. Pub: The Crowood Press
• Miller’s Price Guide to Classic Motorcycles
• The Engineer of 19th November 1920 p498
• Spennell's Annual Directory of Coventry and District, 1912-13