: James Taylor
: Rover's Rebirth The Post War Renaissance 1945-1953
: The Crowood Press
: 9780719844133
: 1
: CHF 30.60
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: Auto, Motorrad, Moped
: English
: 208
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Like other British motor manufacturers, the Rover Company spent World War II helping the war effort rather than building cars. Bombed out of its original home in Coventry during the Blitz in 1940, it was fortunate in 1945 to be able to move into the new factory at Solihull that it had been managing on behalf of the Air Ministry. The Solihull factory was not only new: it was huge. Its size presented Rover with a welcome opportunity for expansion, but first the company had to get back into the game. With no new car designs ready, Rover's only option was to re-start production with mildly improved versions of their pre-war models. New models were a long time coming. Early ideas focused on a small economy car, but it soon became clear that this was not what the public wanted. Meanwhile, ambitious plans for a new and ultra-modern car, using mechanical elements that had been under development before the war, had to be put back when there were delays in designing a satisfactory modern body style. As a temporary measure, Rover added their new mechanical elements to modified pre-war style bodies to deliver the P3 models in 1948. The solution was unexpected. Rover's Chief Engineer had bought a war-surplus Jeep for his own use, and he quickly realised that Rover could easily build something similar that civilian users both at home and abroad would find useful. Combining their new engine with the simplest of chassis and body to save time and costs, Rover had the Land-Rover ready shortly after the new P3 - and its immediate world-wide success took them by surprise. It had plans, too - far too many to put into production. There were gas turbine-powered cars inspired by the company's wartime jet engine work; there was a hybrid of Rover car and Land-Rover called the Road-Rover; and there were ideas for expanding the existing model ranges and adding more. By 1953, when the story told in this book ends, Rover was ready to introduce new saloons and Land-Rovers that would see it comfortably through the 1950s. Not only had it survived, but it was in better health than ever before.

James Taylor has been writing professionally about cars since the late 1970s, and his interests embrace a wide range of older cars of all makes and nationalities, as well as classic buses, lorries and military vehicles. He has written several books about BMW cars within a portfolio that now consists of well over 130 books. Many of these have been definitive one-make or one-model titles, including a number for Crowood. He has also written for enthusiast magazines in several countries, has translated books from foreign languages, and makes sure he always has something old and interesting in the garage.

CHAPTER 1

Background and Overview

By the time World War II began in September 1939, the Rover Company enjoyed a solid reputation in Britain as the makers of ‘One of Britain’s Fine Cars’. The slogan dated from 1936, by which time the company had emerged from a difficult financial period in the early years of the decade and had begun to earn the lasting respect of the professional classes for whom its cars were mostly built.

S. B. Wilks was the level-headed managing director on whose guidance the Rover Company depended heavily.

Rover in this period was based in Coventry, with its main factory and headquarters at Helen Street in the Stoke Heath (now Foleshill) district to the northeast of the city centre. It had an exceptionally strong management team, with the board of directors led by Ransom Harrison, Howe Graham as financial director, and S. B. (Spencer) Wilks as managing director. Chief engineer was Maurice Wilks, the younger brother of the managing director, and he oversaw an equally strong team of engineers. Rover was an independent company, quite small by motor industry standards, but it was run almost like a family business and engendered great loyalty from its employees. By the end of the 1930s, it was selling between 10,000 and 11,000 cars a year.

World War II brought this idyllic existence to an abrupt end. Rover introduced their 1940- model cars as planned in September 1939, but had already turned part of their manufacturing capability over to repairing military aircraft. Since the middle of the decade, they had been running a ‘shadow factory’ at Acocks Green, building aero engines for military use, and during 1939 they took on the management of a second one, at Solihull to the southeast of Birmingham. Car production was halted on government orders in May 1940, and the entire resources of the company were redirected to the war effort. The Helen Street factory was severely damaged by enemy bombing in the Coventry Blitz in November 1940, and the Rover staff dispersed – some of them to a group of repurposed cotton mills in Lancashire and Yorkshire, where they assisted Frank Whittle with the development of his jet engine for aircraft.

Maurice Wilks was the enthusiastic and innovative driving force behind Rover engineering.

It was not until June 1944, as the D-Day landings made clear that the tide of war in Europe was turning, that Rover was able to contemplate with any clarity its future as a car manufacturer. No new design work had been done during the war years, although new models had been planned before the war and the work done for them had not been lost. The Helen Street factory in Coventry had been hastily patched up to enable it to continue producing war matériel, but there was a tantalising alternative to returning there. The Solihull factory was much newer, more modern, and larger, and the government had offered Rover first refusal on it once it was no longer needed for war work.

This poor-quality photograph is the only known picture of the Rover Board as it was in 1945. In the centre is Ransom Harrison, the chairman. On the left are George Farmer (assistant secretary and chief accountant), Frank Ward (secretary) and S. B. Wilks (managing director). On the right are Howe Graham (vice-chairman) and Sir Geoffrey Savage (works director).

Rover’s initial offer to buy the factory outright was rejected, but subsequent discussions about a long-term lease proved fruitful. In February 1945, the Rover Board agreed to lease the factory and to dispose of the Helen Street works, which was sold in July to the Coventry machine tool makers Alfred Herbert. By March, Rover had begun to move into their new Solihull headquarters.

A New Dawn

As early as 1944, the company had also begun to think about the cars it would be selling once peace returned. There were still many unknowns, of course, and whatever plans they developed would have to be modified in the light of events. No surviving documents tell us who took the responsibility for this aspect of company planning, but the strong probability is that the Wilks brothers took the lead. As managing director, S. B. Wilks was used to setting the direction that Rover should take, and he could not have done so at this stage without consulting his brother who, as chief engineer, knew what the company had been working on before the war and what was likely to be feasible.

It was inevitable that both men should have considered the company’s previous experience in similar circumstances, and should have looked at what happened immediately after the end of World War I. The period immediately after 1919 had seen a strong demand for small and inexpensive cars, and there was every reason to imagine that the same would happen again. The British economy was likely to remain in the doldrums for at least a few years, which argued against Rover relying on the so