Richard writes,
> The Silver
>Seraph body is "assembled" at Crewe (does that mean welded?)
>(http://www.rolls-royceandbentley.co.uk/releases/words4.html), and thus
>by "a Vickers subsidiary". The Bentley bodies are to the best of my
>understanding still made at Cowley. At the time of the Club tour, the
>last Spirit-derived Rolls-Royce bodies (e.g., Dawns and Spurs) would
>still have been made at Cowley.
>
The Press office suggests that part, or all of some [unlikely], of the
bodies are pressed by the subsidiary company, Vickers Pressings. I am
really interested to know that members of Richard's local RREC toured the
former Pressed Steel facility at Cowley [Oxford], Rover are adamant that
such pressings as there were were produced at their new facility at Swindon
- I do not know, I have not seen round either!
>While I am not keen on the idea of BMW taking over RR&BMC[. . .] it is
>richly ironic that their main rivals
>are Volkswagen. Hitler's "people's car" taking over (part of) the
>company that powered the Spitfire and Hurricane? Uf! (BTW, there is no
>jingoism here - I'm not a Brit - but the irony is inescapable.)
>
I think this is an irony that has not been lost on many following the
story! My own feeling about this is pretty mixed. It seems a shame to
abandon items like the wonderfully smooth and long-lasting V8 engine (look
at what Chrysler have achieved with the installation of their latest 318
cid in the large luxury British car made by Bristol - fuel consumptions of
the higher 20s in terms of miles per gallon as a bonus), but to quote a
far-eastern friend 'you Brits confuse things, you think that hand made
means well made!'. Certainly some influence of German production
engineering would not go amiss in the luxury British car market and, if the
new production of parts for 30-year-old BMWs is anything to go by, it could
make it easier to keep older vehicles on the road.
[The Rover 600]
>Lifting the bonnet of mine, I got the impression that only one part does
>*not* originate from the land of the Rising Sun - namely, the Rover
>badge...
This was the last of the joint projects with Honda before they were
offended by the way Rover was sold to BMW by British Aerospace. I cannot
really see any opposition materializing about R-R meeting a similar fate,
can you?
Best wishes,
George
'We must aim at the fixing of standards in order to face the problem of
perfection'
Charles-=C9douard Jeannerat
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Dr. George Mowat-Brown, Tel & Fax.: +44 (0)181 580 8430
High Point,
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Isleworth,
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