From: Glen Wilson @ Pennsylvania, USA
Email: RoverCar@home.com
Rover Saloon Touring Club of America
Website: http://clubs.hemmings.com/rovercar/rstca.html
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jones, Daniel C" <Daniel.Jones@MW.Boeing.com>
To: <buick-rover-v8@autox.team.net>; "'Glen Wilson'" <rovercar@home.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 18, 2000 2:54 PM
Subject: RE: Land Rover press release
> > You won't see any Ford V8s in Rovers because Rovers are ALL small
> > front-engined, front-wheel-drive vehicles. You may see a Ford V8 in a
> > Land
> > Rover, but that's a different kettle of fish.
> >
> Ford purchased the Land/Range Rovers only. The automobile side
> was purchased by the same group that purchased MG.
>
I don't think any money has changed hands yet, and I doubt that they're
running around the factories changing the badges on the cars.
If you want to split hairs, Alchemy is buying the automobile side of the
Rover Group and MG belongs to Rover. They think the MG name will zing up
the stodgy Rover image. It's questionable that there really is an MG marque
since the RV8 was just a warmed over MGB parts bin special based on a
Heritage body shell. The MGF was styled by Rover's in-house design team,
and is a 100% Rover design (Honda took no real part in it, and BMW arrived
too late to have any major influence upon it). Now, if you were Rover,
which of the many badges you owned would you put on your new mid-engied
sports car? Morris? Austin? Maybe Triumph? Nope, MG made the most sense.
Does that make it an MG? MG designed its last car how many years ago? The
MGF is just one of the things that Rover did right, and it wasn't their
first mid-engined sports car either. They designed a mid-engined prototype
called the P6BS in the Sixties that outperformed the XKE and that could have
been priced below it, but the project was killed off by Sir William Lyons
when Rover got sucked into British Leyland.
> > It's not that big of a deal, but a Land Rover is a Land Rover. Calling
a
> > Land Rover a Rover is like calling a Dodge Durango a Chrysler. You
might
> > as
> > well call it what it is.
> >
> The article implied the Rover autos would be renamed MG's.
Well, they can call them what they want, but Rover automobiles have been in
continuous production since 1904 which is pretty close to 100 years. Any
new MGs will be as much MGs as the current Bugatti is a Bugatti.
Maybe next year Volkswagen will shell out some more trademark cash and start
making Duesenbergs. Will it be a Duesenberg or just a car called a
Duesenberg?
Glen
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