Production counterfeits and policy collisions: The rover trajectory - A salutary tale

Abstract

Rover Group’s acquisition by BMW and its dissolution little more than five years later marks the end of an era for the British car industry. This chapter builds on earlier work by the author and others to provide an overview of Rover Group’s formation, the controversy over the break-up of its partnership with Honda and acquisition by BMW, and the subsequent trajectories of each of its principal production sites. Neglected contradictions between the market-oriented approach of BMW and Japanese-inspired manufacturing practices are noted - a striking example, played out at Rover in the 1990s, of a strategic mismatch in firm policy. More generally, the history of a Britishowned car industry abounds in instances where strategies not only ‘meet’, but ‘collide’ (Boyer and Freyssenet, 2002). A persistent theme to emerge throughout is that ‘British’ decline is not readily disentangled from the effects of internationalisation on the sector.