Rover

Longbridge Car Manufacturing Plant

At Longbridge, Herbert Austin introduced mass production and the factory. In the three years 1914-7, the number of employees rose from 2,638 to over 20,000. In 1914 the original factory on Lickey Road south of the Midland railway line to Halesowen was expanded with a new stamp shop and extensions to the power house. Then in 1916 Austin started, first, the North Works between the Halesowen line and Longbridge Lane, and then the West Works on the west side of Bristol Road. Finally in 1917 more new shops were added to the original factory, now called the South Works, to accommodate aeroplane production.

The period after the First World War was difficult for the motor industry. Austin went temporarily into receivership in 1920 but prudent management kept the firm going and the famous Austin Seven started production in 1922. Only in 1926-7, however, did Austin start to build again, with a new administration block and despatch room fronting Lickey Road and designed by S.N. Cooke.

The Labour government during the 1960’s made an attempt to fight back against the stronger car manufacturers of the US, France and Germany by amalgamation. The idea was to bring Leyland Motors (who owned Triumph and Rover) and British Motor Holdings (who owned Austin, Morris, MG and Jaguar) to merge under the name of British Leyland.

But by the mid 1970s, British Leyland was facing collapse. Harold Wilson's government bailed it out with £2.4bn of public money as the loss of one million jobs would have been unthinkable.

When Mrs Thatcher came to power she wasn’t in the belief of bailing companies out and sent in Sir Michael Edwards to turn Austin Rover as it was then called around into profit but he was on the edge of pulling the plug when Mrs Thatcher tried to sell the company to Ford who didn’t buy.

British Aerospace took control but failed with the company and sold on to BMW who failed also and sold the company for £10 to the Tower Group. MG Rover finally went bust in 2005 with the loss of 6,000 jobs and is now owned by Nanjing for £50 million.