When was the Rover plant in Longbridge at its peak in terms of production?
Answers:
The glory years for car production by Rover at Longbidge, which became part of British Leyland after a merger of British Motor Holdings and the Leyland Motor Company was in the 1950's and 60's and it started to tail off after the production of the Rover SD1 which, although a fine car was beset with reliabitiy and engineering issue.
The plant witnessed a steady decline throughout the late 70's and the whole of the 80's rocked by industrial action such as that lead by Derek 'Red' Robinson. Production continued at Longbridge after the BMW takeover of 2000 and continued up until the plants closure.
These days all that is left of this once great factory complex are several crumbling factory units and new developments of business and sciece parks are now under way, a significant sign of this was the removal of a bridge which spanned the Bristol Road South that was used to transport cars from one side of the road to the other.
As a note, I grew up in West Heath, next to Longbridge and my Father worked at the plant for many years as did many of my friends and everytime that I pass the plant now I am touched with the deepest sadness for the falling of another British firm, growing up in it's shadow I can remember the loud Klaxon for the change of shifts around 1PM and thought that the plant would be there forever such is the nature of childhood.
in was in it's peak later nineties. some of the plant has been sold off and new high end sports cars are going to be made there.
Probably the 90's when Honda were involved. I drive past Longbridge every day and they are knocking a lot of it down for redevelopment, have heard they may restart production of the MGTF on a small scale next year. There was a good article in Autocar a couple of weeks ago about the 75 being produced in China under a different name its pronounced Rowe or something. Ford have bought the Rover name for Land Rovers benefit.
reminds me of an old "gag".
Spokesman for BL " Today we are making a new Mini and tomorrow we hope to be able to make another one " !
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