What was the rationale behind MG Rover’s attempts to forge alliances?
This essay explores the rationale behind MG-Rover’s attempt to forge alliances. It begins with a brief history of the brand because in order to understand the rationale for alliances, you must understand where the company found itself at the start of the new millennium. The Rover brand emerged over a century ago and provided high-quality cars to the middle-classes. Rover was then assimilated into the nationalised British Leyland in the mid 1960s. However this was, in hindsight, seen as a failure as it starved the brand of investment and seriously harmed its reputation for quality. In 1982, the Austin Rover Group was spun-off and a recent strategic alliance with Honda was giving them access to Honda’s engineering expertise and produced some excellent results. However the group was then sold to British Aerospace in 1988 who in turn sold it on to BMW in 1994. This ended the alliance with Honda. Within a year, Rover was, within BMW circles called “the English patient” as they believed they
