When Rover Met BMW - Episode 1: Don't Mention The War

Episode 1/5: Don't Mention The War (5 November 1996)
"When Rover Met BMW is a 5-part documentary series produced by the BBC in 1996. German motor company BMW had bought Rover in 1994 and the series follows the sometimes fraught relationship between the two."
"Episode one, Don't Mention The War, covers the launch of the Rover 200, analyses the press coverage this generated and also shows the reaction to BMW's appointment of a new chairman for Rover."
All rights go to BBC.

Пікірлер: 28

  • @mikeluscher159
    @mikeluscher1593 ай бұрын

    I think I caught the list of OG Top Gear presenters? I remember Quentin Wilson's coverage of the 200 launch

  • @johnathankain8033
    @johnathankain8033 Жыл бұрын

    If someone want to know why rover failed - this shows it in all its glory. Smug and condescending of their customers and competitors with a healthy dose of jokes at the Italians expense.

  • @QuoPaperPlane

    @QuoPaperPlane

    3 ай бұрын

    Pretty sure the Italians didn't take offence. After all, if we can laugh at ourselves then we can laugh at others or is that too British for you?

  • @AndyRRR0791
    @AndyRRR0791 Жыл бұрын

    They spent too much time worrying about Britishness and not enough producing the best damn thing that could be made for the money.

  • @Ben-jq5oo

    @Ben-jq5oo

    Жыл бұрын

    Yes. If the workers were truly proud to be British they would have upped the build quality and lobbied management, through their shop stewards, to increase spend per vehicle to enable decent rust proofing for example. This way their product would have competed more successfully with those from VW. They would have kept more repeat customers and not gained a poor reputation. A bit of creative thinking applied and management could have bought in a new Golf mk1, stripped it down along side an Allegro and gone from there. Very sad.

  • @andyb3666

    @andyb3666

    9 ай бұрын

    @@Ben-jq5oo you’re talking about 20 years before this though.

  • @_Ben4810
    @_Ben4810 Жыл бұрын

    What Britain did best....Producing people (in this case motoring journalists...) who thought they were so clever in their smugness of being overly-critical & slagging off the products of our own industries & poor old MG Rover...Nowhere else in the world did or does this happen...a truly British disease that even Clarkson made a career out of......🙄

  • @Ben-jq5oo

    @Ben-jq5oo

    Жыл бұрын

    Spot On.

  • @andyb3666

    @andyb3666

    9 ай бұрын

    @@jemimallah sorry don’t agree to be honest. The damage was done years before BMW came along, through years & years of lack of investment in Rover Group by British Aerospace who owned it at the time & as a result being hampered by expensive Honda licensing agreements for all the cars. Given time it probably could’ve been turned round like VAG did with Skoda. But it was losing far too much cash to wait, the poor DM >GBP exchange rate was the final straw. So I would level the blame at BAe managers not Rover.

  • @jamesmitchell8922
    @jamesmitchell8922 Жыл бұрын

    In 2000, the relationship reached an all time low.

  • @sonnylatchstring
    @sonnylatchstring Жыл бұрын

    And if you are then confronted with, for example, those 3 baboons from Topgear who are making fun of everything, then such an introduction has failed in advance.

  • @Ben-jq5oo

    @Ben-jq5oo

    Жыл бұрын

    I stopped watching it when I realised how toxic Clarkson’s humour was. The way he used it to influence May and Hammond, along with the audience, is the definition of a malignant narcissist. No better than Trump.

  • @mfitzy100
    @mfitzy100 Жыл бұрын

    Why would you offer up German food in England like this? Utterly ridiculous. If I was in a different country I want to try the local cuisine

  • @andyb3666

    @andyb3666

    9 ай бұрын

    Germans know what they like and know that they do it best 😂

  • @gleng6812

    @gleng6812

    8 ай бұрын

    Doing the Germans a Favour! 😂

  • @gleng6812

    @gleng6812

    8 ай бұрын

    Doing the Germans a Favour! 😂

  • @jamesbaggaley1460
    @jamesbaggaley1460 Жыл бұрын

    They wonder why Rover group failed. Bunch of amateurs fannying about.

  • @gemspotting6252
    @gemspotting62523 ай бұрын

    Rover was dead long before BMW rocked up - they killed the whole lot in the seventies through a chronic lack of investment

  • @tris7
    @tris73 ай бұрын

    Jesus. I honestly thought this was a spoof!! I used to think Rover died because of poor investment etc etc now I’m sure it was the workers. school boy jokers that seemed to have forgotten they were at work not in the playground!!!

  • @darendalton856

    @darendalton856

    3 ай бұрын

    Management was absolutely appalling in landrover and rover cars

  • @tris7

    @tris7

    3 ай бұрын

    Yes but the way the workers seem to have forgotten that they are at a place of work, they're acting like a bunch of jokers. I can see why management gave up @@darendalton856

  • @owenevans83

    @owenevans83

    2 ай бұрын

    Same

  • @leighbyrne1
    @leighbyrne1 Жыл бұрын

    Absolute amateur hour in fact embarrassing no wonder they failed.

  • @mfitzy100

    @mfitzy100

    Жыл бұрын

    Having known what happened subsequently you can absolutely see how and why things went belly up fast. I reckon BMW didn’t realise actually how bad things were in rover and how far behind they were. Without Honda there was nothing much there at this stage

  • @leighbyrne1

    @leighbyrne1

    Жыл бұрын

    @@mfitzy100 Yeah I have to agree all Rover produced was shiteboxes at that stage.

  • @darendalton856

    @darendalton856

    3 ай бұрын

    Ask John towers how he hid all the faults on rolling road from bmw pushing cars off the track before wolfganger arrived

  • @simonspider
    @simonspiderАй бұрын

    Good looking little cars the 200, as was the 400 (although the 400 wasn't as nice to drive and felt a bit more dated)