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Post by Dutchpeter on Nov 1, 2017 15:42:22 GMT
I heard that early Allegro's blew their screen's due to insufficient chassis stiffness. So owners would dump the clutch when the lights went green, the monocoque shell would flex enough to shatter the rear screen. I want one!
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Post by crapslinger on Nov 1, 2017 16:04:26 GMT
I seem to re call BL was a nationalised company under a Labour government, is this what Corbyn wants to return to ?, a weak government bullied by Red Robbo and the Marxist lead unions funded by the tax payer, must never happen again. BL was nationalised by Tony Benn, under a Labour government. You are correct. What does that have to do with the price of bread? Had it not been nationalised, it probably would have died. BMC was on the verge of collapsing. Labour tried to keep some 250,000 employees in work. People can, and will, bag on Red Robbo, but they'll conveniently forget that huge problem with BL, which is that the quality of British cars really started to plummet in the 60's (before the nationalisation) and then pretty much flat-lined in the 70's and 80's. Designs were outdated. Engines were outdated. Cars were badly assembled, often by inexperienced workers (take the Rover SD1) and were routinely under-engineered. That is all ignoring the fact many of them were also poorly designed (prone to rusting) and cheaply manufactured. It's mad to think, that at the same time you could buy a Morris Marina.... You could also buy a BMW 3 Series (E21).... And there wasn't a massive difference in price. People bought British out of blind loyalty to BL. Once they bought a Volkswagen or a BMW or went Japanese, they quickly realised that they'd been throwing their money away buying shit British cars. The quality pretty much mirrored the eastern European cars of the time, all built in the communist block by underfunded state owned companies, no coincidence that they were as poor as their eastern European counterparts. The unions lead by red Robbo were intransigent and played a part in the downfall of BL, the man was a Marxist twat who will not be missed.
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Post by harryburrows on Nov 1, 2017 16:36:44 GMT
No doubt, the fuhrer will be out to eat me alive and call me a communist, but bollocks was BL's demise down to Red Robbo. It was a combination of things. Shit management, weak government, aggressive unions and absolutely dire quality. Lack of investment by government and complacency by the senior management was part of the problem . I remember seeing a documentary quite a few years ago about the demise of BL . One story that summed it up for me was the introduction of the Austin Maxi . The doorway between the assembly line and the paint shop wasn't wide enough to get the very wide maxi through so rather than widen the door the bare metal cars were loaded onto transporters and driven round the block in all weathers to get into the paint shop through a wider door on the other side of the factory . The cars were sprayed over rust spots leading to lots of cars only a few months old with peeling paint .
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Post by manmarking on Nov 1, 2017 19:15:41 GMT
BL was nationalised by Tony Benn, under a Labour government. You are correct. What does that have to do with the price of bread? Had it not been nationalised, it probably would have died. BMC was on the verge of collapsing. Labour tried to keep some 250,000 employees in work. People can, and will, bag on Red Robbo, but they'll conveniently forget that huge problem with BL, which is that the quality of British cars really started to plummet in the 60's (before the nationalisation) and then pretty much flat-lined in the 70's and 80's. Designs were outdated. Engines were outdated. Cars were badly assembled, often by inexperienced workers (take the Rover SD1) and were routinely under-engineered. That is all ignoring the fact many of them were also poorly designed (prone to rusting) and cheaply manufactured. It's mad to think, that at the same time you could buy a Morris Marina.... You could also buy a BMW 3 Series (E21).... And there wasn't a massive difference in price. People bought British out of blind loyalty to BL. Once they bought a Volkswagen or a BMW or went Japanese, they quickly realised that they'd been throwing their money away buying shit British cars. The quality pretty much mirrored the eastern European cars of the time, all built in the communist block by underfunded state owned companies, no coincidence that they were as poor as their eastern European counterparts. The unions lead by red Robbo were intransigent and played a part in the downfall of BL, the man was a Marxist twat who will not be missed. Totally different entities making totally different products under totally different conditions. In other words, you can't compare Eastern European cars of the 70s to British ones. British cars were vastly superior in almost every conceivable way Whilst there were clearly some very serious problems with BL, these have been exaggerated over the intervening years beyond all truth. For the simple political expedient of trying to persuade people that unions are evil. As opposed to a mechanism which, ironically, would improve the lot of most posters on this board. The very definition of turkeys voting for Christmas
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Post by chuffedstokie on Nov 1, 2017 19:27:28 GMT
Dutchpeter if you want to sum up BL's vision, you have to look at the Triumph Stag, arguably one of the best convertibles of its generation. Looked brilliant, drove brilliant and had all the makings of a great car.... except Triumph refused to use Rovers excellent V8 engine, an engine grounded in reliability (surprisingly) due to.... well, fuck knows why. Instead, some genius came up with the idea of welding two Triumph Dolomite engines together. The cooling system remained almost the same as the original Dolomite and was too restricted to ever cool the engine properly, as such the engine ran hot. When the engine overheated (which they often did), the head warped..... It was common Triumph advice to turn the engine off in any kind of traffic. In 1979 when I started in the Met our Area car (the big fast one) was a Triumph 2.5 PI. Our panda cars were all Allegro's. At any one time we only had access to possibly two of the four Allegro's we were allocated and the 2.5 was nearly always knackered. Then the SD1 came along and was roundly panned because you couldn't see out of the thing. Good engine though.
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Post by yeokel on Nov 1, 2017 21:18:41 GMT
The quality pretty much mirrored the eastern European cars of the time, all built in the communist block by underfunded state owned companies, no coincidence that they were as poor as their eastern European counterparts. The unions lead by red Robbo were intransigent and played a part in the downfall of BL, the man was a Marxist twat who will not be missed. Totally different entities making totally different products under totally different conditions. In other words, you can't compare Eastern European cars of the 70s to British ones. British cars were vastly superior in almost every conceivable way Whilst there were clearly some very serious problems with BL, these have been exaggerated over the intervening years beyond all truth. For the simple political expedient of trying to persuade people that unions are evil. As opposed to a mechanism which, ironically, would improve the lot of most posters on this board. The very definition of turkeys voting for Christmas They haven't been exaggerated at all. There seemed to be barely a day in the early to mid '70s when there wasn't a strike or a walk out at one BL factory or another. Ford, Vauxhall & Chrysler were just as bad, leading to the closure of most of their plants in the UK. Where do you think the "You won't get me I'm part of the union" philosophy came from? Car workers, steel workers, miners, railway workers and many others thought they were untouchable and, for a few years, they were. But, to use your phrase, they were like 'turkeys voting for Christmas'. Somebody had to take this mob and the country by the scruff of its neck and bring it back down to the realities of the world, so they between them set the perfect platform for Thatcher to enter, stage right. So when you are spouting about how the truth has been hijacked, it hasn't and wasn't. It was the unions which were hijacked by a load of Trotskyist militants who weren't 'fighting the fight' on behalf of their membership, they were fighting the fight on behalf of themselves and the powerbase they hoped to build. The militant unions set the stage for Thatcher to destroy what bits of industry that were left which they themselves hadn't destroyed. Without the militancy of the unions, Thatcher would never have been PM. And that, largely, began the path that has led this country to where it is now, overly dependent on financiers and bankers and manufacturing bugger all to bring in foreign currency. It is true to say, however, that the management and business philosophy of BL left much to be desired. As has already been pointed out, there was little to no sharing of engines and other technologies so we ended up with Austin Morris having 1.8 litre & 2.2 litre engines, Triumph having an 1850 and a 2 litre engine, and Rover having a 2 litre engine with barely a shared component between them. Absolutely crazy. And with such a shambles of management and workforce, plus very poor and dated products and no significant investments or financing in sight (save some attempts by Honda to integrate with Triumph), there was only one way the BL story was going to end. And, unfortunaately, end it did.
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Post by manmarking on Nov 1, 2017 23:04:04 GMT
Totally different entities making totally different products under totally different conditions. In other words, you can't compare Eastern European cars of the 70s to British ones. British cars were vastly superior in almost every conceivable way Whilst there were clearly some very serious problems with BL, these have been exaggerated over the intervening years beyond all truth. For the simple political expedient of trying to persuade people that unions are evil. As opposed to a mechanism which, ironically, would improve the lot of most posters on this board. The very definition of turkeys voting for Christmas They haven't been exaggerated at all. There seemed to be barely a day in the early to mid '70s when there wasn't a strike or a walk out at one BL factory or another. Ford, Vauxhall & Chrysler were just as bad, leading to the closure of most of their plants in the UK. Where do you think the "You won't get me I'm part of the union" philosophy came from? Car workers, steel workers, miners, railway workers and many others thought they were untouchable and, for a few years, they were. But, to use your phrase, they were like 'turkeys voting for Christmas'. Somebody had to take this mob and the country by the scruff of its neck and bring it back down to the realities of the world, so they between them set the perfect platform for Thatcher to enter, stage right. So when you are spouting about how the truth has been hijacked, it hasn't and wasn't. It was the unions which were hijacked by a load of Trotskyist militants who weren't 'fighting the fight' on behalf of their membership, they were fighting the fight on behalf of themselves and the powerbase they hoped to build. The militant unions set the stage for Thatcher to destroy what bits of industry that were left which they themselves hadn't destroyed. Without the militancy of the unions, Thatcher would never have been PM. And that, largely, began the path that has led this country to where it is now, overly dependent on financiers and bankers and manufacturing bugger all to bring in foreign currency. It is true to say, however, that the management and business philosophy of BL left much to be desired. As has already been pointed out, there was little to no sharing of engines and other technologies so we ended up with Austin Morris having 1.8 litre & 2.2 litre engines, Triumph having an 1850 and a 2 litre engine, and Rover having a 2 litre engine with barely a shared component between them. Absolutely crazy. And with such a shambles of management and workforce, plus very poor and dated products and no significant investments or financing in sight (save some attempts by Honda to integrate with Triumph), there was only one way the BL story was going to end. And, unfortunaately, end it did. People in unions generally don't think they're untouchable - in fact that's the entire point of joining one. It's very flawed to look at the behaviour of the unions in the 70s as just being a load of unruly mobs being militant and unreasonable. There were economic conditions present that ruled everything. Those conditions influenced unions decisions to push for more money. The fuel crisis, the rise of OPEC, middle eastern instability, stagflation, emerging globalisation, the dropping of the Gold Standard by the US - all of these things massively affected people's cost of living. (And they all absolutely dwarf trade unions in terms of factors that influenced the decline of our car industry). Up until the 70s, people were used to ever rising standards of living, so why wouldn't they push for ever higher wages? It was unheard of not to. Sure, nowadays we just blindly accept that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and there's nothing we can do about it. Only since Thatcher has it become accepted wisdom that stuff should just get more expensive, while wages stagnate and ordinary folk make up the shortfall with ballooning personal credit. It's a con trick, and rewriting the history of unions in the 70s without the context of countless highly significant economic factors is part of a larger move by the establishment to keep our hopelessly broken system on life support. There were excesses on the union side, sure, but then I did acknowledge that some of their behaviour was partly to blame. That really is vastly exaggerated in terms of its actual influence on the death of BL though. It made the headlines because it was dramatic and because powerful people wanted to deunionise Britain.
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Post by yeokel on Nov 1, 2017 23:38:09 GMT
They haven't been exaggerated at all. There seemed to be barely a day in the early to mid '70s when there wasn't a strike or a walk out at one BL factory or another. Ford, Vauxhall & Chrysler were just as bad, leading to the closure of most of their plants in the UK. Where do you think the "You won't get me I'm part of the union" philosophy came from? Car workers, steel workers, miners, railway workers and many others thought they were untouchable and, for a few years, they were. But, to use your phrase, they were like 'turkeys voting for Christmas'. Somebody had to take this mob and the country by the scruff of its neck and bring it back down to the realities of the world, so they between them set the perfect platform for Thatcher to enter, stage right. So when you are spouting about how the truth has been hijacked, it hasn't and wasn't. It was the unions which were hijacked by a load of Trotskyist militants who weren't 'fighting the fight' on behalf of their membership, they were fighting the fight on behalf of themselves and the powerbase they hoped to build. The militant unions set the stage for Thatcher to destroy what bits of industry that were left which they themselves hadn't destroyed. Without the militancy of the unions, Thatcher would never have been PM. And that, largely, began the path that has led this country to where it is now, overly dependent on financiers and bankers and manufacturing bugger all to bring in foreign currency. It is true to say, however, that the management and business philosophy of BL left much to be desired. As has already been pointed out, there was little to no sharing of engines and other technologies so we ended up with Austin Morris having 1.8 litre & 2.2 litre engines, Triumph having an 1850 and a 2 litre engine, and Rover having a 2 litre engine with barely a shared component between them. Absolutely crazy. And with such a shambles of management and workforce, plus very poor and dated products and no significant investments or financing in sight (save some attempts by Honda to integrate with Triumph), there was only one way the BL story was going to end. And, unfortunaately, end it did. People in unions generally don't think they're untouchable - in fact that's the entire point of joining one. It's very flawed to look at the behaviour of the unions in the 70s as just being a load of unruly mobs being militant and unreasonable. There were economic conditions present that ruled everything. Those conditions influenced unions decisions to push for more money. The fuel crisis, the rise of OPEC, middle eastern instability, stagflation, emerging globalisation, the dropping of the Gold Standard by the US - all of these things massively affected people's cost of living. (And they all absolutely dwarf trade unions in terms of factors that influenced the decline of our car industry). Up until the 70s, people were used to ever rising standards of living, so why wouldn't they push for ever higher wages? It was unheard of not to. Sure, nowadays we just blindly accept that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and there's nothing we can do about it. Only since Thatcher has it become accepted wisdom that stuff should just get more expensive, while wages stagnate and ordinary folk make up the shortfall with ballooning personal credit. It's a con trick, and rewriting the history of unions in the 70s without the context of countless highly significant economic factors is part of a larger move by the establishment to keep our hopelessly broken system on life support. There were excesses on the union side, sure, but then I did acknowledge that some of their behaviour was partly to blame. That really is vastly exaggerated in terms of its actual influence on the death of BL though. It made the headlines because it was dramatic and because powerful people wanted to deunionise Britain. "There were economic conditions present that ruled everything." There are always economic conditions that rule everything. Sometimes you have to roll with the punches. Go for a bit more money, shorter hours, etc when times are good and knuckle down for the common good when times are tougher. "Those conditions influenced unions decisions to push for more money. If only it had been just pushing for more money. It was demarcation, shorter hours, longer holidays, longer breaks, and all sorts of other things dragged in to disrupt the efficiancy of the factory or other workplace. "The fuel crisis, the rise of OPEC, middle eastern instability, stagflation, emerging globalisation, the dropping of the Gold Standard by the US - all of these things massively affected people's cost of living. (And they all absolutely dwarf trade unions in terms of factors that influenced the decline of our car industry)." The German, French, Italian, Swedish and even the Spanish car industries, not to mention the Japanese, seemed to manage alright within the same constraints. But their factories weren't out on strike every five minutes were they? There's no point in me going through your post picking bits to quote back and respond to because I'd be here all night, but most of it is so misguided and naive that it makes me wonder if you actually experienced some of these events, first hand or second hand, yourself? Just so I understand where you are coming from, would you mind saying how old you are, and where, if anywhere, you were living in the '70s?
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Post by metalhead on Nov 2, 2017 10:26:54 GMT
The quality pretty much mirrored the eastern European cars of the time, all built in the communist block by underfunded state owned companies, no coincidence that they were as poor as their eastern European counterparts. The unions lead by red Robbo were intransigent and played a part in the downfall of BL, the man was a Marxist twat who will not be missed. Totally different entities making totally different products under totally different conditions. In other words, you can't compare Eastern European cars of the 70s to British ones. British cars were vastly superior in almost every conceivable way Whilst there were clearly some very serious problems with BL, these have been exaggerated over the intervening years beyond all truth. For the simple political expedient of trying to persuade people that unions are evil. As opposed to a mechanism which, ironically, would improve the lot of most posters on this board. The very definition of turkeys voting for Christmas I have no reason to think unions are evil, but I will absolutely disagree that the problems with British cars have been exaggerated. They were dreadful. I think the opposite of what you say is actually true. Many people love to look back at British cars with rose tinted glasses. How many times I hear an old bloke saying "ooooooh, I had a lovely little Austin Montego, never missed a beat" despite the fact Montego's were plagued with rust problems and chronic unreliability, especially the early models. Rinse and repeat for many cars. There are very few BL cars on the face of it, that weren't riddled with faults, and while people say "Oh German cars were bad back then too".... were they? Because all the time these dreadful BL cars were being knocked out in the 70's and 80's, you could go and buy a Volkswagen MK1/MK2 Golf GTI..... two cars which were far less susceptible to rust, had much improved engines and have now stood the test of time. Rose tinted glasses should be saved for the cars that were actually good in that era, not crappy BL bullshit. Regardless, most of what I've just said has little do with unions. Poor design, under-investment, bad engineering and shoddy workmanship.
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Post by lawrieleslie on Nov 2, 2017 11:03:04 GMT
Dutchpeter if you want to sum up BL's vision, you have to look at the Triumph Stag, arguably one of the best convertibles of its generation. Looked brilliant, drove brilliant and had all the makings of a great car.... except Triumph refused to use Rovers excellent V8 engine, an engine grounded in reliability (surprisingly) due to.... well, fuck knows why. Instead, some genius came up with the idea of welding two Triumph Dolomite engines together. The cooling system remained almost the same as the original Dolomite and was too restricted to ever cool the engine properly, as such the engine ran hot. When the engine overheated (which they often did), the head warped..... It was common Triumph advice to turn the engine off in any kind of traffic. You're right a thing of beauty but chronically under engineered. BL cars had many strange faults, Allegro exploding rear windscreens, SD1's who's hazard lights operated when opening the glove box etc. My favourite however, are Triumph Stag's that just after parking would self operate its central locking (thus trapping the owner),then the engine would set on fire These little idiosyncrasies were not confined to Leyland cars. I had a Ford Capri in the 70s that would accelerate rapidly when applying the foot brake. It was a design fault in the brake servo that would pressurise the inlet manifold due to a faulty non return valve that should only allow one way flow to the brake servo.
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Post by sheikhmomo on Nov 2, 2017 11:28:04 GMT
RIP Robbo son, a man of the people. A giant amongst slugs.
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Post by metalhead on Nov 2, 2017 11:35:22 GMT
You're right a thing of beauty but chronically under engineered. BL cars had many strange faults, Allegro exploding rear windscreens, SD1's who's hazard lights operated when opening the glove box etc. My favourite however, are Triumph Stag's that just after parking would self operate its central locking (thus trapping the owner),then the engine would set on fire These little idiosyncrasies were not confined to Leyland cars. I had a Ford Capri in the 70s that would accelerate rapidly when applying the foot brake. It was a design fault in the brake servo that would pressurise the inlet manifold due to a faulty non return valve that should only allow one way flow to the brake servo. You're right.... other cars had their faults, but other manufacturers ironed out those faults and improved their designs and engines and spent time and money on R&D. BL's (and specifically Rover's) R&D pretty much ended with that gas turbine thing. When was that? The 70's? In the 40's and 50's, Britain was innovating and we did spend money on R&D. The rot set in around the early 60's and then the formation of BL. We completely stopped innovating, we stopped researching, we decided that our 'British' stuff was already better than 'their' stuff and that was the end of it. No need to research anymore, we're already better. Complacency. We were right, Britain was making better cars in the 60's than, for example, the Japanese. However, they continued pouring their money into R&D, while we struggled with strikes and stagnating progress and they very quickly overtook us. I don't really know how many times I can repeat the phrase "to sum it up" and "to put it into context", but.... to once again, sum it up, in 1990, you could walk into a showroom and buy a brand new Mini Cooper, with an BMC carburetted A-Series series engine..... an engine designed in 1951. At the same time, you could walk into a Volkswagen dealer and buy this.... Innovation. By the end..... there was none.
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Post by lawrieleslie on Nov 2, 2017 12:36:32 GMT
These little idiosyncrasies were not confined to Leyland cars. I had a Ford Capri in the 70s that would accelerate rapidly when applying the foot brake. It was a design fault in the brake servo that would pressurise the inlet manifold due to a faulty non return valve that should only allow one way flow to the brake servo. You're right.... other cars had their faults, but other manufacturers ironed out those faults and improved their designs and engines and spent time and money on R&D. BL's (and specifically Rover's) R&D pretty much ended with that gas turbine thing. When was that? The 70's? In the 40's and 50's, Britain was innovating and we did spend money on R&D. The rot set in around the early 60's and then the formation of BL. We completely stopped innovating, we stopped researching, we decided that our 'British' stuff was already better than 'their' stuff and that was the end of it. No need to research anymore, we're already better. Complacency. We were right, Britain was making better cars in the 60's than, for example, the Japanese. However, they continued pouring their money into R&D, while we struggled with strikes and stagnating progress and they very quickly overtook us. I don't really know how many times I can repeat the phrase "to sum it up" and "to put it into context", but.... to once again, sum it up, in 1990, you could walk into a showroom and buy a brand new Mini Cooper, with an BMC carburetted A-Series series engine..... an engine designed in 1951. At the same time, you could walk into a Volkswagen dealer and buy this.... Innovation. By the end..... there was none. The only problem with the Golf test is the supercilious cretin that is Quentin Willson. He once openly stated on TV that, when trying to justify the enormous cost of batteries in the early days of electric cars came out with the classic....."after all the average petrol or diesel cars needs a new engine every 6-8 years so that negates the arguement of cost of batteries." Can’t remember who he was talking to but remember the interviewer looking bewildered at him with a look of "what the flying fuck are you on about" on his face.
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Post by metalhead on Nov 2, 2017 13:01:23 GMT
You're right.... other cars had their faults, but other manufacturers ironed out those faults and improved their designs and engines and spent time and money on R&D. BL's (and specifically Rover's) R&D pretty much ended with that gas turbine thing. When was that? The 70's? In the 40's and 50's, Britain was innovating and we did spend money on R&D. The rot set in around the early 60's and then the formation of BL. We completely stopped innovating, we stopped researching, we decided that our 'British' stuff was already better than 'their' stuff and that was the end of it. No need to research anymore, we're already better. Complacency. We were right, Britain was making better cars in the 60's than, for example, the Japanese. However, they continued pouring their money into R&D, while we struggled with strikes and stagnating progress and they very quickly overtook us. I don't really know how many times I can repeat the phrase "to sum it up" and "to put it into context", but.... to once again, sum it up, in 1990, you could walk into a showroom and buy a brand new Mini Cooper, with an BMC carburetted A-Series series engine..... an engine designed in 1951. At the same time, you could walk into a Volkswagen dealer and buy this.... Innovation. By the end..... there was none. The only problem with the Golf test is the supercilious cretin that is Quentin Willson. He once openly stated on TV that, when trying to justify the enormous cost of batteries in the early days of electric cars came out with the classic....."after all the average petrol or diesel cars needs a new engine every 6-8 years so that negates the arguement of cost of batteries." Can’t remember who he was talking to but remember the interviewer looking bewildered at him with a look of "what the flying fuck are you on about" on his face. I don't mind Quentin Wilson, although that is some agenda driven bullshit right there. The only cars that need a new engine after 6-8 years are either completely abused, no oil changes etc, or are hammered about 50k miles a year.... and even then I'm not convinced. You get Passat's that doing 500k miles as taxi plodders. He's always been a big fan of electric cars though, so he might have been twisting the truth to put forward his point. He's a dull as dishwater bloke, but he does know his cars and he means well (done a lot of campaigning). I was watching an Old Top Gear episode a few years ago, where they dedicated (far too much) time to discussing the Rover Metro. At the end, Wilson turns round and says something along the lines of "if you've got money to spend, and want a new car, buy a Mini. You'll enjoy it more, and it'll be worth more in the long run". 25 years later and old Mini's are going for 7 or 8 grand minimum as collectors items and the few Metro's left on the road are worth about £200. He's always been good at spotting classics. He's done work for 5th Gear on similar topics and he bought a VW Corrado VR6 for something like £800, as he said it was a practical car that you could drive around everyday, but also that it would rise in value. Sure enough, those VR6 Corrado's go for 4 or 5 grand these days, and they're not even low mileage.
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Post by manmarking on Nov 2, 2017 13:21:15 GMT
Totally different entities making totally different products under totally different conditions. In other words, you can't compare Eastern European cars of the 70s to British ones. British cars were vastly superior in almost every conceivable way Whilst there were clearly some very serious problems with BL, these have been exaggerated over the intervening years beyond all truth. For the simple political expedient of trying to persuade people that unions are evil. As opposed to a mechanism which, ironically, would improve the lot of most posters on this board. The very definition of turkeys voting for Christmas I have no reason to think unions are evil, but I will absolutely disagree that the problems with British cars have been exaggerated. They were dreadful. I think the opposite of what you say is actually true. Many people love to look back at British cars with rose tinted glasses. How many times I hear an old bloke saying "ooooooh, I had a lovely little Austin Montego, never missed a beat" despite the fact Montego's were plagued with rust problems and chronic unreliability, especially the early models. Rinse and repeat for many cars. There are very few BL cars on the face of it, that weren't riddled with faults, and while people say "Oh German cars were bad back then too".... were they? Because all the time these dreadful BL cars were being knocked out in the 70's and 80's, you could go and buy a Volkswagen MK1/MK2 Golf GTI..... two cars which were far less susceptible to rust, had much improved engines and have now stood the test of time. Rose tinted glasses should be saved for the cars that were actually good in that era, not crappy BL bullshit. Regardless, most of what I've just said has little do with unions. Poor design, under-investment, bad engineering and shoddy workmanship. I'd agree with some of that but I'd add that it's all about context. In the context of the 1970s, cars in general were more shoddily built and less reliable. French and Italian cars of the 1970s, for example, were really no better than British ones in terms of build quality or reliability (or industrial strife for that matter). Although to be fair, quality wise, the JD Power Survey etc didn't exist so there's actually no real evidence beyond anecdotal stories either way. It's probably fair to say that German and Japanese cars were superior in build quality and reliability but then they were probably superior to all other car building nations in that regard, not just us. British cars were plagued by all the problems you mention but in spite of everything, some models were very beautiful, some were incredibly innovative, some were both And in terms of rose tinted spectacles, I'm not for a minute suggesting there weren't shit cars made by BL. But there were great ones too. Many somewhere in between - great concepts flawed in final design and execution - as you've touched on already. Again though, that's not a union issue. Which brings me back to my central point - that whilst industrial strife played a part in BL's demise, other factors were far more to blame. Specifically external economic ones - I can't stress how important they were. And, as you say, a legacy of underinvestment, inefficiency and poor management
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Post by Bojan Mackey on Nov 2, 2017 13:36:13 GMT
You can still buy a functioning MK1-2 VW Golf today, the BL cars have all rotted into the ground, which tells you everything about the build quality and the care that was put into them, my parents had a Metro when I was a nipper and both agreed it was not only the worst car they’d owned, but the worst thing they’d ever owned.
I’d love to have an early Golf, an early Beemer or even have a go in a Datsun 120Y, but I’d rather shit from my eye sockets than ever have to go near a BL car, they were a complete abortion of engineering the lot of them.
I’ve no idea who this bloke is who’s dead but if he was even partly responsible for the utter Chlamydia that was BL then I hope he’s been buried with a Vanden Plas Allegro steering wheel jammed up his cack-eye, the cunt.
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Post by metalhead on Nov 2, 2017 13:56:41 GMT
You can still buy a functioning MK1-2 VW Golf today, the BL cars have all rotted into the ground, which tells you everything about the build quality and the care that was put into them, my parents had a Metro when I was a nipper and both agreed it was not only the worst car they’d owned, but the worst thing they’d ever owned. I’d love to have an early Golf, an early Beemer or even have a go in a Datsun 120Y, but I’d rather shit from my eye sockets than ever have to go near a BL car, they were a complete abortion of engineering the lot of them. I’ve no idea who this bloke is who’s dead but if he was even partly responsible for the utter Chlamydia that was BL then I hope he’s been buried with a Vanden Plas Allegro steering wheel jammed up his cack-eye, the cunt. Probably worth reading up on him. He was sort of the 'shopfloor' union representative. Massively over exaggerated exactly how much damage he did though if you ask me. Shit management and infighting is as much to blame.
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Post by Dutchpeter on Nov 2, 2017 14:21:52 GMT
Red Robbo is interesting because he is characteristic of a more aggressive Union behaviour. We think of Red Robbo as a union leader on a national scale, when all he was, was a Longbridge shop steward. While national union leaders like Hugh Scanlon and Jack Jones would engage with the government of the time (even Ted Heath), younger more impatient shop stewards could undermine them with wildcat strikes on local issues. Many strikes were unofficial. We even had the strange sight, of white middle class left wingers shouting abuse at black working class strike breakers during the Grunwick dispute of 1976-77. It's also interesting to note that at a vote to strike to reinstate Robbo after his sacking, BL workers deserted him in their droves. A fascinating time and more complex than might be remembered.
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Post by metalhead on Nov 2, 2017 15:52:06 GMT
Red Robbo is interesting because he is characteristic of a more aggressive Union behaviour. We think of Red Robbo as a union leader on a national scale, when all he was, was a Longbridge shop steward. While national union leaders like Hugh Scanlon and Jack Jones would engage with the government of the time (even Ted Heath), younger more impatient shop stewards could undermine them with wildcat strikes on local issues. Many strikes were unofficial. We even had the strange sight, of white middle class left wingers shouting abuse at black working class strike breakers during the Grunwick dispute of 1976-77. It's also interesting to note that at a vote to strike to reinstate Robbo after his sacking, BL workers deserted him in their droves. A fascinating time and more complex than might be remembered. I wonder how many lessons have actually been learnt?
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Post by lowlands on Nov 2, 2017 16:01:27 GMT
I owned in the 1980s 4 different SD1s. A 2000 great car and a 3.5 V8 an outstanding motor but then I owned the worse of the lot a 2.6 crock of shit head gasket issues and oil leaks, the 2300 was good car as it only had head gasket problems without the oil leaks. WHy did i continue to buy them I just loved the look of them and I owned the V8 first so I never realised the others were a bag of shite
Then in 1996 out comes The MG then the MGTF which also had head gasket problems right up until they sold it to the Chinese who after a couple of years thought wow this car is another english crock of shit and stopped production in 2010. Basically Britain should not make cars.
We are left with one decent motor now Triumph Motorbikes. As for cars I would never buy anything English
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Post by yeokel on Nov 2, 2017 16:08:22 GMT
Red Robbo is interesting because he is characteristic of a more aggressive Union behaviour. We think of Red Robbo as a union leader on a national scale, when all he was, was a Longbridge shop steward. While national union leaders like Hugh Scanlon and Jack Jones would engage with the government of the time (even Ted Heath), younger more impatient shop stewards could undermine them with wildcat strikes on local issues. Many strikes were unofficial. We even had the strange sight, of white middle class left wingers shouting abuse at black working class strike breakers during the Grunwick dispute of 1976-77. It's also interesting to note that at a vote to strike to reinstate Robbo after his sacking, BL workers deserted him in their droves. A fascinating time and more complex than might be remembered. I wonder how many lessons have actually been learnt? The snag is that many (most?) Corbyn and other far left sympathisers (even the ones on here) were not around or were not aware enough (ie, too young) to appreciate what was going on in the late '60s and the '70s. They don't remember the strikes, the power cuts, the three day weeks, the winter of discontent and all the other miseries we experienced. All they can see is how shit things seem to be these days, without realising how much worse things might get if the far left start shit stirring once again.
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Post by metalhead on Nov 2, 2017 16:09:56 GMT
I wonder how many lessons have actually been learnt? The snag is that many (most?) Corbyn and other far left sympathisers (even the ones on here) were not around or were not aware enough (ie, too young) to appreciate what was going on in the late '60s and the '70s. They don't remember the strikes, the power cuts, the three day weeks, the winter of discontent and all the other miseries we experienced. All they can see is how shit things seem to be these days, without realising how much worse things might get if the far left start shit stirring once again. But see, you said it there, how shit things are now.... for many, it can't get much worse.
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Post by yeokel on Nov 2, 2017 16:14:39 GMT
Then in 1996 out comes The MG then the MGTF which also had head gasket problems right up until they sold it to the Chinese who after a couple of years thought wow this car is another english crock of shit and stopped production in 2010. Basically Britain should not make cars. But we do make cars in Britain. It's just that we make Jap cars which are designed well, which are assembled in factories with a great work ethic and a there is a general desire to see that the firm does well as, if the firm does well then the employees generally do so too.
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Post by yeokel on Nov 2, 2017 16:15:32 GMT
The snag is that many (most?) Corbyn and other far left sympathisers (even the ones on here) were not around or were not aware enough (ie, too young) to appreciate what was going on in the late '60s and the '70s. They don't remember the strikes, the power cuts, the three day weeks, the winter of discontent and all the other miseries we experienced. All they can see is how shit things seem to be these days, without realising how much worse things might get if the far left start shit stirring once again. But see, you said it there, how shit things are now.... for many, it can't get much worse. Oh yes it can.
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Post by lowlands on Nov 2, 2017 16:18:43 GMT
Then in 1996 out comes The MG then the MGTF which also had head gasket problems right up until they sold it to the Chinese who after a couple of years thought wow this car is another english crock of shit and stopped production in 2010. Basically Britain should not make cars. But we do make cars in Britain. It's just that we make Jap cars which are designed well, which are assembled in factories with a great work ethic and a there is a general desire to see that the firm does well as, if the firm does well then the employees generally do so too. Good point but I meant design them we best leave that to the Germans and Japs. Bit like me I am no bob the builder but fucking hell I can build Ikea stuff but I never made it. I best not it would only fall apart quicker than that MFI shit once did
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Post by wagsastokie on Nov 2, 2017 16:54:44 GMT
On the point of unions I totally agree with the right of the workers to withdraw their labour and have done so myself on more than one occasion And any who's read any of my post will realise I'm not a socialist sympathiser
On the point of the British Owened car and motorcycle industry it was pretty much finshed when them pesky japs Turned up with something that actually started outside of the summer And have the temerity to stop when you asked it to I'm sure the British thought the silly idea will never catch on
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Post by mrcoke on Nov 2, 2017 17:19:05 GMT
I had Morris Marina, an automatic, and found an enjoyable car, but in those days timing on when to sell was all important, just before you needed to spend a shed load of money on it.
I enjoyed my Marina so much, I went and traded it for an Ital. The biggest car purchase error I ever made; what a load of crap.
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Post by crapslinger on Nov 2, 2017 19:00:52 GMT
But see, you said it there, how shit things are now.... for many, it can't get much worse. Oh yes it can. It will if Corbyn and his Marxist henchmen gain power.
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