Rover...

[scionic]

BMW should feel ashamed of what they did. If you look at another german car company, VW, they bought out Seat and Skoda, despite all the jokes, and allowed local workforces to brand VW's with their own country's make and personalise them. They make good quality reliable motors now. But BMW, they only wanted the Land Rover R + D so that they could get their own 4 X 4 off the starting blocks.

Me.. I feel sorry for Rover and all the people losing jobs, but I would never buy a BMW on principle

By the way, I think that the Rover 75 is an excellent niche model. It plugs a gap for the over 50's  ;)  but you can't keep a car manufacturer going with 1 niche model unless it is good enough to export all over the world, such as Subaru etc.

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I forgot about the 75. I agree, it's a beautiful and uniquely English looking car.

I can't say anything about it's mechanical soundness though, as I only know it from pictures in my car magazines.

[Boro Sera]

Out of interest Scionic,

Are there many Rovers in the USA?

Like you said, the 75 has a very classic English look to it, unfortunately the market over here has moved away from that sort of car to a more European/Japanese styling.

[scionic]

The Range and Land Rovers are popular here of course since we are obsessed with SUV's.

However the cars aren't really. The only one that I know of that was imported in recent history (last 30 years) was the Acura Legend based model sold as a "Sterling" here.

We definitely don't have the 75 here or anything recent. The Sterling was sold in the late 1980's.

[Gareth B]

The Rover 75 is one of the fastest depreciating cars on the market. The top of the range sells for about £18000 and you can buy a 6 month old one for £8-9000.

Not much incentive really!

[Puls]

Its quite surprising that the last truly British mass-producer is going away. Every other mass-maker in your country is owned by out of towners.

At least now the only 100% British makers are all making cool boutique sports cars and the like ;)

My uncled owned a Sterling....what a heap. He replaced it with an Olds Toronado Trofeo. A car has to be *TERRIBLE* for one of those electronic nightmare pimpmobiles to be considered an improvement. His was the non-Honda based model...can't recall what it was.

If you look at another german car company, VW, they bought out Seat and Skoda, despite all the jokes, and allowed local workforces to brand VW's with their own country's make and personalise them. They make good quality reliable motors now.

Interesting...VW doesn't seem to share that reputation here anymore. For a while, they really improved the quality, but now they seem to be making slighty shoddy cars again. They do poorly on our equivalents of motoring surveys. Even the '04 Golf I drove recently seemed lacking compared to the Mazda3 and Honda Civic I drove that same day.

[scionic]

Interesting...VW doesn't seem to share that reputation here anymore.  For a while, they really improved the quality, but now they seem to be making slighty shoddy cars again.  They do poorly on our equivalents of motoring surveys.  Even the '04 Golf I drove recently seemed lacking compared to the Mazda3 and Honda Civic I drove that same day.

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I hate to say it, but that could have something to do with the fact that Jetta's (Bora) for us are made in Mexico and the Golf's shipped to the U.S. are made in Brazil. Both factories are notorious for QA problems and both countries are not known to turn out good product as far as automobiles and other precise mechanicals go. They are still nice cars though. A Mk4 Golf has nothing on a Mazda3 as far as driving dynamics and handling go, but it's also alot nicer material quality-wise than any Civic, except perhaps the new Si.

In Europe they get German and Czech built Volkswagens.

The Passat we have in the U.S. is build in Germany and quality is noticeably better and it even scores higher for reliability by Consumer Reports.

That said, I had a '99 Mk4 Jetta(Bora) TDI and it was flawless for the 4 years I drove it. Solidly built (in 'ol Mexico no less) and well-made. Never let me down. Even my new Toyota, built in Japan, had a shift cable go at 15k miles and leave me stranded in a bad neighborhood.

Who knows...

[reece]

More bad news.

It’s been announced that warranties on new cars won’t be honoured

Wonder how low in price they will drop now with no back up?