What could have been?
Discussion
I was about to post this on the Stag thread, but not wanting to de rail a serious buying decision am posting a new thread.
The Stag had so much in its favour, but BL screwed it up with the under developed engine. They could, if they hadn't had brand tunnel vision, have fitted the Rover V8. If they had we may think of the Stag very differently now.
And the SD1, any truth to the rumour that the engines used in the development cars were de tuned before they released into production? because otherwise they would have been faster than a Jaguar?
And if the Dolly sprint engine had been developed properly what could the TR7 have been with that in it?
The unions didn't help but running BL as discrete brands with limited crossover contributed to their demise.
So what could have been if we combined the best engines and the best designs available?
Jon
The Stag had so much in its favour, but BL screwed it up with the under developed engine. They could, if they hadn't had brand tunnel vision, have fitted the Rover V8. If they had we may think of the Stag very differently now.
And the SD1, any truth to the rumour that the engines used in the development cars were de tuned before they released into production? because otherwise they would have been faster than a Jaguar?
And if the Dolly sprint engine had been developed properly what could the TR7 have been with that in it?
The unions didn't help but running BL as discrete brands with limited crossover contributed to their demise.
So what could have been if we combined the best engines and the best designs available?
Jon
Alfa101 said:
They could, if they hadn't had brand tunnel vision, have fitted the Rover V8. If they had we may think of the Stag very differently now.
Except there was no spare production capacity of the Rover V8 when the Stag was new, Rover were using all they could make.It was only because of the 73 oil crisis, that there was enough slack in the supply to allow MG the use of it for the couple of thousand BGT V8's. The Stag was half way through its production run before Rover had enough capacity.
I used to know someone back in the 80's that replaced his Stag V8 with a RV8 and bitterly regretted it afterwards. He said the car was more reliable but not as nice to drive.
The Stag was always a car which filled a niche , and even if the engines hadn't been made of cheese , they would have remained niche. TR7 was doomed from birth , not because of the engine but the godawful looks The TR 3 was ugly , but TR4, 5 and 6 were lovely looking bruisers, whereas TR 7 should never have left the drawing board . . It was much nicer in drophead form , but by then BL had lost what little plot was left .
BL cars had sold for years by exploiting the misplaced patriotism of their buyers - but once the public learned that it was possible to buy a Honda , Datsun or Toyota that never broke, or an Alfasud or Golf which made an Alllegro feel the cynically nasty rubbish it was , BL was doomed ,and rightly so
BL cars had sold for years by exploiting the misplaced patriotism of their buyers - but once the public learned that it was possible to buy a Honda , Datsun or Toyota that never broke, or an Alfasud or Golf which made an Alllegro feel the cynically nasty rubbish it was , BL was doomed ,and rightly so
BL had no money for research and development and every vehicle was rushed in to production and very few faults even ironed out whilst in production.
It didnt take long for independent tuners to develop and iron out the problems in both Stag and Sprint engines for competition use.
Lots of people go on about using the Rover V8, but if youve ever driven a Stag with a properly sorted original engine you wouldnt even consider fitting a Rover lump, whilst perfectly acceptable in Rovers it had totally wrong characteristics for a Stag.
It didnt take long for independent tuners to develop and iron out the problems in both Stag and Sprint engines for competition use.
Lots of people go on about using the Rover V8, but if youve ever driven a Stag with a properly sorted original engine you wouldnt even consider fitting a Rover lump, whilst perfectly acceptable in Rovers it had totally wrong characteristics for a Stag.
I could have written the 1st post here. I agree with all that was said, and would add that the Stag convertible was even more sh*te because the dicklheads at Triumph thought it was OK to fit an ugly bracing contraption on top of the body to stop it wobbling itself to bits. This ruined its open top looks.
As for there not being enough capacity to supply Rover V8s for it: surely increasing production of an existing engine was a better bet than going through the hassle of joining two 1500 Triumph engines together to make a new V8.
Agree with it or not, the late 60s to late 70s were a dire time for our home car brands.
As for there not being enough capacity to supply Rover V8s for it: surely increasing production of an existing engine was a better bet than going through the hassle of joining two 1500 Triumph engines together to make a new V8.
Agree with it or not, the late 60s to late 70s were a dire time for our home car brands.
Years ago, I read a book (can't remember the name exactly) that was basically the Rover story.
Very interesting & detailed the internecine rivalry between the BL brands where a lot of the cars overlapped.
Jaguar deliberately designed XJ6's so the Rover V8 would be difficult to fit on the production line.
Triumph, as detailed here, didn't want to use it either.
Everybody wanted to continue doing their own thing with basically no development money.
BL managed the whole thing badly.
With a perfectly servicable engine in the Rover V8, they should have knocked heads, said "this is our corporate engine, fit your own name valve covers" and get on with it.
That would have left more time & money for other development.
Very interesting & detailed the internecine rivalry between the BL brands where a lot of the cars overlapped.
Jaguar deliberately designed XJ6's so the Rover V8 would be difficult to fit on the production line.
Triumph, as detailed here, didn't want to use it either.
Everybody wanted to continue doing their own thing with basically no development money.
BL managed the whole thing badly.
With a perfectly servicable engine in the Rover V8, they should have knocked heads, said "this is our corporate engine, fit your own name valve covers" and get on with it.
That would have left more time & money for other development.
aeropilot said:
Alfa101 said:
They could, if they hadn't had brand tunnel vision, have fitted the Rover V8. If they had we may think of the Stag very differently now.
Except there was no spare production capacity of the Rover V8 when the Stag was new, Rover were using all they could make.It was only because of the 73 oil crisis, that there was enough slack in the supply to allow MG the use of it for the couple of thousand BGT V8's. The Stag was half way through its production run before Rover had enough capacity.
I used to know someone back in the 80's that replaced his Stag V8 with a RV8 and bitterly regretted it afterwards. He said the car was more reliable but not as nice to drive.
Triumph had been working on their V8, which was to form part of a family of engines, since c1963. When Rover, Triumph, Leyland etc merged and became part of BL, politics came into it as well. At the time, Rover had spent approx £3million on V8 production tooling and were virtually ready to go whereas Triumph weren't. According to one of Robson's books in the 70s, GM wouldn't allow the Rover V8 (then under licence from GM) to be used in a potential competitor (Stag), which they assumed would have N. America as a major market, to their Corvette. They were happy for it to be used in Rover 'sedans', as per the original agreement, which weren't seen as competition. The Morgan Plus 8 was a different issue.
At that stage it wouldn't have been beyond the realms of possibility to tool up for greater Rover V8 production but they did end up with Spen King moving from Rover to replace Harry Webster at Triumph, whereupon he increased the Triumph V8 from 2.5 to 3-litres and reverted from Fi to carb.. The original plan for the Stag was the 2.5 straight-six Triumph engine.
Had Triumph wanted to put the Rover V8 into the Stag, they probably would have ended up changing all of the transmission as well as it was geared around the very different characteristics of the Triumph engine, as well as suspension changes. Unfortunately, not all conversions were, shall we say, quite so thorough.
I'm not aware that the Rover V8 was ever downtuned due to inter-company rivalry (Rover had altered/improved it markedly from the original Buick unit) but there's no doubt that some Rover products (P8 and the mid-engined sports [PBS?] ) were cancelled, primarily after pressure from William Lyons who saw them as competition for the XJ6 and E-type.
Hundreds of what-ifs. If Alfa had not rusted, if Lancia had not offered the beta with steel made from bad quality russian imports...
...if the German car industry hadnt convinced the world that luxury meant austere black cabins and very hard suspension, we would have comfortable cars riding/handling like the jag XJ/ Citroen CX still...
...if the Standard Motor Co had bought the Volkswagen in 1945...
...if Leonnard Lord and BMC had let Morris, not Austin lead with the engineering...
...if Ford had not ditched RWD on the sierra replacement, hundreds of kit car makers would still be viable...
...if Patricia hewit hadnt balsed up so badly, would MG Rover still be around?
...so many what-ifs with BMC/British Leyland/ BL/Austin Rover...
...had Ford not bought Aston Martin in 1987/sold them...
...had Ford bought Ferrari...
...Had Porsche not developed the Boxster and actually gone under in the early 90s, as they were very close to doing
Take your pick, they are all fascinating topics
...if the German car industry hadnt convinced the world that luxury meant austere black cabins and very hard suspension, we would have comfortable cars riding/handling like the jag XJ/ Citroen CX still...
...if the Standard Motor Co had bought the Volkswagen in 1945...
...if Leonnard Lord and BMC had let Morris, not Austin lead with the engineering...
...if Ford had not ditched RWD on the sierra replacement, hundreds of kit car makers would still be viable...
...if Patricia hewit hadnt balsed up so badly, would MG Rover still be around?
...so many what-ifs with BMC/British Leyland/ BL/Austin Rover...
...had Ford not bought Aston Martin in 1987/sold them...
...had Ford bought Ferrari...
...Had Porsche not developed the Boxster and actually gone under in the early 90s, as they were very close to doing
Take your pick, they are all fascinating topics
HD Adam said:
Years ago, I read a book (can't remember the name exactly) that was basically the Rover story.
Very interesting & detailed the internecine rivalry between the BL brands where a lot of the cars overlapped.
Jaguar deliberately designed XJ6's so the Rover V8 would be difficult to fit on the production line.
Triumph, as detailed here, didn't want to use it either.
Everybody wanted to continue doing their own thing with basically no development money.
BL managed the whole thing badly.
With a perfectly servicable engine in the Rover V8, they should have knocked heads, said "this is our corporate engine, fit your own name valve covers" and get on with it.
That would have left more time & money for other development.
That seems to be where it went wrong! Very interesting & detailed the internecine rivalry between the BL brands where a lot of the cars overlapped.
Jaguar deliberately designed XJ6's so the Rover V8 would be difficult to fit on the production line.
Triumph, as detailed here, didn't want to use it either.
Everybody wanted to continue doing their own thing with basically no development money.
BL managed the whole thing badly.
With a perfectly servicable engine in the Rover V8, they should have knocked heads, said "this is our corporate engine, fit your own name valve covers" and get on with it.
That would have left more time & money for other development.
BMC had badge engineering down to an art, putting the same 1,622cc engine in the A60, Oxford, Riley 4/72, Wolseley 16/60, MGA, etc. just in different states of tune.
Whereas BL let Rover develop the Buick V8, Triumph build their own V8 and Jaguar soldier on with the 6 cylinder XK so the BL £50 development budget didn't go anywhere!
I always remember in 1979 or 1980 when the MK3 XJ6 was released and Jaguar finally quoted real life power outputs it was 200 bhp and the SD1 Vitesse had 190bhp, so why use 2 engines to get to pretty much the same result?
Whichever they chose ought to have fitted in either - Rover made a straight 6 SD1 and Jaguar made a V12 XJ. And I would have thought the Stag ought to have accommodated either seeing as 2500s had a straight 6 in them.
Such a wasted opportunity.
There was one reason the stag engine got a bad rep, the foundry didn't clean the block waterways of casting sand in a lot of instances resulting in head gasket failure sooner rather than later, replace the head gasket and the same thing would happen. Someone came across this at a later date and the problem was solved but of course this hasn't stopped every pub bore from saying "stag engines are crap,they all overheat"
This is why so many Rover V8 engines were fitted in the early days.
This is why so many Rover V8 engines were fitted in the early days.
What if, after Jaguar took over Daimler, the jewel of a 2.5 V8 hadn't been dropped? Bill Heynes was against it and set out prove it was unreliable, sending his son Jonathan out in a Daimler Mk 2 with the instructions to drive it from Coventry to Stratford and back - in 2nd gear. It survived, so he was told to redo the trip - in first gear. The engine blew. Therein the proof that the XK engine was so much the better of the two. QED. But now, I hear they are getting 1,000 bhp out of them. So sad.
Edited by lowdrag on Wednesday 12th August 07:09
coppice said:
The Stag was always a car which filled a niche , and even if the engines hadn't been made of cheese , they would have remained niche. TR7 was doomed from birth , not because of the engine but the godawful looks The TR 3 was ugly , but TR4, 5 and 6 were lovely looking bruisers, whereas TR 7 should never have left the drawing board . . It was much nicer in drophead form , but by then BL had lost what little plot was left .
BL cars had sold for years by exploiting the misplaced patriotism of their buyers - but once the public learned that it was possible to buy a Honda , Datsun or Toyota that never broke, or an Alfasud or Golf which made an Alllegro feel the cynically nasty rubbish it was , BL was doomed ,and rightly so
It's interesting how wise we all are in hindsight. Actual sales figures - rather than nostalgia - during the time in question are surely a better indicator of just how much the public 'liked' a car?BL cars had sold for years by exploiting the misplaced patriotism of their buyers - but once the public learned that it was possible to buy a Honda , Datsun or Toyota that never broke, or an Alfasud or Golf which made an Alllegro feel the cynically nasty rubbish it was , BL was doomed ,and rightly so
For the record the TR7 outsold all the other individual TR variants...... TR7 (111k), TR6 (95k), TR5 (3k), TR4 (40k)
But then again MGB production increased when they started making the much derided 'rubber bumpered models.....
Was the TR7 that bad looking? Compare a 1975 TR7 with a 1975 Porsche 924 and ask yourself which car has dated more? (purely from a design aspect!)
For the record - my opinion - the TR7 actually looked 'ahead of it's time' - Famously, when legendary Italian car designer Giorgetto Giugiaro first saw it in 1974, he walked around the car, paused for a moment, and said: “My god! They’ve done the same on this side as well.”
But the swage line (http://carspector.com/dictionary/S/swage-line/) along the side of a car that so offended Giugario is now a standard design feature of virtually all modern cars.
A couple of posts on Wiliamp poses a few 'what - ifs'..... all of which are perfectly valid.
The problem BL had was every car it replaced had a smaller market share.
Less money for its replacement as such, bean counters got even more powerful.
Read up on BL, the sheer balls ups they made were absolutely staggering.
The tuned SD1 story, it was the straight 6 engines they detained not the V8.
I was in the spanner’s in the late eighties so primarily worked on BL cars.
They were awful.
They had so much good design ruined by short cuts and shoddy build quality, I hated working on them.
The equivalent Fords and Vauxhall’s were better, but all cars were rusty and badly built in those days, most BL products were just unappealing.
Have a read up on the Maxi! This was without doubt the future.
It wasn’t good enough and they knew it, so the Marina was born. Both cars were designed to compete with the Cortina.
The Marina was meant to be in production for three years and they would quietly kill off both cars.
By the time they had been launched the Cortina Mk3 came out and was in a different class ( ford moved it up a class after the Mk2 ).
Read about the forced design compromises on it.
Read why the Allegro ( don’t get me started on this turd ) didn’t get a tailgate, or why the Princess didn’t either.
TR7 was an awful car in every respect. And everyone knew it.
I can’t comment on the Stag because oddly I never worked on one.
For me though it was a great car that was ruined by shoddy workmanship.
Less money for its replacement as such, bean counters got even more powerful.
Read up on BL, the sheer balls ups they made were absolutely staggering.
The tuned SD1 story, it was the straight 6 engines they detained not the V8.
I was in the spanner’s in the late eighties so primarily worked on BL cars.
They were awful.
They had so much good design ruined by short cuts and shoddy build quality, I hated working on them.
The equivalent Fords and Vauxhall’s were better, but all cars were rusty and badly built in those days, most BL products were just unappealing.
Have a read up on the Maxi! This was without doubt the future.
It wasn’t good enough and they knew it, so the Marina was born. Both cars were designed to compete with the Cortina.
The Marina was meant to be in production for three years and they would quietly kill off both cars.
By the time they had been launched the Cortina Mk3 came out and was in a different class ( ford moved it up a class after the Mk2 ).
Read about the forced design compromises on it.
Read why the Allegro ( don’t get me started on this turd ) didn’t get a tailgate, or why the Princess didn’t either.
TR7 was an awful car in every respect. And everyone knew it.
I can’t comment on the Stag because oddly I never worked on one.
For me though it was a great car that was ruined by shoddy workmanship.
It wasn't just hindsight though . I lived through the awful crap BL peddled to the public , survived a Marina TC crash as it understeered off the road at a speed even a Cortina or Victor would have managed without drama , endured my dad's Dolomite eating 5 gearboxes in a year and then trying to kill me as its front suspension collapsed at high speed -on a viaduct. I put up with dad's various Vitesses needing decoking , and losing most of their synchro after 18 months
I had forgotten the TR 7 sold so well, so stand corrected . But I'd maintain a 924 looks far nicer, and a Golf GTi or Alfasud Ti was better to drive . I speak as possibly the only person in the UK whose Sud didn't rust .
I remember driving an innocuous little Datsun 120 Y hire car for a week back then . A deeply unfashionable car , very very uncool -but here's the thing - it was brilliantly equipped , so easy to drive and everything just worked . Light controls , unbeatable synchro , started first time , every time . heater not only standard (!) but effective . tinted glass , HRW, integrated radio etc . Was it any wonder why folk bought Japanese cars ?
I had forgotten the TR 7 sold so well, so stand corrected . But I'd maintain a 924 looks far nicer, and a Golf GTi or Alfasud Ti was better to drive . I speak as possibly the only person in the UK whose Sud didn't rust .
I remember driving an innocuous little Datsun 120 Y hire car for a week back then . A deeply unfashionable car , very very uncool -but here's the thing - it was brilliantly equipped , so easy to drive and everything just worked . Light controls , unbeatable synchro , started first time , every time . heater not only standard (!) but effective . tinted glass , HRW, integrated radio etc . Was it any wonder why folk bought Japanese cars ?
lowdrag said:
What if, after Jaguar took over Daimler, the jewel of a 2.5 V8 hadn't been dropped? Bill Heynes was against it and set out prove it was unreliable, sending his son Jonathan out in a Daimler Mk 2 with the instructions to drive it from Coventry to Stratford and back - in 2nd gear. It survived, so he was told to redo the trip - in first gear. The engine blew. Therein the proof that the XK engine was so much the better of the two. QED. But now, I hear they are getting 1,000 bhp out of them. So sad.
Not just the 2.5V8, there was the 220 hp 4.5 V8 as used in the Majestic, which was much lighter, more compact and more efficient than a 4.2 XK.....A fascinating thread this, with so many rabbit holes to dive into, but no mention of the Mini which continued to sell pretty steadily throughout the period in question, although it's annual sales peak was c.1971 I think. BL management tried to kill it off more than once but buyers were still there wanting them, even the basic no frills 850. What ifs..... what if Lord Stokes hadn't killed off the Cooper S in '71, what if Issigonis had been allowed to develop a hatchback version of the Mini before the Metro came along, etc, etc.
What if Ferruccio Lamborghini's Ferrari 250GTE hadn't had a dodgy clutch one day in 1962....
What if Ferruccio Lamborghini's Ferrari 250GTE hadn't had a dodgy clutch one day in 1962....
P5BNij said:
A fascinating thread this, with so many rabbit holes to dive into, but no mention of the Mini which continued to sell pretty steadily throughout the period in question, although it's annual sales peak was c.1971 I think.
I have no idea why......as despite a strong desire for a 998 Cooper (and of course a S) back in 1980, I had to make do with a normal '73 1000 version on financial grounds, and despite a few tweeks to enable a few road rallies to be done in it (laughably) it really was a horrid little thing, and I was glad to be rid of it, only for a few years later, being car-less for about 6-9 months, and having to borrow my Mum's 1980 Mini City E auto to visit mates and girlfriends etc......oh how I hated driving that thing on a 60-70 mile trip 
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