The Story

1. Background (Part I)

It is often the case that the biggest success stories in automotive history come about almost by accident. The Land Rover is a case in point, being a product of circumstance rather than the result of a longstanding desire by Rover management to produce an all terrain vehicle.

Imagine being in charge of a car manufacturing company in the immediate post-World War 2 days; a company with an excess of production capacity a severe restriction on the amounts of sheet steel available to it.

Rover’s situation looked almost hopeless after the War. With raw materials in such short supply, the British Government of the time was allocating the largest quantities of sheet steel to those car companies who could offer relatively large levels of exports. With rover’s existing and essentially outdated range of cars unlikely to capture any major share of overseas markets, there simply wasn’t the money available to develop another fairly upmarket model in keeping with Rover’s new-found image of quality.

What Rover really needed was a stop-gap model that could be developed and launched both quickly and cheaply, yet would appeal to large numbers of buyers in Britain and elsewhere. This could then tide the company over until the launch of a true post-war Rover ( which turned out to be the highly successful “P4” a few years later); the stop-gap model, having served its purpose by then, could easily be discontinued and would have proved useful by earning a few pennies for the Rover piggy bank.

It had been thought that Rover might rush into production a new 700cc economy car, code-named the M-type, but such plans were dismissed when this model was deemed unsuitable for export. Meanwhile, Rover’s application to build 15,000 examples of its pre-War design “P2” series cars each year was turned down, the Government explaining that only enough steel could be allocated for the production of 1,100 examples. The company’s problems seemed never ending...

At the time, Rover’s troubles were resting on the shoulders of Spencer Wilks, the company’s Managing Director... but it was to be Spencer’s brother, Maurice, who was eventually to prove the inspiration for rover’s route back to recovery.