Jewel25 Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 Ausocoutic kit ? Was this available on the 45? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sierraman Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 After project drive, they stripped a lot of the sound deadening out, offering it as an option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davehedgehog31 Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 https://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=34369 Interesting read on the Project Drive caper. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
egg Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 https://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=34369 Interesting read on the Project Drive caper. Reading that is like watching individual nails in the coffin going in the UK car industry. The Reverend Bluejeans and rml2345 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr_Bo11ox Posted March 17, 2018 Author Share Posted March 17, 2018 Very interesting that, cheers for posting it! I think if you find a 75 with the 'Rover Group' VIN plate you can sleep safe in the knowledge that it is pretty much exempt from PD bollocks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bren Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 They fiddled while Rome burned. egg and HMC 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
egg Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 They fiddled while Rome burned.Agreed, it smacks of people in suits in meetings making excuses and saying 'things are changing'... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wuvvum Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 You can blame Bernard Pinchinstrider for that.Or "Burnt Fishtrousers", as Top Gear magazine once memorably called him. The Reverend Bluejeans 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr_Bo11ox Posted March 17, 2018 Author Share Posted March 17, 2018 Deleting the placca cap off the seatbelt bolt is so friggin stingy it's downright insulting to people who come into the showroom isn't it. If you start from a position of having it, then make a conscious decision to delete it thinking 'the customer won't give a shit' you clearly have a fairly low opinion of your customers. Wankers!!! Lacquer Peel, The Reverend Bluejeans and oldcars 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mk2_craig Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 That was quite a depressing read. I didn't browse through the several pages of replies but it left me with the impression that every month, the accountants sat down with the engineers and told them, "we're still unprofitable, if you want to be employed next month you need to find another way of saving 4p per unit". I particularly liked how they binned off the second horn and boot release switch, but didn't get round to chopping the relevant circuits out of the wiring loom until a while later. egg and The Reverend Bluejeans 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pillock Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 Some of the stuff makes sense, like not having a Rover branded key when you're going to be making MG branded cars. But yeah, creating whole new cheaper things to replace stuff like sill plates, shaving 5mm off the width if bloody stingy. How did you replace the rear light bulbs once they'd removed the access hatch? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghosty Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 How did you replace the rear light bulbs once they'd removed the access hatch? They had one of those crappy clip-in moulded carpet things that you have to unclip and pull away to reveal inside the wing. Before it would have been permanently mounted with a hole cut for the door. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sierraman Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 I'm surprised they didn't replace the bulbs with tea lights. pompei, angle and AMC Rebel 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jewel25 Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 The quality of the carpet and leather was a significantly worse on later cars. That said , it fell from a high starting point as the quality of the leather on the early 2000-2002 model years was superb. oldcars 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sierraman Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 As ever they spent all the money on all the wrong stuff. Pursuing a dead end market of cars for a generation that was dying out, then pricing the product alongside cars it couldn't hope to compete with. If they had tried to appeal to the wider market things might have been different. AMC Rebel and alcyonecorporation 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
holbeck Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 I worked as a suppliers rep for a component supplier during the 90's and early '00's. All of this sort of activity is very familiar. Although you look at that post and the baby was going out with the bath water. Project Drive looks like it must have been a rabid whirlpool of cost reduction activity. Even in normal times, manufacturers would be looking for an annual 5% cost saving on each part. Delivering that made for quite a tense environment for the engineers on both sides of the table. I remember a customer (not MGR) who insisted we reduce the thickness of the plating on a pulley. We did it - we were offered no choice if we wanted to remain as a supplier. The durability of the component was reduced. The saving was less than 0.5p per item and we had to do all the product verification tests again which even then cost tens of thousands to do. The punch line to this is that they were buying 10K per month of this item and continued to do so for another 3 years until the next major change. So even after all the costs associated with the change they would have still made a net £100k saving. nacho man, egg and alcyonecorporation 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LostnotFound Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 I think what gets me with that list is someone somewhere decided on the 'nice touches' to create a premium product in the first place. If you buy a Dacia you'd be impressed with the owners manual being given to you on a 3.5" floppy but people looking at a 75 in 2003 would have also sat in something that was at least properly finished? Forgive my ignorance as I'm not a Rover aficionado by any stretch of the imagination, what were they selling them by this time for? Or more relevantly what could you have bought for the same money as a mid level 75 around this sort of time? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mk2_craig Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 As ever they spent all the money on all the wrong stuff. Pursuing a dead end market of cars for a generation that was dying out, then pricing the product alongside cars it couldn't hope to compete with. If they had tried to appeal to the wider market things might have been different.I wonder how many man-hours went into this sort of petty cost cutting, when the real efforts should have been going into designing a new generation of competitive motor cars. New POD and holbeck 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sierraman Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 They really ought to have fucked all this wood and leather stuff off in the seventies. But instead they knew better, as if it would have some sort of renaissance. alcyonecorporation 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cort16 Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 It makes an early 99/00 one seem quite desirable though . egg 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lacquer Peel Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 They really ought to have fucked all this wood and leather stuff off in the seventies. But instead they knew better, as if it would have some sort of renaissance.They did, for the MG versions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jewel25 Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 Going down the retro route leaves you in a styling dead end too. As for wood and leather, it needed to be done in a more contemporary way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sierraman Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 They did, for the MG versions.But carried on with the Rover. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
egg Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 Well I guess it was their USP, that and HGF. Joey spud 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
New POD Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 I worked as a suppliers rep for a component supplier during the 90's and early '00's. All of this sort of activity is very familiar. Although you look at that post and the baby was going out with the bath water. Project Drive looks like it must have been a rabid whirlpool of cost reduction activity. Even in normal times, manufacturers would be looking for an annual 5% cost saving on each part. Delivering that made for quite a tense environment for the engineers on both sides of the table. I remember a customer (not MGR) who insisted we reduce the thickness of the plating on a pulley. We did it - we were offered no choice if we wanted to remain as a supplier. The durability of the component was reduced. The saving was less than 0.5p per item and we had to do all the product verification tests again which even then cost tens of thousands to do. The punch line to this is that they were buying 10K per month of this item and continued to do so for another 3 years until the next major change. So even after all the costs associated with the change they would have still made a net £100k saving. I was involved in a design change (at prototype stage) that saved 1 million units x 6 years x 45p per unit. We used a tool developed by Hull University and Lucas Industries called Design for Assembly, and a set of rules which defined parts into A or B parts. In a week long offsite workshop we replaced a Brass Tube (42p) , a brass washer (2p) and 2 seals (3p each) with one Brass deep drawn flat ended "bullet" (2p) and one seal (3p) Total cost of this ? 8 engineers for a week and a set of tools costing £30K. Also this increased the reliability/quality because it removed 1/3 of the O rings in the whole solenoid. so 1/3 less things to leak. Boothroyd and Dewhurst still sell a similar design tool. holbeck and egg 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
New POD Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 I wonder how many man-hours went into this sort of petty cost cutting, when the real efforts should have been going into designing a new generation of competitive motor cars. Indeed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lacquer Peel Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 They couldn't afford to design a new car on their own, they even looked to partner with automotive greats* like Proton. The Gen 2 could have been the new mid size Rover. The worst thing that happened was the BMW buyout and losing their partnership with Honda. Let's not dwell on the failures of MG-Rover, let's rejoice in the excellence of Ken_Testes' 45 V6, built at a time of guarded optimism, before joyless penny pinching. egg, BeEP, rml2345 and 2 others 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
egg Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 Good point, sorry for taking part in fred derailment. Here's a nice early 1.6 (adequately fast I'd imagine) as compensation... https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201803054273628 Sir Snipes and ProgRocker 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sierraman Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 That's true. What was hopelessly uncompetitive when new has become bizarrely appealing in old age. Probably best to get a Rover 45 while they are still cheap and available. pompei 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr_Bo11ox Posted March 18, 2018 Author Share Posted March 18, 2018 Averaged 27mpg on my last tankful - not brilliant, but then I have been commuting to Derby in it which inevitably involves sitting in traffic for friggin hours and hours every day watching your life, and those of thousands of other losers like you, ticking away in a brightly coloured tin box surrounded by litter, identikit retail parks and streets of dilapidated 1930's semis with odd tiles missing off the roofs Lacquer Peel, egg, JohnK and 2 others 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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