Did you work at Longbridge? Rover stories. Red Robbo things.

[New POD]

On 11/02/2025 at 13:42, motorpunk said:

I have sledged down there. Cofton Park. Used to live in Rednal. 

[motorpunk]

Interviewed two fantastic gentlemen today. Sons of a sort-of famous person who had a big impact at Morris (as they called it). I photographed a few interesting bits, too.

Am getting to the point where I need to start writing. 

[lesapandre]

Centre badge with the star is Moskvitch - a very long way from Longbridge.

[lesapandre]

Funny thing to consider though all this industrial action at BMC, BMH and British Leyland.

With the Mini and to an extent the 1100 and commercial vehicles - BMC were probably the manufacturer that served working people the most with modest transport to get them to their jobs and run their daily lives. 

And the strikers disregarded that aspect in favour of their own 'grievances' - sometimes quite petty?

[motorpunk]

Here’s the cover. Things still being tweaked.

[Dobloseven]

7 minutes ago, motorpunk said:

Here’s the cover. Things still being tweaked.

I know it's a nice bit of alliteration,but surely the Metro actually being produced would have been after his time at Longbridge.Though it seems its potential production was used as a threat/bargaining tool by the management.

[motorpunk]

The switch to the Metro signified a radical new way of doing things, its introduction and Union opposition to the new way of working forced management to deal with Robbo. The book sort of could have been Robbo v Metro, but, as you know, I like alliteration. 

[cort1977]

Looks good. Is there a reason for doing the cover first? I would have thought it was one of the last things to be decided on?

 

[motorpunk]

23 minutes ago, cort1977 said:

Looks good. Is there a reason for doing the cover first? I would have thought it was one of the last things to be decided on?

 

Helps me focus on the end result! Back cover is WIP and comes last as there’ll be text and quotes on it. 

[lesapandre]

'The Hunt for Red Rob....'....I can't get the rest of the alliteration to work.

'Militants Metros and MI5' - might stretch the memory of potential readers? Do many clock the Metro? Of course we do.

Militants 'Motors'? etc

Or 

Militants 'Motoring'? 

[lesapandre]

'Blood on the Shop Floor' 😅

 

[lesapandre]

2 hours ago, Dobloseven said:

I know it's a nice bit of alliteration,but surely the Metro actually being produced would have been after his time at Longbridge.Though it seems its potential production was used as a threat/bargaining tool by the management.

Nice bit of work BTW 👏 

[Madman Of The People]

I’d shorten the title to “The Real Red Robbo.”  It’s more concise and just a little more punchy.  I’m sure it would make doing a search on Amazon easier, too.

 

[lesapandre]

Personally I prefer the "looking for" - echoes of 'The Quest for Corvo' or 'The Teller of Tales: In Search of Robert Louis Stevenson' - biography as discovery taking the reader along with the writer has a long and distinguished publishing history.

[N Dentressangle]

4 hours ago, motorpunk said:

Here’s the cover. Things still being tweaked.

Really like that - looks good to me.

The way MI5 was used (and maybe still is) to defeat completely legitimate non-violent left-wing opposition is pretty appalling. A friend of my dad's was a 70's leftie, politically active and went on to work for https://cat.org.uk/ He reckoned his phone was tapped, and maybe he was right.

[motorpunk]

2 hours ago, Madman Of The People said:

I’d shorten the title to “The Real Red Robbo.”  It’s more concise and just a little more punchy.  I’m sure it would make doing a search on Amazon easier, too.

 

Ta. Without giving the game away, the shorter title wouldn’t work. The ‘looking for’ element gives me room to tell the story of the search which is (I hope) just as interesting as the individual himself. 
 

@lesapandre yup. Thanks. That. 👍🏼

[motorpunk]

1 hour ago, N Dentressangle said:

Really like that - looks good to me.

The way MI5 was used (and maybe still is) to defeat completely legitimate non-violent left-wing opposition is pretty appalling. A friend of my dad's was a 70's leftie, politically active and went on to work for https://cat.org.uk/ He reckoned his phone was tapped, and maybe he was right.

Thank you. Someone (retired ex-Cowley Marxist) who I interviewed this week asked me straight if I was working for MI5 (!) The political subterfuge side of BL has never properly been told. So I’ll have a stab at that, too.

[R Lutz]

On 09/02/2025 at 11:17, motorpunk said:

 examples of sabotage which quite tickled me - They used to put a ball bearing in cold grease inside the tubular seat frame of certain cars, knowing that once the grease melted the new car owner would have a rattle almost impossible to find and remove.

SD1 sabotage was something else. My boss told me there was a random knocking in one. A full strip down found a large nut, hung from a bracket by a piece of string. Alongside, a note saying 'you found it then?'.  SD1s had real resentment built into them. Even to this day I used the phrase 'capitalist bastards', again from a note inside a SD1. A common issue was the plastic blanking plugs from radiators inside the inlet manifold. 

As late as 2015, we were stripping out Spanish-built Corsas to find porn mags blocking runners or channels. Probably the most disgusting was a takeaway curry container with food inside wedged into a Valeo built heater motor in the then new Ford Mondeo. That was a Cowie warranty claim. 

 

[inconsistant]

6 hours ago, motorpunk said:

Here’s the cover. Things still being tweaked.

What about ‘MI5, Militants and MiniMetros?

[lesapandre]

Or 'Militants, Minis and MI5'?

[lesapandre]

'Cus he was there at the height of the Mini. I think the maximum production year was early 70's after the Oil Crisis.

Just 'Metro' makes me think of urban railways - Paris Metro not Longbridge Metro...😅

[motorpunk]

1 hour ago, R Lutz said:

SD1 sabotage

 

That’s brilliant! 😂 I might include that. Very funny. 

[artdjones]

3 hours ago, lesapandre said:

Personally I prefer the "looking for" - echoes of 'The Quest for Corvo' or 'The Teller of Tales: In Search of Robert Louis Stevenson' - biography as discovery taking the reader along with the writer has a long and distinguished publishing history.

Looking for, searching for, the quest for were all fresh and interesting once, but are clichéd now.

Just like A Very British.......at the start of a title. 

[lesapandre]

Peak Mini:

1970: 278,950 made - 80,562 UK sales - 198,398 exported.

 1971: 318,475 made - 102,006 UK sales - 216,469 exported.

 1972: 306,937 made - 96,185 UK sales  -  210,752 exported.

 1973: 295,186 made - 96,383 UK sales - 198,803 exported.

 1974: 255,336 made - 89,686 UK sales - 165,650 exported.

Production then fell right through the 70's as the competition caught up, imports ramped up and strike action bit.

Must have had a catastrophic effect on the company as remember their fixed costs would have remained much the same as at 318,000 or gone up with the rampant inflation of the 70's.

There was also huge wage pressure created by that inflation. Hence all the underlying unrest. 

The inability to update the car was a killer factor in all this. Metro was really five years later than it should have been.

Source:

ARonline:

https://www.aronline.co.uk/cars/mini/essay-mini-production-many/

[lesapandre]

5 minutes ago, artdjones said:

Looking for, searching for, the quest for were all fresh and interesting once, but are clichéd now.

Just like A Very British.......at the start of a title. 

Oh I think they can all bear recycling. There are only so many ways to say much the same thing.

[High Jetter]

5 hours ago, Madman Of The People said:

I’d shorten the title to “The Real Red Robbo.”  It’s more concise and just a little more punchy.  I’m sure it would make doing a search on Amazon easier, too.

 

Or "The Real Red Robbo...Revealed"? I know you were 'looking for' him, and that's worked before, but is it a series? Hard to know which would reel more punters in 

[Bren]

3 hours ago, R Lutz said:

SD1 sabotage was something else. My boss told me there was a random knocking in one. A full strip down found a large nut, hung from a bracket by a piece of string. Alongside, a note saying 'you found it then?'.  SD1s had real resentment built into them. Even to this day I used the phrase 'capitalist bastards', again from a note inside a SD1. A common issue was the plastic blanking plugs from radiators inside the inlet manifold. 

As late as 2015, we were stripping out Spanish-built Corsas to find porn mags blocking runners or channels. Probably the most disgusting was a takeaway curry container with food inside wedged into a Valeo built heater motor in the then new Ford Mondeo. That was a Cowie warranty claim. 

 

When I removed the front offside wing from my SD1 a cigarette butt fell out of the void. 

 

[Madman Of The People]

2 hours ago, lesapandre said:

Peak Mini:

1970: 278,950 made - 80,562 UK sales - 198,398 exported.

 1971: 318,475 made - 102,006 UK sales - 216,469 exported.

 1972: 306,937 made - 96,185 UK sales  -  210,752 exported.

 1973: 295,186 made - 96,383 UK sales - 198,803 exported.

 1974: 255,336 made - 89,686 UK sales - 165,650 exported.

Production then fell right through the 70's as the competition caught up, imports ramped up and strike action bit.

Must have had a catastrophic effect on the company as remember their fixed costs would have remained much the same as at 318,000 or gone up with the rampant inflation of the 70's.

There was also huge wage pressure created by that inflation. Hence all the underlying unrest. 

The inability to update the car was a killer factor in all this. Metro was really five years later than it should have been.

Source:

ARonline:

https://www.aronline.co.uk/cars/mini/essay-mini-production-many/

Weren’t they losing money on every Mini sold, at least in the beginning?  I wonder how long it took before the Mini finally turned a profit?

If the story (according to Ford’s engineering analysis) of BMC losing thirty quid or so on every unit they sent out the door to be believed, then the total losses must have been staggering!

 

[lesapandre]

I'd heard that - I don't know how it was calculated.

The BMC board reputedly had the bad habit of pricing their cars against the competition rather than looking at what they actually cost + profit. 

They really were all over the place. 

I'm not sure what Ford meant - because you can't work out the total cost of a car just by looking at the manufactured components - there are the variable on-costs like  plant, buildings and wages  as well as advertising etc - all which contribute to the cost. Maybe Ford estimated these.

BMC had too many plants, strung out supply chains and paid out too much in dividends in the 1960's which all weighted on the gross cost of each car too.

Issigonis was a brilliant designer - but I'm unsure how much thought went into making the Mini easy (cheap) to make or in streamlining the production process to reduce costs. Probably very little.

I don't think they set fixed parameters for vehicle cost and specification either - unlike Ford. 

By the time of the Mk1 Cortina Ford were making much more use of computers in body design too - to reduce materials used and thus costs.

The Cortina is for example considerably lighter than the equivalent Farina A60.

[motorpunk]

ISBN assigned - 9798311342803