[ROVERNET - UK] Glen et al

[Aidrian Bridgeman-Sutton]

>
> His books all contain mistakes and he is not as good as he thinks he is. My P4 colour scheme (definately original I have the proof) doesn't exist according to his book!
>

Here's something that isn't widely acknowledged in these days of
limited packages options - the old Rover company would let you have
almost anything you wanted if you were prepared  to.one, pay for it
and, two, wait for it to be built.

There were large numbers of standard combination that you could get
cheaper and quicker than a bespoke finished car, but if you wanted
your Rover painted a specific colour then it would be done though not
always cheaply or quickly as it had to be sent through production as a
a special order.

The fact that it wasn't a standard option doesn't mean that it
couldn't happen, but the numbers of people willing to pay for such
things would have been quite small


>  If there's one thing I've learn't over the years my perception of how I thought the Rover Co was run (and probabaly was in the early /mid 50's) is nothing as to the reality of 1970's industrial Britain. .

Yes... quite agree.

One factor is that mistakes did happen on the lines and sometimes
parts needed to be substituted due to supply shortages; Some of these
are well known such as non-standard BW 235s affecting some P5Bs  and
others might only affect one or two cars.

For later cars the BL management philosophy was apparently volume
production at all costs and bother the quality - early SD1s were the
classic example of this, but it seems that the need to keep the lines
rolling meant that some earlier cars may have been assembled using
whatever parts they had on the line to keep the plant running.

On the other hand some cars may have been misidentified on the line
and got the wrong bits or that some cars were caught between a change
between one variant and another- at this time the assembly lines were
still vary much concerned with hand assembly and weren't the
computerised, Kanban-centred marvels of efficiency and repeatability
that we think of nowadays.

Aidrian