End of line for model railway ? YORK

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"Rover never moved to Solihull - Solihull was/is only ever Land Rover. Though Rover had access to the Gaydon G-DEC (theoretically part of Land Rover), their "home" remained at Longbridge until the bitter end."

Er, that's what I said!

Cheers Richard

You are talking about the so-called "Rover Group". I am talking about the Rover Car Company which began in Coventry and started making Rover *cars* in Solihull in 1946 following the refusal of the governemnt to grant a development certificate for expansion of car production in Coventry. The "Rover Group" was just a renamed British Leyland and had practically nothing to do with the original Rover Car Company.

I don't think that you are correct Richard, Rover bought the Solihul site from the government, it was a "shadow" aircaft enfine factory during the war. The newly converted Solihull premises were officially opened by the President of the Board of Trade in February 1946 and production of the 1940 model cars re-started there(P2 and P3 models). Numbers were serverly limited by Government restrictions on steel . As you said it was these steel restrictions that brought about the LandRover.

Reagrds Jeff

... but Rover still never operated from Solihull! Land Rover was devleoped by Wilkes brothers, notably Maurice, directors of the Rover Car Company, after WWII to allow production of something within the restrictions of an abundance of aluminium but a dearth of steel. Launched at the Amsterdam Motor Show in 1948, they only ever envisaged making about 1,200, as by then they expected steel to become available to allow resumption of production of pre-war cars. For whatever reason (I've no idea what Solihull was used for before, if anything), these were produced at Solihull. By the time most Britsh car makers were absorbed in to the nationalised Britsh Leyland Land Rover was a sepetate company (technically), thought in practical terms LR was a division of Rover, which became a divsion of Leyland, as did BMC, Austin etc etc. Under Leyland, Land Rover only really started to become a trully sperate entity when there was a attampt to sell LR to, ironically, Ford in the mid 70's - at which point Land Rover spares started to aquire an 'L' on the end to differentiate them from Rover parts, a process never completed. Even when I worked for Rover in 1996 for a spell at the University of Warwick Advanced Technology Center, the two were completely intertwined, except for production facilities and seperate payrolls (ish, many engineers jackets had both companies logo's on).

Cheers Richard

ok - I guess that answers the "what was it used for before" question - I'll make a note as I've yet too see it in the Land Rover folklore!

Cheers Richard