> The Death of British Autos:
>
> I don't know that I could agree that re-engineering was the
> death of Triumph. I think that marketing and bad management
> practice would be a better description.
This is consistent with the death of MG and Healey. The problem
was not that their products were poorly engineered, quite the
contrary. I've made a flippant semi-joke out of it, but it's
quite literally true that British sports cars work in spite of
their specifications. The cost constraints put on MG after
1935, when Len Lord closed the racing department, were just
staggering. The fact that these damn things worked at ALL
given their components is a testament to the genius of the
men who put them together.
The problems with both Healey and MG came because they were
forced to use only Austin powerplants and other components.
While many of these are robust, most of them were 20 years old
when they were pressed into service for use in a sports car.
The classic example is the gearbox of the Healey Hundred. Originally
from an Austin truck, the gearbox was used behind the tuned Austin
engine (which was up something like 25 bhp from its original rating).
The increased power invariably broke first gear. So did Austin
re-engineer the gearbox to improve it? No -- they blanked off
first gear and put an electric overdrive on the tail so that the
car would have good ratios. This is how you say "kludge" with
a British accent -- yet it's one of the really cool features of
the car at the same time.
Commonization of parts across production lines was BMC's (and
later BPL's) downfall. The phrase was "rationalization" (sorry,
should be an "s" there instead of a "z" for the UK), and it meant
reducing the number of competing cars in the vast corporate structure,
reducing the number of unique components in the cars they kept, and
reducing the number of changes required to update those cars from one
year to the next.
In the Sixties, MG engineering (and Healey engineering) money went
towards improving the breed. The Healey 3000 Mk III is much refined
over the Mk I (though neither one has that great 100-4 windscreen),
with the result that the BJ8 is a luxury sports car that filled much
the same market niche that the expensive Japanese two-seaters fill
today. And the '67 MGB has many refinements over the one introduced
in 1962, such as a five-main bearing engine, an improved starter,
a stronger rear end, and even a few more BHP due to the improved
smoothness of the five-main.
1968 changed all that. And not to make US smog and safety laws out
to be more a villain than necessary, they had a staggering impact on
British sports cars. Much BMC/BPL engineering from late 1967 through
1980 was dedicated to getting cars to pass smog and safety laws that
were aggressive at best and unreachable at worst.
The crucial problem, however, was neither engineering nor laws -- it
was management at the corporation's highest level. To get an idea of
the difference, consider that Donald Healey made regular trips to
the US, not only because he liked coming here -- especially the
California coast, which anyone can understand: if you like sports
cars, you'll love the Santa Cruz mountains -- but also because it
kept him in touch with the customer base. Many of my friends in the
Healey club knew DMH from his almost annual visits, even through his
eighties. He liked driving in the States, largely because it was
so different from driving in picturesque but crowded Britain. He
appreciated that difference, reveled in it, and suggested a number
of changes to his cars (big six-cylinder engines, overdrive, roll-up
windows, snug convertible tops) to better suit the conditions in
which his customers drove the cars he loved to build.
Contrast this with the story told by Kjell Qvale, one of the earliest
importers of MGs (and also of Morrises, Austins, and other detritus
that was required to get the lucrative MG package from Nuffield, later
BMC). Qvale's offices were in San Francisco, at the foot of Nob Hill.
He was complaining about the hill-climbing ability (or lack) of the
Morris Minor, which at that stage had a 36-bhp side-valve engine, and
the BMC representative didn't believe him. "Here," Qvale said, handing
the rep a set of keys, "try to drive that car to the top of Nob Hill."
The BMC rep laughed derisively. "Are you trying to imply that our car
can't make it up that hill?"
"Just try it," Qvale kept insisting. They got into the Minor and
were soon puttering up the hill. About halfway there the car started
lugging. Shortly after that it labored, the rep had it in the lowest
gear he could manage, and finally, less than two-thirds of the way
up, the car stalled, unable to proceed.
Most management at the top level of the British auto industry just
didn't get it with regards to the US. We were their largest market,
responsible for over half their production on their most lucrative
models, the sports cars. Yet they continued to ignore, ridicule,
and otherwise abuse this market. Alec Issigonis, inventor of the Mini,
refused to come to the US.
The Seventies were the worst. In addition to smog laws and crash
protection legislation that caused fears of elminating the open car
altogether, the huge corporate morass of British Phlegmsucking Leyland
had begun to crush the life out of British sports cars, and again by
the old failures of not producing what customers wanted. The British
Car article mentioned earlier talks about the hapless TR7, one of the
victims of this period. The TR7 was originally designed as a fixed-
head two seater with that odd roofline, exclusively because of the
fear of rollover-protection legislation that never materialized. So
from the start, the TR7 had a disadvantage as a closed sports car.
BL decided to improve the slow sales of the TR7 by discontinuing sale of
the MGB-GT in the US, though BGT production continued through 1980
in the UK and other export markets (including a V8 version that would have
been ideal for US conditions, having been designed here). This didn't
help, and TR7 production numbers continued to lag behind the open MGB.
So in 1980, BPL ended MGB production shortly after the TR7 finally
got a folding top. That bought them two years, after which time
even the MGB-GT V8's engine and a drop-top could no longer induce
people to buy a British Leyland product, the otherwise commendable TR8.
And that, as they say, was that. No more British sports cars.
The fault isn't Triumph's, as the decision to push the TR7 ahead of
MG prototypes and production models was made at the top levels of BPL.
The fault is squarely on the shoulders of people at Leyland who for
some reason promoted the TR7 in spite of its continually lagging
sales, and who never addressed the reasons for those lagging sales:
poor reliability due to an unwillingness to spend the money to get
the problems solved before they came here. (The common bogey of course
is the labor union, and there's some truth in that: the labor situation
in the UK was appalling in the late Seventies, with strikes for no
good reason and enforced slowdowns and other problems, not to mention
rampant inflation on the world market, two oil shortages, and other
sundry political and economic upheavals throughout the world. But
it's not all the fault of the truculent jack on the line; in fact,
I'd say that more of it is probably due to the arrogance of the
jug-eared son-and-heir with the old school tie up in the m.d.'s office,
having researched things a little more fully.)
The frightening moral of this story -- or one of many -- is that a
large, arrogant corporation will almost inevitably fail, particularly
when it loses sight of its customer base and becomes fixated on trying
to revive a product name with which its current heads had good
associations when they were climbing the corporate ladder. (Oh, wait,
I don't work there anymore, I can *say* that...) In the Sixties,
Triumph and MG occupied very slightly different niches, niches that
had some competitive crossover, but that appealed to different kinds
of people. The Big Healey was a completely different vehicle, and
the E Type different yet again, while the Aston appealed to international
spies of unparalleled sophistication and suavity. :-) When BPL
consolidated all these disparate cars under one corporate umbrella,
they made several mistakes:
1. They assumed that there were fewer niches than there actually were
and reduced their overall product coverage by consolidating and
eliminating viable product lines
2. They introduced new cars without consideration for the driving
conditions, market requirements, or basic desires of the customer
base
3. Their products were late, poorly tested, made with components that
were improperly specified for the ultimate application
4. They almost without fail made the wrong choice, and discontinued the
strong sellers (MGB, Austin-Healey) in an effort to bolster weak
sales of products (TR6, TR7) that addressed a smaller niche
The real problem is that Healey, Enever, Thornley, Lyons, and whatsisname
at Triumph (I really should learn the sod's name one of these days) knew
the secret about sports cars:
Sports cars aren't interchangeable. If you really want a Healey, an Alfa
just won't do. Sports cars aren't commodities, to be bought by price and
optional features list alone. Sure, you pay attention to how much you can
afford to pay, but within the basic price bracket, the price is one of the
last things you look at in sports cars. Nobody says, "Well, I really
wanted a 911 Carrera, but I bought a Lotus Esprit Turbo because it's
cheaper." Well, nobody with the slightest ounce of soul, anyway. Your
soul either tells you that you long for one or you yearn for the other,
and the rest of it is just rationalization as to why you choose between
the two.
In the end, British Phlegmsucking Leyland management fouled things up
because they failed to understand that people who buy sports cars
don't do so for the same reasons that people buy Volvos or Datsuns
(save your flames, I have one of each).
You buy a sports car the same way you fall in love with someone:
because you can't help yourself. And having fallen in love with
someone, you don't break up just to be with someone who's a little
more reliable or who costs a little less.
And I think some people understand this about cars, and some people
don't. And the people who just don't get it shouldn't run car companies.
At least not sports car companies.
--Scott Fisher
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