Rover (marque)

Rover

Rover logo from 2003
Owner	Jaguar Land Rover (since 2013)[1]
Country	United Kingdom
Introduced	1878; 146 years ago (1878)
Discontinued	15 April 2005; 19 years ago (2005-04-15)
Markets	Automotive
Previous owners	Rover Company (1878–1967) Leyland Motors (1967–1968) British Leyland (1968–1986) Rover Group (1986–2000) BMW (2000–2006); licensed to MG Rover (2000–2005) Land Rover (2006–2013) [2]

Rover is a British automotive brand that was used for over a century, from 1904 to 2005. It was launched as a bicycle maker called Rover Company in 1878, before starting to manufacture autocars in 1904. The brand used the Viking longship as its logo. The rights to the brand are currently part of Jaguar Land Rover, which continues to produce Land Rovers, but no Rover automobiles are currently in production and the brand is considered dormant.

Despite a state-controlled absorption by the Leyland Motor Corporation (LMC) in 1967 and subsequent mergers, nationalisation, and demergers, the Rover brand retained its identity, first as an independent subsidiary division of LMC, and subsequently through various groups within British Leyland (BL) through the 1970s and into the 1980s.

The Rover brand then became the flagship brand of the newly and eponymously renamed Rover Group in 1988, which included the actually stronger and more valuable brand names Land Rover and Mini as it passed first through the hands of British Aerospace and then into the ownership of BMW Group. Sharing technology with Honda and financial investment during the BMW ownership led to a revival of the brand during the 1990s in its core midsize car segment.^[3]

In 2000, BMW sold Rover and related MG car activities of the Rover Group to the Phoenix Consortium, who established the MG Rover Group at Longbridge. BMW retained ownership of the Rover brand, allowing MG Rover to use it under licence. In April 2005, Rover-branded cars ceased to be produced when the MG Rover Group became insolvent. The MG Rover Group's assets then got split up between two Chinese automakers – some were bought by SAIC Motor, who obtained technology that was incorporated into a new Chinese line of Roewe branded luxury saloons. Other assets were bought by Nanjing Automobile.

BMW sold the rights to the Rover brand to Ford in 2006 for approximately £6 million, the latter exercising an option of first refusal to buy it dating back to its purchase of Land Rover in 2000. Ford thus reunited the original Rover Company brands, primarily for brand-protection reasons.^[4] In March 2008, Ford reached agreement with Tata Motors of India to include the Rover brand as part of the sale of their Jaguar Land Rover operations to them. Legally the Rover brand is the property of Land Rover under the terms of Ford's purchase of the name in 2006.^[5]