Before the remnants of the British Leyland empire were sold off to various developing-world automakers (in an intriguing automotive inversion of colonialism), BMW temporarily became the caretaker of a number of British auto brands, including Rover, MG, Land Rover, and Mini. Only Mini now remains under Bavarian fealty, but before dumping the mess on the hapless Phoenix Consortium, BMW helped the Rover brand develop its only halfway-competitive car of the 1990s: the retro-inspired Rover 75. And according to Britain’s AutoExpress, BMW also helped Rover developed this odd duck, known as the 55, as an attack upmarket on Audi’s A4 and Mercedes’ C-Class. It was to be followed by a larger replacement for the 75, which would have given Rover a one-two punch to match the Mercedes C and E Classes, Audi’s A4 and A6 and so on.
The long-nosed look of this 1997 design study is the result of a Passat/A4-style longitudinal-front-drive platform, which (like the 75’s platform) had been experimentally developed by BMW. Of course, the looks are a bit odd, and BMW really didn’t need to develop unique-platform competitors for its 3- and 5-Series, so this car was probably never likely to make it to production. Still, it’s interesting to imagine what Rover would be like today if it were still struggling along with a large neo-retro flagship based on dated German technology and not much else… except that then it would pretty much be a British Chrysler.
I does look like it could be an updated Chrysler 300.
Yeah, I was seeing the same thing – 300 with an softer front end & trunk.
I definitely see elements of the Chrysler 300 in the area around the C pillar.
Quite an article on this on http://www.aronline.co.uk, a truly excellent site if you’ve got any curiosity about BMW/BL/Austin-Rover/MG-Rover. It’s a pity the car was never built. Rover’s at the end, were not bad cars, and it would be nice to see the Brits building something a bit more mass market than Morgans. Yes, I haven’t forgotten Jaguar/Land Rover.
The site is also expanding into a number of other British areas: Rootes, various small scale sports car builders, etc.
Yeah, I was just going to link to that article:
http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/2010/08/08/rover-55-the-new-age-midliner/
Look through the comments, were the designer of the car, Richard Woolley, responds to questions raised by the readers of the article.
Credit due where credit’s worth. Keith Adams was first on that story, Aronline published it August 8th. But his name is under the Auto Express article as well, August 13th.
I like it, but I’ve never have been able to afford it new, nor would it have been sold in the US, so my opinion matters little.
Some of it is definitely odd, but there are a lot of design cues present that have since appeared in more mainstream production vehicles like the fender vents and chrome accents on the base of the doors.
Are those wheels or hubcabs? If that is an actual alloy rim, that’s a pretty cool design, a lot better than most aftermarket wheels you see these days. The color on that car is also awesome, sort of a baby blue meets lavender, but still somehow masculine.
Of ALL those old names, MG is the one I really wish they were able to make modern and keep alive.
+1,
A decade ago, my little brother and I were walking around the streets of Berlin one hungover morning, and came across a Mini and what appeared to be a relatively new MG. We rubbed our eyes and flipped out, as our dad had a ’69 midget, which he promptly sold the week I turned 16.
The design cues are neither here nor there, but the volumes and proportions are awful. Looks big on the outside and small on the inside with a tiny trunk to boot. The Rover 75 was a sound FWD sedan, but it was also a harbinger of the crummy BMWs to come, not that many people knew it at the time.
There are plenty of cars with short rear decks that have absolutely huge trunks. Yes, the opening looks a bit small, but you can sort of see the shadow of a rear headrest through the back window, and it looks far enough up that the trunk could be big.
I agree with you about overall proportions though. The exhaust tips and mirrors are far too small. The foglights should be where those odd air intakes are near the lower front bumper. Round high mounted foglights don’t play well with oblong main headlights, and the headlights are too small and high mounted as well. The grill doesn’t look to small, but is shaped oddly, and makes the wrong front end look Chinese-cheap.
A small correction to the article. BMW still own Triumph (come on BMW you know you want to…) and Riley as well as MINI. Riley is rumoured to be coming back at a super luxury brand which will feature on high end MINI’s……(e.g a Rolls Royce interior on a MINI).
SAIC, China’s largest car maker now own MG, Austin, Austin Healey and Morris. MG is still alive and kicking and in the middle of a very ambitious relaunch.
“alive and kicking” might be something of an optimistic overstatement, but otherwise nicely summed up.
There was a lot of buzz a while back about the owners of the AC brand buying the defunct Smart roadster design (which for the benefit of non-UK readers was a hit here, if nowhere else) and relaunching the brand with that… I don’t think anything ever came of it though sadly.
Personally I’d like to see SAIC relaunch Morris with a retro-reinterpretation of the Minor, (chasing the lucrative fashion small car market) but pragmatically I can’t see them managing more than a kind of sub-Kia (sub-Perodua?) presence re-entering MG in the market with what they have… if they get off the ground at all.
I’d be delighted to be proven wrong though.
Rover were always ahead of the game but it is hard to believe that this design is 12 years old as it looks modern now. It is a great shame that BMW completely cocked-up Rover as these pictures show that there was more talent than that shown by BMW (then or now). Interesting site aronline as it confirms that BMW relied on Rover for the design for the BMW MINI and even their 1 series!
In my mind at the time Rover were doomed when BMW held back the 25 45 replacements (R30) from the deal when they sold to the Phoenix group. Rumor has it that these cars were less than 6 months from productions and that sampling tooling and already been purchased. Rumor also has it that BMW took this platform and turned it into the 1 series (but considering the R30 was FWD and the 1 Series is RWD) then I’m not sure this was true.
Of course, when a car is so near production, it’s potentially worth a lot of money. Keith Adams states that BMW offered the R30 to MGR for £50 million, but that they declined. Either they didn’t think it was worth it, or they didn’t have the money. That’s about 77 million dollars, in todays exchange rate, inflation not included. And that’s pretty cheap for a brand new car.
Rover (Leyland) managed to sabotage themselves well enough before BMW (the P8 springs to mind), but BMW despaired at Rover’s progress with the MINI, and the writing was probably on the wall when BMW took the project over with a German team. The farce of selling Rover to the Phoenix group was just icing on the cake allowing a few more vultures to pick a few extra million from the carcass before selling the bones to China.
God forbid anyone think that’s a path any other automaker should follow.
@ TrailerTrash: Do you mean “all” or just the small handful Ed mentions? There are a lot of once household names in the graveyard of British car marques.
Anyway SAIC (who own pretty much everything that was left of the carcass of the British motor industry after Phoenix were done squabbling over it) would like you to believe there may yet be an MG in your future… personally I wouldn’t hold my breath but the MG marque soldiers on in a zombie-like way that makes Saab seem positively vigorous.
Looks like the Chrysler 300 and Lincoln Mark VIII had a baby!
Finally, somebody nails it!
It is hard to believe that this R55 is 12 years old, it looks more advanced than BMWs now look today, back then it would have dramatically shown up the BMWs. Rover had so much talent and the way that BMW cocked-up Rover is one of those disasters that show that BMW are fallible, they did not want them to succeed. There is little doubt that the initial engineering for the 1 series stem from Rover as the initial brief was for FWD/RWD and of course Rover engineered the BMW MINI.
Actually a very handsome car, IMO. And yes it could be a British Chrysler. I’d buy one.
If it’d ever been released it would have been yet another Rover which was only bought by those over the age of 40, only to be sold on after 5-6 years after MASSIVE depreciation to someone who would’ve treated it like crap.
It’s second owner would no doubt be another tracksuit/baseball cap/Rebok classic wearing genius who would have then bolted a body kit and ‘phat’ exhaust onto it, lowered the suspension, fitted a massive subwoofer in the boot, tinted all the windows, and then driven it around at stupid speeds. Such is the fate of all old Rovers in the UK.
Wow, you just made me picture the light blue, well polish Rover owned by Richard Bucket from “Keeping Up Appearances” suffering that fate. (shudder) No car deserves that.
When my now exwife asked what a Rover was (we were watching the series in syndication on PBS) I told her it was a “British version of Buick/Oldsmobile that had fallen on hard times.”