ABSTRACT
Rover, the British subsidiary of automobile manufacturer BMW, was very interested in entering the Eastern European market with its Maestro model. After some initial failed partnership attempts, Rover finally entered a joint venture (named Rodacar AD) in 1995 with a private Bulgarian company, The Daru Group, with a manufacturing facility at the Black Sea port of Varna. Rover knew that partnering with this local company could provide low-cost access to existing manufacturing facilities in an economically unstable environment. The partnership made sense since The Daru Group owned Daru Car, the official BMW dealer in Bulgaria, and it was also a major shareholder of two local financial institutions. But the joint venture failed after only eight months, which may be attributed to simple bad luck due to the tragic death in an auto accident of a key Rover executive. The facts in the business plan seemed to indicate that Rover’s joint venture plan for entering the Bulgarian market was very sensible. Yet a closer examination of the cultural underpinnings can be very enlightening.
