ABSTRACT
The British Motor Corporation (BMC) was formed in 1952 by the merger of the two major independent British-owned car producers – Austin and Nuffield alias Morris. British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC) was formed in 1968 when Leyland took over British Motor Holdings, as BMC had been renamed after its merger with Jaguar. This chapter aims to answer the central question about the BMC/BLMC/BL failure: why have successive managements over the past twenty years been completely unable to make a success of the Austin-Morris volume car operation? It argues that the pattern of BMC's expansion necessarily compromised the possibility of higher productivity and profits. The chapter analyses market problems by examining the home market. It provides a disaggregated market-by-market analysis. The chapter demonstrates that low model volume was the outcome of the programme of new model introductions in the early 1970s and the resulting loss of volume completely undermined profitability. The chapter also argues that the media stereotype is a misrepresentation.
