ABSTRACT
The British Leyland Motor Corporation was formed in 1968 from a merger of British Motor Holdings and the Leyland Motors Corporation. These businesses were themselves the result of a series of mergers going back to the 1920s. The Corporation manufactured cars, buses, vans and trucks at a large number of sites across the UK and under brand names such as Austin, Morris, Triumph, Rover, MG, Jaguar, Daimler, Land Rover and Leyland. For example, Austin cars were made at Longbridge in Birmingham and Jaguars at Coventry. Land Rovers were built in Solihull and Freight Rover vans at the Common Lane factory in Birmingham. Surrounding the main sites were large numbers of component firms heavily reliant on orders from British Leyland. The Corporation also had a range of other enterprises, some quite distant from the activity of vehicle manufacturing, including producing refrigerators, road surface manufacture, metal casting and construction equipment, and had a number of overseas operations. In 1979 the name British Leyland was shortened, unimaginatively, to BL.
