More Longbridge scars to be healed
 

West Midlands have just secured £24m of Government regeneration funding which is to be allocated for redeveloping the site of the original West works at Longbridge so won't be much left soon to give any clues of what existed.
Sorry tried to add a link but gave up trying to work out how to copy and paste on Chromebook!!

They will do what they normally do, a few aptly named roads the general populous will think 'Ahh that's nice Allegro Avenue'

Sad for the loss of all the skills and the 2nd and 3rd tier suppliers, makes me sick to think we once had the worlds greatest car manufacturing in this country.

RIP Longbridge.

I share your sentiments, I grew up in the shadow of Longbridge, my grandfather and six of his eight sons, my uncles, all spent their working lives there, my mother worked on the WW2 aircraft production.

The Austin 'Bull' used to benchmark times, Mother would frequently be shouting up the stairs 'come on get up the bulls gone you'll be late for school, similar remarks at lunchtimes and if I dawdled home at the end of the day it would be 'where have you been till now the bull went ages ago'. Happy days.

When I first started car ownership you had to have an Austin/BMC as spares were available everywhere at knock down prices! I often pondered how many cars were 'lost' each week in parts. Start of the rot, and of course not forgetting Red Robbo.

Herbert Austin was referred to as the 'old man' so could well have been him your uncle was referring to. Lord Austin died in 1941.

I' ve just looked up again a fascinating website by John Baker on Austin thru to British Leyland which i read snippets on a good while back but looks like a lot more has been added since my last visit.
For anyone interested there is some really interesting history in the 'news' pages.


www.austinmemories.com

The decline began when Leonard Lord took charge. 50% market share and no profit made to reinvest in new cars and production facilities.
Donald Stokes was ill equipped to run British Leyland and the decline continued. Great salesman but not a CEO.
Edwardes made an attempt to stop the decline and turn it around. 15 years too late. The result was the Maestro and Montego which hardly set the world alight. I will say that my Montego 2.0si was a nice car and went like stink albeit with a few quality issues.
E758XMR if anyone wants to check its details.
Easy to blame the Phoenix group but they simply squeezed 5 more years out of a dead duck. The debate about them will go on for many years though.
Putting sentiment aside, I do believe a proper memorial should be erected to honour Herbert Austin and what he created there. We’ll never see the likes of it again.

Just a thought. Very soon there will be a modern, purpose built car production plant available in Swindon. I doubt anyone has deep enough pockets to turn it into a British car manufacturer. Having said that, a blank canvas for making electric cars there might be an option?

Thank you for reminding me of my Montego 2.0Si, D569 KMF. Mine was a rare early one I had from new and was in black with grey lower body and had traces where ribbons (?) had been fitted diagonally across the bonnet so may have been a demo. It was fast and very reliable - until the gear change linkage fell apart on a roundabout leaving with just 4th gear! I remember it with affection.

I have just glanced through various parts of this Austinmemories.
Indeed, very interesting. I then came upon the section that covers the J40 childs pedal car.
Made in much larger quantities than I had realised, it provided work for ex coal miners, suffering with mining related ailments.
I ended up reading the whole article, which in it's own way is quite humbling.

Thank you.

https://www.andystreet.org.uk/news/p...n-set-go-ahead

I wonder if the main gate and the showroom will survive. Somehow doubt it but that ought to be listed if it is not already.

And we both know who to blame for that.