This is getting old,,, but one more post. Am I a car nut, no. But there have been a handful of cars I've owned really fell in love with and our Discovery was one of them. Now as far as their history goes, well there's this thing called the internet, but I guess you know that because somehow you've managed to access it. On the internet there's this site called Wikipedia, where you can find stuff like this.
History
Originally, the vehicles was simply called the Land Rover – an
off-road capable car model of the
Rover Company. The "Series" indication later became a
retronym model name, once 'Land Rover' had started becoming a
brand, with the introduction of the
Range Rover in 1970, and eventually even a British Leyland subsidiary in 1978. In 1983 and 1984, the long and the short wheelbase Land Rovers were finally given official names – the One Ten, and the Ninety respectively, and together they were badged the
Defender models in 1990, after the 1989 introduction of the new
Discovery model.
Rover Era
Land Rover conversion to fight forest fires,
Cascina, Italy (August 2016)
The design for the original vehicle was started in 1947 by
Maurice Wilks. Wilks, chief designer at the
Rover Company, on his farm in
Newborough, Anglesey, working in conjunction with his brother
Spencer who was the managing director of Rover.
[8] The design may have been influenced by the
Jeep[9] and the prototype, later nicknamed
Centre Steer, was built on a Jeep chassis and axles.
[10] The early choice of colour was dictated by
military surplus supplies of aircraft cockpit paint, so early vehicles only came in various shades of light green; all models until recently feature sturdy box section ladder-frame chassis. Early vehicles like the
Series I were field-tested at Long Bennington and designed to be field-serviced.
After the formation of Land Rover Limited in 1978 the hyphen in Land-Rover —as shown in the logo— began to be dropped.
[11]
Land Rover Ltd - subsidiary of BL
Land Rover as a company has existed since 1978. Prior to this, it was a product line of the Rover Company which was subsequently absorbed into the Rover-Triumph division of the
British Leyland Motor Corporation (BL) following
Leyland Motor Corporation's takeover of Rover in 1967. The ongoing commercial success of the original Land Rover series models, and latterly the Range Rover in the 1970s in the midst of BL's well-documented business troubles prompted the establishment of a separate Land Rover company but still under the BL umbrella, remaining part of the subsequent
Rover Group in 1988, under the ownership of
British Aerospace after the remains of British Leyland were broken up and privatised.
In 1994 Rover Group plc, including Land Rover, was acquired by
BMW. In 2000, Rover Group was broken up by BMW and Land Rover was sold to
Ford Motor Company, becoming part of its
Premier Automotive Group.
Ford era
In 2006 Ford also purchased the
Rover brand from BMW for around £6 million. BMW had retained ownership of the brand to protect the integrity of the Land Rover brand, with which 'Rover' might be confused in the US 4x4 market and allowed it to be used under licence by
MG Rover until it collapsed in 2005, at which point it was offered to the Ford Motor Company, who by then owned Land Rover. On 11 June 2007, Ford announced that it planned to sell Land Rover along with
Jaguar Cars. Private equity firms such as
Alchemy Partners of the UK,
TPG Capital,
Ripplewood Holdings,
Cerberus Capital Management and
One Equity Partners of the US,
Tata Motors of India and a consortium comprising
Mahindra & Mahindra of India and
Apollo Management all initially expressed interest in purchasing the
marques from the Ford Motor Company.
[12][13] On 1 January 2008, Ford formally declared that Tata was the preferred bidder.
[14] In 2008, On 26 March 2008, Ford announced that it had agreed to sell its Jaguar and Land Rover operations to Tata Motors, and that it expected to complete the sale by the end of the second quarter of 2008.
[15]
Tata Motors era
On 18 January 2008, Tata Motors, a part of the
Tata Group, established
Jaguar Land Rover Limited as a British-registered and wholly owned subsidiary. The new company was to be used as a holding company for the acquisition of the two businesses from Ford - Jaguar Cars Limited and Land Rover. That acquisition was completed on 2 June 2008 at a cost of £1.7 billion.
[16][17][18][19] Included in the deal to buy Land Rover and Jaguar Cars were the rights to three other British brands: the
Daimler marque, as well as two dormant brands
Lanchester and Rover.
[20]
On 1 January 2013, the group, which had been operating as two separate companies (Jaguar Cars Limited and Land Rover), although on an integrated basis, underwent a fundamental restructuring. The parent company was renamed to Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC, Jaguar Cars Limited was renamed to Jaguar Land Rover Limited and the assets (excluding certain Chinese interests) of Land Rover were transferred to it. The consequence was that Jaguar Land Rover Limited became responsible in the UK for the design, manufacture and marketing of both Jaguar and Land Rover branded products, and Land Rover and Jaguar Cars ceased to be separate vehicle producing entities.
[21]