The Austin Rover Group was a British motor manufacturer. It was created in 1982 as the mass-market car manufacturing subsidiary of British Leyland (BL). Previously, this entity had been known as BL Cars Ltd (formerly Leyland Cars) which encompassed the Austin-Morris and Jaguar-Rover-Triumph divisions of British Leyland. After a major restructuring of BL's car manufacturing operations, Jaguar regained its independence whilst the Triumph and Morris marques were retired. The new, leaner car business was rechristened as the Austin Rover Group and focused primarily on the Austin and Rover marques.In 1989, ARG assumed the name of its parent company Rover Group plc, from which point the two entities were generally considered one and the same, although they continued to be legally separate - Rover Group plc was a holding company also owned Land Rover following the divestment of Unipart and Leyland Trucks, whilst Rover Group Limited was the mass market car manufacturing business.
BL had been using the Austin Morris branding loosely since the original 1968 merger to manage and market the marques operated by the former British Motor Corporation, but it was not until 1978 that it was given a formal corporate identity with the blue and green "chevron" logo, which began appearing on Austin and Morris-badged BL cars in that year - the Princess and the van/pick-up versions of the Morris Marina were the first vehicles to wear the logo. However, this separate branding strategy was later abandoned and by 1983 the chevron would be later expanded to represent virtually all of BL's marques and business activities in the public domain, eventually supplanting BL's own roundel logo (affectionately known as the "plughole") and would ultimately become the logo of the entire Austin Rover Group.
British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC) in 1975 and the stark Ryder Report on the ailing firm, the resulting government bail-out and nationalisation saw the company being renamed to British Leyland (BL). The car manufacturing subsidiary of BL became Leyland Cars, and later BL Cars Ltd, and it was this entity which ultimately became Austin Rover. Sales of Austin Rover products were reasonably strong, though not quite as high as the sales achieved by some of the earlier British Leyland products – the Maestro & Montego for instance did not sell as well as their predecessors, the Austin Allegro and Morris Marina, despite being fundamentally superior vehicles for their time. The Austin/MG Metro was regularly among the top five selling cars in Britain throughout the 1980s, and in the early part of the decade it was the best selling supermini in the country.
In 1986, Austin Rover's parent company, BL plc, was renamed "Rover Group", and the truck and bus businesses were subsequently de-merged and sold off to DAF and Volvo, respectively. The spare parts and logistics arm Unipart was also spun out in 1987. After an abortive attempt in 1988 to divest Land Rover to General Motors, the entire Rover Group was sold off by the British government in 1988 to British Aerospace. The car making subsidiary Austin Rover Group Ltd was renamed "Rover Group Ltd", which saw the effective disappearance of the Austin Rover name and brand, even though the Austin badging had been removed from the Mini, Metro, Maestro and Montego models in 1987. By 1991, all Austin Rover dealer signage had been changed to the new claret and beige "Rover" branding, and use of the old blue and green "chevron" logo had ceased, although it made sporadic appearances on the cars themselves.
