The cars of bmc book /graham robson automobile history isbn-9781899870417-304pp

Hardcover Book in like new condition NOW ONLY €69,90 G6 •Book's Info• All big businesses start as small businesses and most small businesses start as the love-child of just one person; the Austin Motor Company and the Nuffield Organisation were no exception to this rule. The roots of the BMC story really took shape way back in Victorian times when two ambitious men – Herbert Austin and William Morris – started their careers; BMC was a long time a-coming. By the time BMC was formed one of the two had been dead for a decade and the other had become a Viscount. In 1952 the founding fathers of BMC were Lord Nuffield (for that is the title William Morris had adopted when ennobled in the 1930s) and Leonard Lord. Many specialist histories have been written about the Austin and Morris marques and as this is a book about relatively modern cars concerning a group which only existed between 1952 and 1968 there is no need to dwell at length on the early development of the two companies. At this stage though it is worth recalling that the Austin Motor Company was founded in 1905 and sold only 31 cars in its first full year while W.R.M. Motors (the predecessor of Morris Motors) started trading in 1912 and sold just 393 cars in the whole of 1913. Austin was still called Austin in the early 1950s while W.R.M. Motors had become Morris Motors in 1919 and was to be the most important constituent part of the larger Nuffield Organisation from 1936. To an economist a merger between the two companies might have seemed desirable for many years but to the companies themselves there always seemed to be good commercial reasons or a clash of formidable personalities – to get in the way of the marriage. One of the most surprising facts about BMC therefore was that it took so long to be created. There had after all been plenty of motor industry precedents to encourage it to happen for in the USA the giant General Motors (MP)