After Longbridge Closed

[Edward Huggins]

What happened to all the partly assembled Rovers ad MGs that were sat on the assembly line after the day of closure in April 2005? It must have been a very emotional experience to walk around the plant at that time.

[jim_k]

Anything in early stages of production (body in white) were not completed and scrapped. After administration a small number of facilities and production staff were retained. The brief was to preserve the site so it could resume production and to complete any cars near completion. I think 200 people were retained or thereabouts. The cars were hand finished using the parts available and joined the stock of cars auctioned off. If you look at 28 days later website you will see that in some areas car shells were still sat on production lines years later, never to be completed. All this stuff and most spare parts in the factories were scrapped. Pictures were shown on this Web site of metal waste skips full of new parts about to be sent off as scrap. Very wasteful. If I rember right in the auctions that followed, new rovers could be bought for 33% off new prices or more. It probably wasn't economic to complete the cars earlier down the production line.

[jim_k]

If you go to the Gaydon motor heritage centre the last 75 made was on display. I think the the assembly team all signed the inside of the bumper panel before it was fitted. The shut lines on the front don't look that great to be honest, however it was far from ideal to hand complete cars and maintain quality. Incidentally the administrators also in haste rounded up some cars that were being used for development and never intended for sale. One owner found that the electronic controls were not standard later on so diagnostics did not work. Another found they had a 1.9l diesel under evaluation not the.normal bmw unit. For safety sake these cars were never signed off and intended for the public but this happened in the confusion that followed.

[BigRuss]

Most of the usable parts that were on the cars that were unable to be completed weren't all skipped and scrapped
A company called Best of British stripped the usable parts from the cars and then resold them.
Over the years I've bought plenty of parts from them essentially brand new but had signs of being fitted.
Somewhere I've still got some original "new" front drop links I got from them.

Russ

[SCP440]

As much as we think of this as being crazy parts like the body in white dont cost much to make compared with the storage costs for a decade or more. I know when Cowley cleared out when the ''New'' Mini was on its way there were shells and skips loads of stuff just going off to be recycled. Even when they were still making Rovers at Cowley cars that failed quality control badly were ''accidentally'' scraped against a wall or bollard so they were written off. Some were used as hacks around the works for a few months before they went off to be scrapped.
Even now cars that have numerous unfixable warranty problems will often end up being recycled, its just not worth the time and money trying to fix them.

[Edward Huggins]

Many thanks to you for all this detail. Is "28 days later" just the title of the Website?

[stevestrat]

Yep, 28 days later is a website. There are several links in the quoted post below.

Originally Posted by TomRS

The rest of the plant has been demolished now unfortunately so there literally isnt anything left barring the MG sales office.
Here is a few links showing all the remaining cars etc back when most of the plant was still around.

Saddening, i'd have loved to have gone so much! Was planning an Urbex trip with my mate but it got planned for demolition earlier this year.

This Link Shows it back in 2007 after it had been closed for only 2yrs

This Link and This Link show the factory in 2016, another two links for other pics in 2016 here and here and finally the last one from 2017 here

There was one of a widebody TF knocking about but i cant find the links...


As you can see in this future plan of Longbridge Brochure there wont be anything left soon.

[Costa Fortuna]

In a previous life as a truck driver I used to go into the closed down Ford Transit plant in Southampton - there were a few blokes working on some fleet vehicles getting them ready for retail. It was very eerie driving through the place to get to the zone where these guys were.

And when you left, round the back sat the robots, electrodes pointing to the sky, in the pouring rain.

[Edward Huggins]

Thank you so much for this information. Such haunting photos. Just think of all those dedicated Workers who had built their lives around Longbridge and the hopes that they had back in 1999 when the new 75 was launched. This was to have been their future.....

[jim_k]

I think as longbridge had produced cars for so long and was at one point so large, the perception was it would always be there. Bmw had sunk a lot of money in to it, so yes it would have been a shock when it went.