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The Metro is a supermini car, later a city car that was produced from 1980 to 1998, first by British Leyland (BL) and later by the Rover Group. It was launched in 1980 as the Austin Mini Metro (styled AUSTIN miniMETRO). The Mini Metro was intended to complement and eventually replace the original BMC Mini, and was developed under the codename LC8.
The Austin Metro, launched in October 1980, was heralded as the saviour of Austin Motor Company and the whole BL combine. Twenty-one years after the launch of the Mini, it gave BL a much-needed modern supermini to compete with the recently launched likes of the Ford Fiesta , Vauxhall Nova , VW Polo and Renault 5 .
When the Austin Metro was facelifted for the 1990 model year, it was rebadged as the Rover Metro. On 31 January 1994, BAe sold its 80% stake in the company on to German vehicle manufacturer BMW [ 5 ] [ 6 ] for £800 million (a takeover which caused uproar in the House of Commons ), [ 6 ] the name changing again in 1995 to BMW (UK) Holdings ...
The Austin marque started with the Austin Motor Company, and survived a merger with the Nuffield Organization to form the British Motor Corporation, incorporation into the British Leyland Motor Corporation, nationalisation as British Leyland (BL) forming part of its volume car division Austin Morris later Austin Rover, and later privatisation as part of the Rover Group and was finally phased ...
When sales in the UK resumed, they were sold through Austin dealers at listed prices of £707 6s 8d for the hardtop and £732 2s 6d for the convertible. Austin was dropped from the name, which became simply "Metropolitan," and the cars carried no Austin badges, although they had Austin Company chassis plates.
The last Morris of all was a van variant of the Austin Metro, before the Morris brand was finally completely abandoned in 1987. After much restructuring of BL in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the former Morris plant at Cowley and its sister site the former Pressed Steel plant were turned over to the production of Austin and Rover-badged vehicles.
That same year, the UK Government controversially tried to privatise and sell-off Land Rover, however this plan was later abandoned. The Austin name was dropped from the Metro, Maestro and Montego by 1988, signalling the end for the historic Austin marque, in a push to focus on the more prestigious (and potentially more profitable) Rover badge.
The Austin Rover Group (abbreviated ARG) 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 Le