There’s plenty of room beside Rover in the Happier Hunting Ground

Rover has now been removed to the Happier Hunting Ground. In a brief obsequy broadcast from Birmingham, Tony Blair sympathised with the dependants. The economy was strong, he told them, good jobs were being created, and £40 million of public money had been set aside to turn Longbridge, Rover’s old home, into an industrial park. A fitting memorial, he must feel, and better than a car park. This idea is sure to be of interest to St Modwen, the property company, which is now Rover’s landlord. Desperate to keep going, Rover sold the site for £57 million and leased it back but, of course, the money ran out, as it does. St Modwen will miss the rental income — those buoyant Brummies had taken out a 35-year lease — but will dry its eyes. The development value is what matters. If that works out well, St Modwen might look across the Atlantic and see what might be for sale in Detroit. There, the distress signals are flying at General Motors. This week GM owned up to losing more than $1 billion in the last three months, and declined to say what it expects from the rest of the year. Apart from the problem of making and selling enough cars that people will buy, GM has a ‘health-care crisis’, in the same way that companies like Rover have a pension crisis. The effect has been to degrade GM’s credit, which is in imminent danger of being rated as junk.

Good for the country

To think that, within working memory, this was the world’s biggest company! ‘Engine Charlie’ Wilson, who ran it, was recruited to President Eisenhower’s cabinet and thought this a natural progression: ‘What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.’ Robert Townsend in Up The Organisation picked it out as a company whose biggest worry was to keep its share of the market down to 55 per cent.