Rover

Rover was a British car manufacturing company founded as Starley & Sutton Co. of Coventry in 1878. The company traded as Rover, manufacturing cars between 1904 and 1967, when it was sold to Leyland Motors, who had already acquired Standard-Triumph six years earlier. Initially, the Rover Company maintained a level of autonomy within the Leyland conglomerate, but soon after its merger with British Motor Holdings (the owners of Austin, Morris, MG and Jaguar) in 1968 to create British Leyland (BL), Rover effectively became just a brand within BL. The assets of the original Rover Company were separated into a separate organisation within BL known as Land Rover in 1978 whilst the Rover trademark continued to be used on vehicles produced by its successor companies – the Austin Rover Group (1982–1986), the Rover Group (1986–2000), and then finally MG Rover (2000–2005). Following MG Rover's collapse in 2005, the Rover marque became dormant, and was subsequently sold by BMW to Ford, who had bought Land Rover from BMW in 2000. The rights to the Rover brand were transferred along with the Jaguar Cars and Land Rover businesses, to Tata Motors in 2008.