I ran and owned an independent design organisation in the 1970's & 80's and BLMC, ARG, Rover, or whatever they were calling themselves that week, were clients.
I recall that in 1977 I had a meeting with a very senior manager at Cowley and although I normally went there in one of their products, on this occasion i went in my Granada Ghia 3.0 Coupe. We had to go to another location and went in my car. I invited the BLMC manager to drive my Granada. He said, "Why can't we make cars like this which people actually want to buy"? His car was a 2200 Princess and he hated it. He said that it spent half its life being fixed.
The Rover P6 was superb and I had a couple of 3500 models, but the SD1 was a disaster. I bought a couple for my senior guys and one had to be re-painted because all the paint peeled off.
After the Granada I thought I would try a Jaguar XJ6 and I became so frustrated with the reliability that I changed it for a BMW 735i in 1980. I have bought BMWs ever since with very few exceptions. Now retired for 12 years, I still have a BMW 730D SE as my main road car.
The demise of BMC/BLMC/ARG, etc, was not caused by any one single factor. it was a combination of stupid trades unions, weak management, bad market research, lack of meaningful targeted investment and p**s-poor quality control.
