Letter: Partnership that would beat recession

Sir: I have been following your correspondence on the British car industry, and would like to correct a couple of comments made by Oliver Bond (Letters, October 14). While Rover Group has collaborated on a number of cars, this is not true of all Rover products - for example, the Mini, the Metro, all Land Rover products, the MG and a number of recent cars such as the Rover 800, Cabriolet and Coupe. Though we enjoy a technical collaboration with Honda, when it comes to marketing we are direct competitors.

I am afraid Mr Bond is totally wrong in his comments about Rover's export cars. Every Rover product sold in Japan is made in a Rover factory in the UK. On the other side of the coin, we also make in our UK plants a large number of Honda cars which are sold in the UK and Europe.

Finally, Honda holds 20 per cent of Rover, but Rover holds 20 per cent of Honda, and neither company is directly involved in the management of the other.

Yours faithfully,

JOHN TOWERS

Group Managing Director

Rover Group

Birmingham

15 October