On Fri, 29 Jun 2001, Jeff Berg wrote:
> As I said, otherwise a concise and excellent introduction to the
> Marque--perhaps worthy of being archived in the FAQ. Dixon?
Well, there is http://www.lrfaq.org/FAQ.3.history.html already.
As per some slight inaccuracies, Bantam originally developed the Jeep, but
being a small company, the bulk of the contracts to build the original
Jeep went to better positioned companies such as Willys, Ford and others.
Jeff is correct about the aluminium versus steel issue. Aluminium was
plentiful (lots of aircraft being decomissioned etc), and steel was being
rationed. In fact, how much steel you received was a direct relationship
with your level of exports. Rover was forced over to aluminium for these
reasons, and others. And don't forget, as far as Rover was concerned, the
LR was only a short term stopgap to fill in production until their cars
took off.
The IIA vs II was more a change in the way that suffix letters were to be
used. If continued, there would have been the IIB, IIC, IID up through G
as major changes were implimented, but this was never really followed.
see http://www.lrfaq.org/FAQ.S.Chassis_Numbers.suffix.IIA.html
You can see from this table that changes occurred all throughout the IIA
history, and to some on this list (Russell Dushin, myself etc) the
traitorous switch to negative earth and the implication of the future
demise of the corporation under BL, BAe, BMW and now Ford can proably be
traced to this ill-informed decision. The Series III (which was really
nothing spectacular as most of the "innovations" found in the III
(alternator, all synchro gearbox, headlamps in the wings, vinyl dash, etc)
existed in the last Series IIA vehicles.
> full, accurate, and equally well researched report regarding "The
> Girls On the Beach" tomorrow.
Hmmm, have to look for this... :-)
Rgds,
Dixon
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