Template talk:British Leyland

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cars Portal

This article is within the scope of Wikipedia Project Automobiles, a collective approach to creating a comprehensive guide to the world of automobiles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you are encouraged to visit the project page, where you can contribute to the discussion.

???

This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

???

This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the importance scale.

Isn't it about time the header in the template was renamed from "rise and fall of BL" to something like "Timeline of the major British motor car manufacturers" GraemeLeggett 10:58, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I've changed the header. Ideally we need another template showing the rise and fall of the bus/truck companies. Malcolma 21:57, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

NO! I strongly object. The purpose of this template is to follow the rise and fall of Leyland - if we add in all the other bits of British motor companies it'll get much more complicated and it won't be useful for it's intended purpose. Feel free to write a new template for what you want - but this one is needed in order to avoid repeating the same long and complicated discussions about how each of several dozen cars went from being made by first one company then another. There are a LOT of articles about BL cars - and we need a simple way to dump all of that discussion and 'see also' type of links into a single, handy template. It serves to hold all of the links to the various sub-articles relating to BL. Rather than dramatically broadening the scope of this template (and let me remind you of it's title) - let us instead delete whatever extraneous content there is to keep this template doing it's title says it is. If you feel the need to start a new template - feel free (although I think an article would be more appropriate). SteveBaker 13:06, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

1 Rover 1930/1940
2 What's with the Riley bit?
3 Colours
4 Footnotes
5 Mini
6 Timeline end
7 Standard

[edit] Rover 1930/1940

What happened to Rover in the timeline twixt 1925ish and 1945ish - did the company cease to exist? The wikientry does not say.GraemeLeggett 17:14, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I've filled in the gap. Malcolma 21:57, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What's with the Riley bit?

There is a box on the left of the diagram that says; "Riley & from 1950s Mini name" - but whilst it talks about 'from 1950's', it ends in the 1930's. I presume it's talking about the use of the Riley name in the Mini model called the Riley Elf. But many of those early company names were similarly re-used but are not tagged as such. For example, the Wolseley name was also used to name a Mini (the Wolseley Hornet - the exact same model as the Riley Elf as it happens).

This idea of subsequent name re-use being mentioned in this way is inconsistent - and has little to do with this kind of timeline (IMHO) so I'm removing it. SteveBaker 12:08, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I've put in a separate line that becomes New Mini and started it with BMC. Not sure if it needs more explanation. I've also put Ford back on the Land Rover line as that's where the brand went. Malcolma 21:57, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I guess I misinterpreted the meaning of the diagram. It just looks odd to have two Ford lines coming off the big BMW box with no obvious explanation as to why - but with the MINI line coming off it's own BMW box. Anyway...I don't like 'New MINI' - the name of the company is BMW/MINI surely - just like BMW/MGR. SteveBaker 22:46, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Colours

Having seen the colours come, and very rapidly go, I'd just like to say/vote that I liked them and thought they added to the usability. There were issues with the particular choices, for example giving yellow to VDP, where there would be no confusion, but having Ford and MGR in very similar lilacs. But overall, I'd prefer to see them come back again! Steve, could you be persuaded? ;) Kierant 15:32, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't alone in disliking the colour version - User:Malcolma didn't like them either. Also, NONE of the other automotive timelines have colour. I think that if you are passionate about it, you should start a discussion on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Automobiles/Templates talk page. SteveBaker 16:15, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Footnotes

I think that all of those horribly detailed footnotes in flyspeck-3 font need to go away. This is supposed to be a handy-dandy navigational aid that you can drop into the bottom of an article to give people a quick overview of the history of the company. If they need all of this detail, they should be going to the main article at British Leyland Motor Corporation. The recently addition of the trademark numbers of the company name was the straw that broke the camels back. SteveBaker 14:20, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

The triumph note is fairly important, the Alvis more organizational - I've trimmed them down again. GraemeLeggett 14:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Ack! Yet more stupid footnotes. Guys - this is supposed to be a mere navigational template - it's getting close to an entire screenful. The intent here is not to put up a fully researched and annotated article - that is the job of British Leyland (ie the article) which is linked from the template. The function of this template is to provide a simple overview - a way for articles about BL cars to easily link to all of the articles about the BL ancestor and descendent companies. With all of the junk on the end, it's getting to the point where I'm going to have to remove it from the articles I patrol because it's WAY too intrusive. My inclination is to simply delete all of the footnotes and go back to the clean, easy-to-understand version of the template. All of that information should be in the British Leyland article - or in articles about the ancestors and descendents...and that is exactly as it should be. If anyone has a contrary viewpoint - let's hear it - but for my money, the footnotes need to just go away. SteveBaker 13:02, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mini

The 'classic' Mini was never a company name - it was a car name. The new MINI brand started in 2001 with BMW and did not exist back in BMC, etc eras. So MINI has nothing whatever to do with British Leyland and 'Mini' doesn't belong in the chart any more than 'Maxi', 'Marina' or any of 50 other car names. SteveBaker 20:52, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

We need to decide what to do about the period when "Mini" wasn't branded as being an Austin, Austin Rover, or anything else. (Even if the decision is just to remove it, if it's believed that no new brand was created.) Currently, the table is broken, in a sense, by having lost "Mini" at the beginning of a row which remains, "headless", and concludes with "BMW/MINI". – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 21:42, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Several other of BL's cars were not branded with a legacy company name over that period either - the Mini isn't special in that regard. You could perhaps argue for 'MINI' (note capitals) on that row - linking it to MINI (BMW) which is both a car company/marque and a car. The difficulty I'm having with that is the question of "Where do we stop?". Some parts of BL ended up in BMW and therefore we feel that BMW subsidiaries need to be listed here - then surely we should list all of the Ford subsidiaries too. (NO! I'm not advocating doing that!). I suppose the justification for including MINI would be that they are located at the Oxford plant - which was historically a part of BL. But this isn't a table that's organised according to what buildings the company owned - it's about tracking the corporate ownerships and complicated set of name changes. In that context, should the BMW/MINI box be in the table at all?

Worse still, if we retained the Mini tag as a kind of marque, it would absolutely have to include both Austing and Morris since the Mini was released simultaneously in both 'marques' at the outset. Once you start thinking like that, the entire idea of building a simple timeline/table falls apart. SteveBaker 12:42, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep. I think we might be as well to remove the row altogether, but perhaps add a footnote associated with BMW (which would still appear elsewhere in the table) to mention the "brand" status of MINI today – I'd say this is relevant to the BL timeline in the sense that it's worth mentioning the rebirth of old marques. – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 13:42, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm strongly opposed to adding more footnotes. In fact, I think we should delete the ones we currently have. This is supposed to be a small navigational template - not an article in its own right! When it's put into an article, it takes an inordinate amount of space and the footnotes have little (if any) relevence to the article that transcluded it. The place for detailed discussions of what happened to Leyland is in the British Leyland article - not here in the template. SteveBaker 18:03, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I've reinserted Mini temporarily, not to short-circuit this discussion, but rather to ensure the table isn't left in a confusing state, pending a final decision. 80.192.72.41 12:47, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

So now, the table says "Marque" at the top of the column and "Mini" listed under that heading - with a footnote that says "Mini is not a marque"...so (as a reader) I'm saying to myself: "Why the heck did they put this into that column and then tell us that it shouldn't be there?!". SteveBaker 13:05, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. It's just that we haven't got the right solution yet. I'd agree that the present situation is better than having BMW & MINI "orphaned" at the end of a row. As a reader I'd be much more confused by that, than by a note which tells me there are two articles to consult to get more details and an explanation. Not that I'm saying it's the right end solution, just the lesser of the evils.

In terms of finding a solution, although I'm always a fan of keeping things simple, I've seen some other templates using Javascript to make them "expandable". How would people feel about having the footnotes "expandable" in that way, so less messy? I take Steve's very good point that these things belong in the main article, but I don't believe that the current number of footnotes neccessarily hurt anybody; I'd want the template to always and only appear at the foot of articles, however. – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 20:12, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

(unindent)

I have no idea about 'expandable' footnotes in a Wikipedia context - but if you have to click on a link to expand the footnotes, you might just as well click the link to take you to the British Leyland article. Where is the advantage? The disadvantage is clear...non-standard stuff that'll be hard to maintain. The template ought to appear at the end of articles - but some articles have multiple templates at the end and they can't all be at the end - so if you set a precedent by adding all of this junk, then things could easily get out of hand. I should remind you that there is a well-supported proposal to limit templates to at most 6 lines of text. I oppose that - but templates like this one are the kind of thing that are provoking that kind of reaction. Let's dump the footnotes - just delete them. SteveBaker 23:15, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I really do sympathise with that point of view, but I think "the advantage" is that one remains on the same page, with the expanded (i.e. visible) footnotes, and for people who don't know how to (or can't) use multiple tabs or windows, that's handier than switching back and forth between two pages whilst trying to understand something.

But I don't mean to get bogged down in this detail. How about we resolve what should be in the grid at all – and if we agree that it's marques and that Mini was not one under the BL era, and perhaps agree that it is not one now, we should just delete the whole row. (And once that's done, as for the footnotes... well, I'm not going to be the one who puts them back if you go ahead and remove them ;-) – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 23:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think we have several choices that make a lot more sense than sticking Mini into a list of marque names:

Put MINI in the marque slot for that row. MINI is a new company/marque - and whilst it really has nothing to do with BL - it's a million times better choice than Mini in this context. (Answer: It's inappropriate to do that because all of the other names on the left are ancestors of BL, not descendants).
Delete that row altogether. BMW/MINI are not - nor ever were a part of BL. We don't show other BMW subsidiaries - why do we show that one? (Answer: Because MINI run out of Cowley and make a retro Mini)
Perhaps the template should end before MINI joined into the picture. By the start of the 1990's, everything that was ever a part of BL was a part of either Ford or BAe. Do we need anything to the right of that? (Answer: This timeline is more about the fate of British car manufacturing than it is about BL - and the final rebirth of the Cowley plant as a part of BMW is a nice ending to the story - especially because the car they are making is the direct successor to the most successful British cars ever made).
Because the MINI factory is situated in the Cowley plant. It is arguable that it is the final incarnation of the Morris company - so we should rearrange the diagram so that MINI(BMW) is on the Morris row. (Answer: But that spot is currently occupied by Nanjing - so that just creates a new problem).
The 'Marque' column is inappropriately named. It's really a list of the predecessor companies - who mostly became mere marques later on. That being the case, neither Mini nor Land Rover belong there - now there are two gaps - but having gaps isn't a bad thing if the diagram gets fatter in the middle than it was at the outset.

None of those alternatives are very nice - but they are all better than listing Mini under the Marque column.

In the end, this is only a problem because our vision of what those horizontal rows mean is kinda vague and messy. What part of Wolseley still exists in Nanjing?? Why does no part of Rover end up contributing to Nanjing even though the company they bought was called "MG Rover Group"? Why aren't companies like Authi and Leyland Innocenti featured in the diagram (Innocenti eventually got bought by Fiat and Authi by SEAT)? It makes no sense at all. The problem is that we've stuck this into a rectangular grid which implies that things on the same row of the diagram are somehow related - when in fact they sometimes are and sometimes are not. What is really required is a 'fishbone' diagram such as the ones used in BAE Systems or UNIX...but those don't play well as navigational templates because you can't easily link from them.

Overall, I think we need a careful rethink of what this diagram actually means before we try to fix it any more. SteveBaker 00:26, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

A good explanation – but damn, this just became a much bigger clean-up task...

In the meantime, how about we go with your number (4), but have the Morris row ending with "Nanjing & MINI (BMW)"? That would seem make as much sense as the rest of the diagram. – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 00:35, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

It's certainly better than we have now. SteveBaker 02:23, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline end

I think that there is a case for putting an end to the timeline at about 2006.

There appear at the moment to be no companies that were part of BL left anymore. Some brands remain but are now entirely in hands of what BL would have regarded as (foreign) competitors. Alternatively we cou.d find a new title for the template - but one that avoids us having to add Vauxhall Ford and Rootes to the template. GraemeLeggett 13:04, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

This sounds sensible. I'd like there to be some "reason" beyond just a date though. Perhaps the appropriate point is when every company (corporate entity, not brand) which was brought into BL has ceased to exist – i.e. has been fully purchased and subsumed, as opposed to being made part of a group of companies. Do we have enough knowledge of the businesses to identify that moment? – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 13:44, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I've been having a hard think about this and I think it all comes down to asking what the purpose of this template is - especially in the context of the kinds of articles are likely to include it.

Mostly, I think it's valuable for people reading an article about a particular car who are confused by the confusing and rapid change in company names and marques (I'm imagining one of our readers saying: "Eh - it said the car was made by "Austin" - but now they say it's made by "Leyland" - WTF?!"). The timeline makes it clear what the relationships are - roughly when companies like Morris turned into mere marques. It also provides convenient and comprehensive links to all of the component companies - which is also a very useful service for the parent article authors.

It's also useful when reading an article about one of the component companies because we don't have to repeat the entire corporate history in each of a dozen or so articles - and it provides the 'one true place' where the facts are correct.

So, I think the usefulness of continuing to extend the timeline to the right (or to the left for that matter) disappears when articles written about cars that are built by the companies mentioned (eg Ford and BMW) no longer include the timeline - there is no point in including those companies on the timeline. So the 'Ford Explorer' article doesn't use the template - but I bet the Range Rover and Jaguar articles still do. Similarly, the MINI (BMW) article uses the template to illustrate the heritage of the car - so it's worth keeping MINI(BMW) in the template.

In conclusion, I think it's wrong to end the template at 2006 - but it might be worth thinning out the number of companies represented. MINI and Nanjing should be there (which means BMW and Rover need to be there) - but BAE systems probably shouldn't be there. They came from BAe - they had nothing to do with Leyland or any of the prior parts of Leyland - and the BAE Systems article doesn't need the template. By thinning out companies that no longer make anything recognisably 'from the BL era' and which no longer contain any of the original marque names - the template will gradually taper down to nothing as the last cars/marques vanish. However, I'm reminded that BMW are talking about making a retro-TR6 in the MINI factory - if that happens, the BMW/Triumph thing will get complicated.

SteveBaker 18:21, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Steve, There's a case for BAE Systems staying as they own the Alvis brand through their Land Systems division, although the brand left Leyland and was bought by BAE Systems rather than being inherited when BAe bought Austin Rover Group. Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 15:26, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah - I didn't know that. Is the 'Alvis' name still being used for anything? A Google search reveals just one link which is to http://www.alvisvickers.co.uk/ - but that web site says 'under construction' and according to the way-back machine has been that way since January 2nd 2006. According to the page just prior to that, the BAE 'Land Systems group' was formed from a merger of Alvis with 'RO Systems' in September 2005. As best as I can reconstruct the timeline, it appears that the Alvis/Vickers name died more than a year ago in the merger. The news of that was kept up on the Alvis web site for four months site until January this year - and now it's just Cyber-squatted with an 'under construction' page. No business who gave a damn about their image would leave just those two words on their corporate site for 10 months - so we may safely deduce that Alvis is finally gone. From an encyclopeadic perspective - it's non-notable...certainly if we wanted to put a definite end to the template, this is not the reason not to do so. SteveBaker 20:30, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree with that, it seems BAE Systems has finally discontinued all of its brand names such as Alvis, Haglunds and Bofors. It does mean the Alvis is now in an identical situation to Rover, where just the brand name lives on and unused at that. Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 11:17, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Let me know if I can help sort out any confusion. I've done a lot of work on British Aerospace/BAE Systems/Alvis Vickers/BAE Systems Land Systems etc. and I created the diagram above. The Alvis name was dropped almost as soon as BAE completed its takeover of the company. It also dropped the Royal Ordnance name and merged those two companies to form BAE Systems Land Systems. Bofors is different, BAE acquired it when it bought United Defense in 2005. The Bofors and Hagglunds names have been maintained.

Also, why is British Aerospace listed as a car company/brand. Yes it owned the Rover Group, but the car brand was always Rover? Mark83 13:30, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I know theres not much room left on the tempolate but when BL became Rover and tookover by BAe the name Austin Rover eventully disapeered and became Rover Cars so surely instead of BAe shouldnt that colummn say Rover Group (BAe) or something similar Penrithguy 18:45, 1 April 2007 (UTC)