Prompted by Spanish goverment initiatives to promote industrialisation, Rover and BMC independtly embarked on Spanish ventures.
Authi
A couple of years before the merger that would bring Rover and BMH into the same fold, BMC established its own Spanish arm, known as Authi. This page describes the various ADO16-based models they produced, and also contains a brief history of the company and the other BL models built there... |
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Santana
In the mid-1950s, Rover set up a factory in Spain to build the Land Rover. The introduction of a smaller, Suzuki-based model in the early 1980s led to the Japanese company having a 49% stake by 1991. Thus, the newly reformed Santana Motor, SA effectively became Suzuki's Spanish production and distribution arm, and Land Rover production consequently came to an abrupt end. But just over a decade later, there was to be an interesting twist in the tale... |
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