Rover

Rover is a British automotive marque that was used for over a century, from 1904 to 2005. It was launched as a bicycle maker called Rover Company in 1878, before starting to manufacture autocars in 1904. The brand used the iconic Viking longship as its logo. The rights to the marque are currently part of Jaguar Land Rover, but no Rover vehicles are currently in production and the marque is considered dormant.

Despite a state-controlled absorption by the Leyland Motor Corporation (LMC) in 1967 and subsequent mergers, nationalisation, and demergers, the Rover marque retained its identity, first as an independent subsidiary division of LMC, and subsequently through various groups within British Leyland (BL) through the 1970s and into the 1980s.

The Rover marque then became the flagship brand of the newly and eponymously renamed Rover Group in 1988, which included the actually stronger and more valuable brand names Land Rover and Mini as it passed first through the hands of British Aerospace and then into the ownership of BMW Group. Sharing technology with Honda and financial investment during the BMW ownership led to a revival of the marque during the 1990s in its core midsize car segment.

In 2000, BMW sold Rover and related MG car activities of the Rover Group to the Phoenix Consortium, who established the MG Rover Group at Longbridge. BMW retained ownership of the Rover marque, allowing MG Rover to use it under licence. In April 2005, Rover-branded cars ceased to be produced when the MG Rover Group became insolvent. The MG Rover Group's assets then got split up between two Chinese automakers – some were bought by SAIC Motor, who obtained technology that was incorporated into a new Chinese line of Roewe branded luxury saloons. Other assets were bought by Nanjing Automobile.

BMW sold the rights to the Rover marque to Ford in 2006 for approximately £6 million, the latter exercising an option of first refusal to buy it dating back to its purchase of Land Rover in 2000. Ford thus reunited the original Rover Company marques, primarily for brand-protection reasons.In March 2008, Ford reached agreement with Tata Motors of India to include the Rover marque as part of the sale of their Jaguar Land Rover operations to them. Legally the Rover marque is the property of Land Rover under the terms of Ford's purchase of the name in 2006.