British Motor Heritage background, BMH Body Plant at Witney, V8 Register, MG Car Club

Where has British Motor Heritage come from?
"British Motor Heritage was established as a limited company in 1975 as part of the former British Leyland group to support owners of British classic cars by putting genuine components back into manufacture using original tools wherever possible. In 2001 British Motor Heritage was acquired from BMW and since that time it has been run successfully as an independent and privately owned company". That is the concise note on the origins of BMH set out in a recent company brochure and it is understandably brief because BMH has come through over thirty years of turmoil in British car production and numerous corporate changes in the various guises of British Leyland, Rover Group, BMW, MG Rover and more recently the Chinese that could fill a book.

Rare moment of foresight
Setting up BMH before the end of MGB, MGBGTV8 and Midget production to provide a genuine parts service and technical information for all the models from both the former British Motor Holdings and from the Leyland Vehicles sides of BL was certainly far sighted. BMH was created as part of a small division Leyland Historic Vehicles which started with a collection of cars at Donnington before moving to Syon Park in London, ultimately finding a final resting place as the Heritage Motor Centre at Gaydon in Warwickshire. Subsequently Leyland Historic Vehicles became the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust or BMIHT in 1983. BMH became the subsidiary of BMIHT responsible for producing parts on a commercial basis, particularly body pressings, panels and sub-assemblies using the original moulds and tooling. Any surpluses generated by BMH were paid over to the trust so that it could be self-sustaining as Leyland lurched from crisis to crisis. But the question remained what to do with the huge number of engineering archives, drawings and production records for models like MG, Morris, Riley and Wolseley, as well as all the serviceable moulds and tooling that had been used to make them in the first place.

New manufacturing facilties at Faringdon
David Bishop joined the BMH team in the late 1980s and decided to make more use of the original tooling by manufacturing replacement bodyshells for MGBs. He managed to recover thousands of pieces of lost tooling, jigs and moulds. With his strong background in vehicle manufacturing he set up a new manufacturing facility at several industrial units in Faringdon in Oxfordshire and found the skilled people to man for small scale production. BMH reintroduced the new MGB bodies at the May 1988 Classic Car Show at the NEC and they were followed by bodyshells the Midget and the Triumph TR6.

Many enthusiasts found that often using a replacement BMH bodyshell for a refurbishment project proved cheaper and better than reconditioning an old car. Although the new bodyshells used original tooling, the use of modern manufacturing methods, including improved industry standard rustproofing, resulted in a significantly better unit.

Move to a new body plant at Witney
BMH moved to its current premises on the outskirts of Witney in 1996, and then its owner, Rover, was bought by BMW. When BMW sold Rover off in 2000, Land Rover was also sold to Ford and the ownership of the Gaydon museum passed to the American company. In all the confusion, BMH was forgotten and remained in the ownership of BMW which soon realised it did not fit into the company portfolio. It had been separated from the BMHIT museum trust and had become a loss making operation.

BMH buy out
David Bishop decided to try and arrange a buy out and contacted Unipart sales director Neil Morrick and John

Yea, who had held senior finance roles at Rover Group until 1999. But it was not just a matter of buying the firm. There was the extremely important matter of the ownership of the names associated with the business. BMW owned Mini, Riley and Triumph, whereas the new owners of MG Rover, the Chinese company Nanjing Automobile Corporation, owned MG, Austin, Morris, Wolseley and Austin Healey. Just to complicate things further, Caterpillar, which had been manufacturing parts for MG Rover, owned the rights to "modern" MGs, while the MG Rover name had been bought from BMW by Ford! A quite extraordinary tangle of brands and rights!

An initial deal was thrashed out in October 2001, in which BMH was taken into private hands with the help of BMW and the licences to key brands were secured. John Yea explained "the plan was based on historical sales and our understanding of the market place. BMW wanted the company to survive and turn it from a loss maker into a profitable business."

John Yea's buy out
That happened and the firm continued happily until early 2005, when David Bishop and Neil Morrick decided they wanted to retire, whilst John Yea a mere 55 decided to continue. As a result the Witney premises, bought from BMW in 2004, were sold and leased back to fund John Yea's buy out of 55% of the company.

Future of the business
John is the first to recognise that all businesses, even those with their origins so clearly linked to the past, have to move forward. He explained "the bodyshell in primer finish is a unique product and sells well but is one of the least profitable lines, because it takes all the staff up to three weeks to make 30 units, which does not stack up financially." As a result he has looked for ways to increase value added. One way has been to supply bodyshells already painted in a standard colour and, should a customer require it, the whole car, engine and all. The key is to supply them direct to the customer, rather than through the specialist parts dealer, which is making a profit of about 35 per cent by selling them. A typical bodyshell costs about £5,500. But the parts specialists will not lose out because BMH will become a customer, for example, offering fuel tanks already built on to a bodyshell."

The outlook is healthy as the company is looking to top its 2005 turnover of £3.25m and the pre-tax profit of £300,000 is also robust for a company employing 35 people. A clear build programme has been established with runs of Mini, Midget or MGB bodyshells, most of which have been pre-sold. Advertising in specialist magazines has aroused plenty of interest from enthusiasts.

Maintaining essential skills
One challenge is ensuring essential skills such as the use of "straighteners" by skilled employees with a keen eye for any dents or imperfections, continue to be available. Many skilled workers with those skills have gone thanks to technological advances in the modern car industry. As a result BMH has been keen to attract and train younger staff and succeeded in recruiting Matt Street, 19. He joined the company as an apprentice in that role and another recruit shortly after.

Meanwhile, the original tools, some of which date back to 1948 for the Morris Minor, are lovingly maintained as they are essential for producing the heritage body panels. Without that original tooling manufacturing the panels and components would be beyond the capability of modern robotised equipment and would make handworking a great deal more difficult. Additional background note

V8 Register - MG Car Club - the leading group for MG V8 enthusiasts at www.v8register.net