Rover’s story begins in 1878, when John Kemp Starley and William Sutton founded the business in Coventry. The 1885 Rover Safety Bicycle set the pattern for the modern bicycle, and the company began building cars in 1904. Its cars were built in Coventry until the late 1940s, when production moved to the former shadow factory at Lode Lane, Solihull.
After the war Rover built dignified, well-engineered saloons: the P4, the P5 (1958 to 1973) and the P6 (1963 to 1976). Rover also built the JET1, an experimental gas turbine car shown in March 1950, and launched the Range Rover in 1970. The SD1 followed in 1976, and its production moved from Solihull to Cowley in 1982.
Rover was acquired by Leyland Motors in 1967 and became part of British Leyland in 1968. The Rover Group was created in 1986, sold to BMW in 1994 and broken up in 2000. MG Rover carried on, mostly from Longbridge in Birmingham, until it collapsed in April 2005. The Rover name is now owned by Jaguar Land Rover, which builds Land Rovers on Rover’s original Solihull site.