A Child of Rover

Available for over a year

As a child, Nathalie Olah would ask for toy garages and racing tracks for Christmas. Every person in her family drove a Rover car. Most of them worked at the vast car plant at Longbridge, southwest of Birmingham, at the foot of the Lickey Hills where Tolkien had been inspired to write The Lord of the Rings. Cars, to her, were just as fantastical. Nathalie revisits the story of Britain's leading volume car producer, from its origins in 1904 to the iconic Mini, the much-derided Austin Allegro and the suped-up 'boy racer' models of the Phoenix Four, through years of industrial disruption, nationalisation, foreign ownership and bankruptcy. With voices from the BBC Sound Archive and new interviews with former Rover employees Alison Debenham (track worker), Giovanni Esposito (chassis engineer) and Ian Murter (showroom salesman). Co-produced by Nathalie Olah and Alan Hall A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4