Word: leylands
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...competing foreign models, and no U.S. automaker can match the gas-mileage claims of some of the imports: 38 m.p.g. for the Volkswagen Rabbit, 39 m.p.g. for the Japanese Honda Civic. Those cars are in the forefront of the import surge, along with Fiat, Datsun, Toyota and British Leyland's Marina. Says Honda's U.S. sales manager, Cliff Schmillen: "There seems to have been a change in people's thinking. It has sunk in that energy shortages and high gasoline prices will be with them for the rest of their lifetime." Johnie Leake, a 26-year...
Although it is scarcely a consolation to Detroit, the big European automakers are also having their problems. British Leyland, which is one of Britain's largest non-nationalized industrial firms, has been forced to go, hubcap in hand, to Harold Wilson's Labor Government for a five-year loan of $230 million or so to help it get over a severe cash shortage caused by plunging sales. Peugeot and Citroen have sought and received financial backing from the French government for a desperation merger. Italy's Fiat, hit by a sharp decline in sales, is struggling...
...mergers have proved disappointing lately for such huge European companies as Dunlop Pirelli and British Leyland, but France's second and third biggest auto makers remain undaunted. Last week Peugeot and Citroën announced a kind of corporate engagement. Financial terms and most other aspects of the proposed merger were left vague by the companies' spectacularly uninformative statement, but one thing is clear: the merged firm will be a giant. Sales of the two companies now total about $4 billion a year, a figure running fender-to-fender with Daimler-Benz and outranked in the European auto...
...point out that the annual wage settlement sought by the miners totaled only $200 million. On the international money markets, the pound fell to $2.16, its lowest value ever against the American dollar. Nearly a million Britons had lined up for the dole. Said Lord Stokes, chairman of British Leyland: "I suggest with respect that Heath doesn't quite understand. The whole thing will collapse like a house of cards. He'll have a bankrupt nation on his hands...
Among likely bidders are Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch industrial complex, and a consortium of British companies led by British Leyland Motors, producer of Jaguars, MGs, Austins and bodies for Rolls-Royces (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler insist that they have no interest). If there are no bids above an undisclosed "reserve" price, estimated by London financiers at $120 million to $150 million, then the sale is off. Otherwise, the company's physical assets will go to the highest bidder, British or foreign-but only if the buyer is a British company will it be allowed to keep the Rolls...