Rover 200 & 400 Owners Club

Picked the car up this am after getting a lift over there. Car running fine with a nice new ECU fitted with a years warranty with it. I also picked up some useful tips regarding the window glass. New glass comes with the yokes or clips already glued to the bottom edge.

Brillant


five star service from John and all his staff at A.E. Wilcox.

The membership 'cluster' in the Bristol area is lucky to have these chaps relatively close!
Did you get a feel for how the Rover side of their business is holding up? I wonder whether their positive attitude is encouraging other Rover owners to persevere?

IMO this is all down to one chap and that's John who is co-owner of the dealership.

It seems that certainly some of the smaller Rover Dealerships were and still are, family owned business.

There was another small Rover Dealer in Staple Hill/ Fishponds area of Bristol that suddenly closed. It now looks as if the site is going to be cleared and redeveloped as housing. I subsequently found out that the owner of the business had retired and sold up! So obviously the site was worth more with planning permission for housing.

So it's purely down to the whim of the owner He has chosen to retain the test and diagnostic equipment and keep NOS and used parts on the shelf, against the advice of his accountant I would suspect , because it's not going to be fast moving stock. Stock sitting on a shelf and costing money is the driving force behind 'just in time' logistics within Motor Manufacturing after all.

Wilcox now have a split site in Wickwar, a new construction that house's Citroen sales, while the workshop and smaller showroom are on the original site and still have two very old green petrol pumps outside. They certainly had a MG TF in the showroom and I think a couple of Rover 75's for sale, but I didn't take too much notice.

So as long as John is still running the service side of things, those of us within travelling distance will be okay.

I had several long conversations with him while deciding what to do next and how much it was going to cost, as I didn't just give him a blank cheque to spend, and he was very interested in our club and our events etc.

I totally agree Tim. I have a long standing family owned ex MGR dealer locally and they still service quite a lot of MGs/Rovers. They have all the diagnostic equipment and if they can't source parts themselves through Xpart or Rimmers then they will fit customer supplied parts.
They have a 214SEi as the workshop runabout!

montegoman wrote:I totally agree Tim. I have a long standing family owned ex MGR dealer locally

Hmm. North Bucks. Souls of Olney perchance?

Mr Teddy Bear wrote:I had several long conversations with him while deciding what to do next and how much it was going to cost, as I didn't just give him a blank cheque to spend, and he was very interested in our club and our events etc.

Give him an honorary subscription to The Viking!

crepello wrote:

Mr Teddy Bear wrote:I had several long conversations with him while deciding what to do next and how much it was going to cost, as I didn't just give him a blank cheque to spend, and he was very interested in our club and our events etc.

Give him an honorary subscription to The Viking!

Tim, send me his email address and I'll make it so

Hmm. North Bucks. Souls of Olney perchance?

Spot on!

Get those names into the 'Recommended Products and Services' forum!

Appears to be a happy ending for my 214GSi.

After three months changing a number of bits from another 214 and some new parts including coil, crank sensor etc....

...the problem was a dodgy new rotor arm and dizzy cap, which were genuine parts from somewhere that rhymes with 'dimmers'.

Seems OK now. Only another 23K miles before the magic 200K mark...

The diagnostics for these early MEMS1.2 cars don't tell you anything as to the faults though there is a piece of equipment that reads the sensors.