Arguably the biggest and most constant success of the British motoring industry has been the Land Rover, with both its offroad 4×4 vehicles and its remarkably long-lasting engines having a huge and enduring impact both in the UK and overseas.

However, much of this success came amidst a backdrop of chaos that lasted over 30 years and involved gigantic businesses across at least four countries, and at one point included a spell of ownership by the biggest weapons manufacturer in Europe.

The story of British Aerospace’s ownership of Land Rover begins with its own incorporation, packaged into a company and sold by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government as part of a huge privatisation scheme, albeit with a single “golden share” that stopped it from ever being owned by a foreign power.

During this time, Land Rover’s parent company, British Leyland, was in the midst of abject turmoil. Eager to keep Land Rover itself safe from this, it was established as a separate part of the monolith, spun off from the Rover-Triumph division albeit still owned by it.

By the 1980s, whilst the company had stabilised, the plan was always to sell it, and in 1986 the first part of this took place when Leyland Trucks was sold to Dutch company DAF.

Soon after, the parts and services division Unipart was sold to the management with the help of several external backers in 1987, and in 1988 Volvo bought Leyland Buses.

More controversially, Jaguar was sold to Ford and Land Rover was nearly sold to General Motors, something that led to such controversy that it ultimately led to an about-face by the government and an agreement instead to sell to the newly privatised British Aerospace.

The condition of the sale was that neither Land Rover nor the Austin-Rover group acquired as part of the deal could be sold on for five years, which is exactly what happened in 1994.

Ultimately, it was a marriage of convenience, arguably always intended to lead to a sale as soon as BAe legally could, even if the stint under the defence company led to the Land Rover 

Discovery, the Range Rover II and the early development of the Range Rover III, later completed under Ford ownership.