. . . but dons bite back
NOW his successor tells Aerospace's share- holders that Rover is eating the company's cash, but that it has bright prospects in nuz- zling up to Honda. What he means is that he wishes Honda would take the dog on. I have one simple test for Rover's handlers. Austin Morris merged the two biggest British car-makers, each with its own mas- sive plant, one at Longbridge, one at Cow- ley. None of its subsequent owners has had the nerve to back one plant and shut the other. Would Honda choose? Or would it follow Toyota and Nissan, and opt for a green field and a fresh start? The City and Suburban solution has long been to close Cowley. This would solve Oxford's recur- rent problem, the shortage of college ser- vants, and its newest problem, which is finding somewhere to put the undergradu- ates. Colleges are hurrying to build, at their old members' expense, on the surviving greensward of Oxford — Magdalen, on its deer park. Cowley could be Oxford's Dock- lands, its machine-shops tastefully convert- ed into quadrangles.
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