Tony Gilroy 1937-2022

The man who saved Land Rover from oblivion in the 1980s – and who you've almost certainly never heard of – has died, aged 85. His name was Tony Gilroy, and having started out at Ford he moved to British Leyland in the 1970s as manufacturing director of Longbridge. An astute leader who always shunned the limelight, Irishman Gilroy was instrumental in the dismissal of Longbridge's trade union convener Derek 'Red Robbo' Robinson, who led 523 walk-outs in the 30 months before he was sacked in 1979. Gilroy played a key part in the introduction of the Metro in 1980, and was promoted to managing director of Freight Rover. He was given six months to turn the company around or close it; Gilroy saved the business.

In 1983 he was appointed to the top job at Land Rover, and within months had identified its deficiencies and had developed a plan to make it successful. At the time 75% of the company’s business was in Africa, the Middle East and Far East, but the collapse of the African economies, and the decline in oil revenues, meant that these markets could no longer afford to buy Land Rovers.

Gilroy recognised that Land Rover had to be more successful in mainland Europe and Australia. More importantly, Land Rover would have to sell vehicles in the world’s two largest car markets, North America and Japan, but to succeed in the former the Range Rover had to become a luxury vehicle with bigger engines, luxury leather interiors, and a host of other refinements.

Gilroy also identified changes in the world’s four-wheel-drive markets. New vehicles being developed by Japanese manufacturers were creating a segment between the agricultural Land Rovers and the luxury Range Rovers; the solution was the Discovery, which was developed in a record time of three years, when most new vehicles took almost twice this. By using the existing Range Rover suspension and chassis, and the Austin Rover parts bin, Gilroy developed the Discovery at a fraction of the cost that other manufacturers were incurring for their new models.

With the Thatcher government anxious to sell off BL, Land Rover was offered to GM which offered Gilroy a free hand, but he rejected the offer in a bid to keep Land Rover British; he wanted to acquire the company through a management buy-out, but Thatcher vetoed the Rover Group being sold off piece-meal. The management changes brought in by Graham Day (merging the Austin Rover Group board and the Land Rover Group board into one Rover Group board) led to Gilroy leaving Land Rover at the end of 1988, a year before the launch of the Discovery.