Assess the probability of BMW's strategy for Rover (as described in the case) to succeed. Outline the most important reasons for your assessment.

BMW's aimed at growing aggressively in the 1990s, facing consolidation in the car industry. The acquisition of Rover would enable BMW to increase its share in Europe. This acquisition was very driven: before enabling BMW to realize synergies, it overall lead the German group to market a more important number of cars, on more segments and on more markets. Indeed, beyond extending tremendously BMW's market share in Europe, Rover provided access to emerging markets to BMW that entered the small/medium sized cars market. One should one forget that BMW acquired some important brands as MG, Triumph, Austin that could possibly be revived later on. Internationalization of BMW was crucial to the deal. By acquiring some production locations in new countries, BMW afforded some protection against currency movements. The growth strategy of BMW implied a development on new segments. The growing market segment constituted by women, young drivers and city drivers could only be reached by BMW by developing the front-wheel drive technology BMW had been starting to investigate on. Land Rover's positioning enabled BMW to get into the sport utility car market, thus impeding Daimlez-Benz AG to take to much advance in this field. BMW learnt very much from Land Rover, and may not have developed the X5 as quickly without its stake in Rover (and thus compete against Benz on the 4*4 market). Moving on these segments did not hurt BMW brand image. Rover did not make cars of a very different range as BMW: Rover had a luxury image. Despite Rover's rises and falls in therms of quality, the overall trend thanks to the alliance with Honda had been an improvement in quality and design. The German could not have taken the risk of damaging their brand image. Rover's range of cars was not so different from BMW and so did not endanger the image of the