End Of Westland As We Know It…

G’Day All. As a kid I walked past the Fairey factory in Hayes to school daily, still entrenched in the memory. Westland the same. It would be nice if an aircraft restoration company or museum in the U.K. were able to reclaim these out of use iconic aviation brand names to keep them in the public eye. Naive I’m sure. Regards from OZ:cool:

Perhaps they should call it something snappy like ‘Eurocopter’… 😀

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I suppose that one is out of use at the moment……

British Aerospace didn’t have too many original designs either….

I think the Italian bosses are trying to get the best of both worlds by a) Making it clear that they are in charge while at the same time b) trading on a reputation. They themselves called AgustaWestland a ‘brand’. Perhaps a bit like BMW Mini – or maybe more like Tata’s continued use of the Jaguar Land Rover brand(s). Makes sense, really. In fact I suspect the change isn’t that great.. a couple of management ‘economies’ and only one kind of headed notepaper. Still sad, though, in a way.

Not so fast…

The left hand doesn’t seem to know what the right is doing.

https://twitter.com/finmeccanicaweb/status/682202267836137472

@AgustaWestland brand will continue to be used for #Finmeccanica helicopters, the best in class products worldwide #OneCompany

Perhaps they should call it something snappy like ‘Eurocopter’… 😀

Seeing as Boeing are trying to buy them, it could all become immaterial anyway…

Ironic that Thatcher’s name should be mentioned. It was Westland that almost brought down her government over a spat between her, who wanted the American Sikorsky company to take over the company and Michael Heseltine who wanted a “European solution” and wanted Agusta to take over.

In my previous abode I had an up-and-over garage door made by Westland! I wish I’d had the foresight to take a photo of the manufacturer’s plate proudly embossed WESTLAND, YEOVIL but I spent most of my time swearing and slamming it to make it close.

Huh, according to this page even their garage doors were licensed from North America 🙁

http://www.garagedoorsonline.co.uk/garadorupandoverdoors.php

In 1948 Westland formed Westland Engineers Ltd, a strategy to diversify from military applications. Westland Engineers Ltd bought a licence to manufacture one piece garage doors from Canada and during the 1950s was, essentially, the only UK manufacturer of this type of door.

To be precise the W.G. 13 ( Westland Group 13) design largely originated with the Fairey team at Hayes, whilst the Wasp/Scout were of course of Saunders Roe descent.

If everyone continues to use ‘Westland’ it won’t fall into disuse or ultimately die.

Indeed. They say that a man is never truly dead until he is forgotten. The same goes for a company.

Not sure exactly how the licensing agreement worked but the Lynx was predominantly a Westland product, while the Gazelle and Puma were predominantly a French product.

wasn’t the Lynx wholly designed by Westlands as part of a cross-licensing agreement with the Puma and Gazelle?

…and CD, you propose Government intervention in a free market?

Since when has the international military helicopter market had anything to do with ‘free markets’!

And, despite what you may believe from our various discussions on the GD forum, I’ve never been a slave to any notion of a totally ‘free market’; all I maintain is that you cannot simply ignore economics. 🙂

Yeah, fair enough! Though the Lynx was home-grown as well.

To clarify, it is true that ‘Westland’ hasn’t been (just) ‘Westland’ for a while now…

…but I didn’t mean to denigrate the amount of design work carried out at Yeovil.

However, having said that, the only helicopter I can think of that didn’t have any foreign input was the Westland Wasp / Scout and the other ‘Westland’ products all had significant foreign partners: Merlin, Apache, Lynx, Gazelle, Puma and with significant redesign work by Westland, Sea King and Wessex.

..and CD, you propose Government intervention in a free market? The Blessed Margaret would be spinning in her grave! Sorry, one for GD perhaps.

No. I don’t know how familiar you are with the AgustaWestland operation in Yeovil, but a lot of design and development work was and is done from a field in Somerset. Westland was and is ‘Westland’ to those that work there and know what they do for a living. It was the engineering and design expertise that was bought and paid for by the Italians, and it was the Lynx – a Westland design – and beyond that made the company such a target for aggressively acquisitional companies like Finmeccanica. If it was a ‘dumb’ assembly facility they were after it would have been in the third world. Licence-building Sikorskies saved the company, but that was a LONG time ago.

True. Almost all of Westland’s post war products were either (modified) licence-built products or products built in cooperation with other nations…

…but the British government should never have allowed our only helicopter manufacturer to become wholly foreign owned when GKN sold their 50% stake for (only) £1billion.

I’m not sure Westland has been “Westland” for awhile now.

Even in newer “the good old days” (post-fixed wing, their early helicopter period) they were basically a license builder of Sikorskys…something that many seem to forget (such as the poster here last year who accused Sikorsky of copying a Westland design).

Could be worse…

https://twitter.com/finmeccanicaweb
/
https://twitter.com/finmeccanicaweb/status/682202267836137472

.@AgustaWestland brand will continue to be used for #Finmeccanica helicopters, the best in class products worldwide #OneCompany

…but still… :rolleyes:

Not really, Snaf. A true manufacturing company like Westland is simply an asset. It doesn’t become more or less of one overall if it is sold to a larger organisation, though potentially less of one locally. Unfortunately a government, unless it is extremely interventionist, has no real say. Deeply sad, though. Having been present for the W100 celebrations I really got a sense of Somerset’s (justified) pride in ‘its’ aircraft manufacturer.

I guess the Agusta guys feel the same but reading on they are going to retain the Agusta/Westland “brand” so how does that work? is the Wildcat going to be a Finnmeccanica Wildcat or an Agusta/Westland Wildcat?