Apropos of nothing, Joseph Lucas died long before the company that bore his name developed its notorious reputation due to long association with the late car manufacturer BMC (Austin/Morris/Triumph/Rover/Jaguar) - later British Leyland.
For all my opinion's worth, Lucas themselves didn't really deserve that notoriety, as most of the legendary faults tended to be due to poor workmanship during fitting and assembly, and as such was out of their hands.
In fact there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between the British motor and aviation industries between the '50s and the '70s. In both cases the R&D and technology levels were world-class, but the actual production environment tended to suffer badly from management interference and political chicanery. Aviation was particularly poorly-served by the latter.
For example - here's Harris Mann's original concept design for the Austin Allegro:
And here's what several months of re-design by management committee turned it into (squared-off "Quartic" steering wheel
not shown...):
The story of the DH.121 Trident is similar, except that while the aircraft remained relatively pleasing aesthetically, BEA's interference left it woefully underpowered and limited capacity-wise.
(proud Rover owner... 
)