By the middle of the 1970s, the government had closed RAF Gaydon. In the late 1970s British Leyland purchased the site to convert it into a vehicle development facility, and proving ground and it became the headquarters of BL Technology (BLT). In 1980 BLT awarded a GB£2 million contract to McAlpines for the construction of a wind tunnel there. The ownership of the site passed, along with what was by then called the Rover Group, to British Aerospace in 1988, and subsequently in 1994 to BMW following the privatisation of BL (British Leyland) by the Government.