Michael Edwardes, a famously pugnacious industrial turnaround artist in Britain who rescued the Jaguar, Mini and Land Rover automotive brands in the late 1970s while becoming a union scourge, died on Sept. 15 at his home outside London. He was 88.

The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, according to Caroline Watkin, a family friend.

In some ways, Mr. Edwardes (pronounced the same way as Edwards) was the Lee A. Iacocca of Britain. At roughly the same time that Mr. Iacocca (who died in July) was saving Chrysler, in part by persuading the United States government to provide an inflation-adjusted $5 billion in loan guarantees, Mr. Edwardes was trying to jump-start British Leyland, a government-owned car giant whose brands included Austin, Morris, Mini, Jaguar, MG, Land Rover and Triumph.

Each man came to personify corporate boldness, reputations they burnished by writing best-selling business memoirs.

Mr. Edwardes, who spent the early part of his career fixing parts of Chloride, a battery manufacturer, took over as British Leyland’s chairman in 1977. It was a last-gasp rescue effort: The British government had assumed control of the company in a 1975 bailout, and the company was almost bankrupt again. Turnaround plans had gone nowhere, a result of near-constant worker walkouts, shoddy craftsmanship, disaffected managers and a convoluted corporate structure. Japanese and German competitors were gobbling up market share.