An old refrain from protectionists and other fixed-wealth folk is that it is terrible that Britain does not have a major car manufacturer any more. Japanese and other nations’ car plants are in Britain, true, but we have little home-grown stuff. Jaguar is owned by Ford. Aston Martin has been taken over from Ford by a private equity firm. TVR has gone. Morgan is just about hanging on. Land Rover, Rolls Royce, Bentley, MG… they are all in the hands of evil foreigners.
This is largely a function of globalisation, with a bit of help from decades of restrictive practices, crap design and poor quality during the 1950s, 60s and 70s and early 80s. The car industry never really recovered. A whole generation of people learned to loathe British Leyland cars and bought Saabs, Renaults, Citroens and VWs whenever they could. Even though some gems remained – Landrovers and some of the Jags were fine – the reputation of the British car industry was devastated. The same nearly happened to Italian carmaker Fiat when Communist-run unions nearly destroyed that industry as well. But at least Italy had Ferrari.
However, the situation these days is quite bright. Many of the world’s top Formula 1 racing teams are based in Britain, like MacLaren in Surrey. And as this article demonstrates, while it may be cheaper to make cars in China or Brazil or Poland, many of the hottest car designers are still British. In the information economy, the value-added areas of design are what count, and it turns out that Britain is rather good at it.
Paradoxically, look at Triumph Motorcycles Ltd. If any industry could be seen as the epitome of British industrial decline in the 70’s, then surely it was motorcycle manufacturing. Then came along John Bloor in the late eighties, who took ownership over with a 100% stake and invested hugely with modern manufacturing techniques and the rest, as they say is history.
As a donor to the Tory party and being anti-union, it is no surprise that this success story is little known, given the BBC’s and the MSM’s general left-of-centre bias.
Well, my take on all of this is that it seems utterly bizarre to expect that every country on Earth makes or grows every single thing it’s populace might require.
Having had a dinner of Irish beef with Italian wine I am smoking Turkish tobacco while seated upon a British chair at a Swedish desk typing on a (mainly) Chinese computer (with a CPU made in Israel) using American software. And that’s just for a Thursday.
I am glad to offer profit and employment globally. I love it. Every time I bite into a tasty hunk of Indian tuna that was air-freighted to the UK I think of the amazing chain that got the poor unsuspecting fish from ocean to plate.
I can honestly state that I never understood quite what the anti-globalization agenda was about. So, it’s politically incorrect to object to immigrants but politically correct to object to imports. That did not compute and it still doesn’t.
I guess I never bought it. I remember being taught at school how terrible it was that all these poor people in the third world were being forced to grow “cash-crops” and this was leading to starvation. Even as a an 11 year-old I didn’t buy that one. I appreciated at some level that money was an improvement on barter. As Homer Simpson’s brain once tells him “money can be exchanged for goods and services”.
The left love the poor as long as they remain poor. I want to buy stuff from them until they’re no longer poor or I no longer want to buy stuff.
I mentioned here just post Christmas an exchange I had with a comunist chick in central Newcatle. She accused all Western companies but especially oil companies of exploiting countries like Nigeria or Venezuela. She didn’t understand that the likes of BP had done deals and… I ought to stop preaching to the converted.
We agree with the greens and Trots on one thing. We have one world. We disagree on everything to do with how that ought to be used.
Take comfort my British friends. Jaguar and Aston-Martin and Lotus are held in high esteem in the US. I spend considerable time in South Florida which after Southern California is the luxury car capital of the US. I see lots of new Jaguars on the road and have heard only good reviews from owners.
Contrast that to France which doesn’t export automobiles to the US anymore. It is very rare indeed to see a French car in the US.
Yes, while it is sad that Britain allowed it’s indigenous motor industry to die, by whatever means, Brits may look with great pride at the UK-born marque names which are held in great esteem and respect by the rest of the world: Bentley, Rolls Royce, Jaguar, Land Rover, Rover, Aston Martin, etc.
Those who now build the cars bearing one these names invest the vast sums required because of the value of the brand, lovingly created and developed by Britons.
What a great legacy, that such commercial confidence can be generated by British brand names.
Regretably, we have here a paradox. Britain needs to look forward to using its’ brains, but haven’t we been complaining about the low standards of education in schools across the country? Or are there enough exceptions that the future still looks bright?
Landrover/Rangerover are owned by Ford now, which is certainly a good thing for Rangerover owners. Why? Because apparently one of the first things you had to do with a Rover/BMW-owned Rangerover was to put the car back in for service immediately upon purchase (from new) in order for them to find out any QA problems that had been missed on production.
As for the British car industry you do miss out one existing manufacturer, namely the Bristol Car Company so beloved of Jimmy Carter and others. Perhaps it is a sign of enduring quality that vehicles carrying a British marque retain their distinctive ‘Britishness’, i.e. in a global age where an Aston Martin can easily be manufactured in the USA, Malaysia or Spain it is still known as a ‘British’ car.
Regarding actual local manufacturing we still have one of the few true success stories in the auto industry – namely the Nissan plant in Sunderland which now accounts for around 20% of all cars exported from the UK and still boasts that it has never lost one minute in production due to union interference.
Reid of America,
Could you have a word with Hollywood scriptwriters, and ask them not to insist that only Britains can play top-rate villains? In most areas i would not object, but couldn’t a master villain be a frenchie now and again? I’ll bet that some of the Anti-Americanism in Britain is because it seems that Hollywood hates Britain. Could they not view everything through a lens made in 1776?
Thank you! (Though now an Australian, I was born in Britain)
nick g, you are right to mention the education issue as a problem, which is why we defend things like cuttng the school-leaving age so that motivated children can learn in peace while their non-academic peers can work. In fact, an increase in private shooling, home-schooling etc fits in with the more information driven economy of today. The existing education model that Britain has had since the Forster Act of 1870 is essentially copied from Prussia. Time for a change.
The complaints tend to be about the appaling quality of state education. According to a recent survey, the 7% or so who benefit from British private education are the best educated in the world.
My elder daughter leaves her (private) school in a couple of months and hopes to go on to do a real (science based) degree at a proper university. Of her peers, 100% are planning to go to university and none of them are looking at former polytechnics or Mickey mouse degrees (albeit not all are scientists). I do worry however what will happen when the other 93% realise they’ve been shafted by the state. They will probably be told it’s my daughter’s fault because of her “privilidge” (being educated). I have already advised her to take her degree overseas when qualified.
Julian,
As a native of the NE (albeit a Geordie and not a Mackem) I have to say that the Mackems and Nissan have really got stuff right. So, we Brits have got top-line car brands, we do a lot of car design and we also manufacture. The fact that these things are not all under “one roof” should probably be seen as evidence that we are ahead of the game.
Labour relations at the Nissan plant are excellent because management talk to the “workers”. Did you ever see a BBC show called “Back to the Floor” or something which had CEOs spending a week doing the actual work. I was appalled at the lack of understanding displayed. At Nissan it isn’t as much “top-down” and the lads on the production line are consulted on procedures and if someone has a better idea on a more efficient way to bolt the doors on a Primera then it gets implemented.
I’m sorry I had to use such terms as “workers” and management” in such a stereotypical way and I am not pleading for some state-sanctioned “industrial democracy”.
MarkE,
Re;” I do worry however what will happen when the other 93% realise they’ve been shafted by the state. They will probably be told it’s my daughter’s fault because of her “privilidge” (being educated). I have already advised her to take her degree overseas when qualified.”
At one time there were real, material shortages and the welfare/socialist state rose up to fill the vacuum. Now wealth is so plentiful that there is no physical reason that basic human needs cannot be met. This is a fundamental threat to those that work and prosper by working and administering the welfare state. So, poor education has become a necessary factory for producing people unable to minimally grasp the prosperity and opportunity at their feet. The seeing must be made blind and the young brain must be damaged in order to supply necessary bodies to fill and justify the welfare system.
At one time slavery consistent mainly in physical slaver of ones body. Both the slave and the slaver knew the nature of the system, but at least the slave could imagine liberty. Now, the new system is to leave the body physically free, but insure the intellectual, spiritual and ethical components of the person be so damaged as to not even, in our day and age, be able to make even minimal actions that would free a person. In the old days the crop was cotton, today it is the man himself that is the crop, and from that crop millions derive a comfortable living.
Poverty must be manufactured; the governments and their minions depend upon it.
.
And the really neat thing about having a “post-industrial” economy is that, paradoxically, such a country can profitably import stuff that it could more cheaply manufacture for itself.
Could you have a word with Hollywood scriptwriters, and ask them not to insist that only Britains can play top-rate villains? In most areas i would not object, but couldn’t a master villain be a frenchie now and again?
I realise this was meant to be only a light-hearted comment, but it’s an idea that is showing up more and more lately, not least from pundits on Radio 4. If ever there were a meme that needed slaying, it’s this one, because it so completely misses the point.
The Hollywood baddies that are objected to are not British. They are English. OK, Fat Bastard was a Scot, but he’s an exception. We don’t get Welsh baddies, or Irish baddies, or (apart from Fat Bastard) Scottish ones. They are (almost) uniformly English.
Why? Because of the accent. The English bad guy almost invariably speaks with an educated English accent. When was the last time you heard a Mancunian or Scouse criminal mastermind? Or, for that matter, a Cockney criminal (as opposed to a criminal Cockney such as Dick Van Dyke)?
The educated English accent is shorthand in Hollywood for sophistication, suavity and charm. Used by a criminal it also means guile and cleverness.
That’s all it is. It’s not personal. It’s just an easy way in to characterisation. It’s no cause for a transatlantic falling out.
Quality definitely enters into it.
I’ve never owned a British car – I’ve never even sat in one. But I’ve still heard enough talk by those who have to know that “Lucas” is a name to avoid like the very Devil.
There is, after all, a reason why so many old XJs in the US have an American-made V6 or V8 engine grafted into them and completely re-done wiring, and that reason isn’t snobbery; it’s that the originals were horrible.
Brilliant aesthetics, terrible mechanicals and electricals.
(Me, I’d like Jaguar looks with Toyota reliability.)
I wish I could fish out the reference to someone who costed the wiring savings of the old XJS. Something like £30 savings per car caused all the wiring problems due to the use of cheap connections and low grade looms. One word: Imbeciles.
Mercedes made that mistake a while back but I hear they have reversed within one “generation” and the current and previous (i.e. younger than the frogeye) E-class are so much better.
One day I will try one out, probably when my W124 needs replacing.
Landrovers were shockingly bad vehicles. The gearboxes leaked oil from new, and they kept the same basic gearbox design from about 1948 until the late 1980s. They would break down regularly, and anyone who has worked on Landrovers would tell you that some of the designing seemed done solely to annoy any owner.
That said, they were extremely practical, very easy to modify, even easer to fix when they broke down, and practically indestructable, hence they were and still are very popular. But even the most die-hard Landrover fans wouldn’t argue that they represented fantastic engineering.
ROBTE, If the villains were all french, you’d get more people going to the movies in Britain! (And probably also in America, these days!) Why not a sophisticated European? Shouldn’t these things be handled by a quota system?
I think the reason that nothing is actually done here any more without foreign help is that Britain is a ‘can’t do’ country, ever since those nasty, common industrialists were put back in their places by ‘society’.
And I don’t mean the unions.
I mean that too many people in Britain would cough blood before giving credit where credit is due, and wihtout foreign intervention the British economy would sink like an undercooked souffle.
Something else, Robte, 90% of Britain is english by population, when last I looked, so your explanation that it’s only an English accent is only balm to a small segment of the people. Also, what’s wrong with being educated? Do we want Hollywood to promote dumbing-down in education? Why not show crooks as uneducated dummies, and the police as smarter, and more educated, than them? Isn’t it time Hollywood accepted responsibility for its’ share in the image of smart people. Smart peoples is Humans also, U know!
Perhaps that could be your crusade- responsible film-making!
Wasn’t Dr. Evil Belgian? Adopted by Belgians, anyway. And Goldmember was Dutch.
And where was Blofeld from?
French bad guys would be a refreshing change from the CIA conspiracies and Colombian cocaine lords that usually make up bad guys in our movies.
But I still feel a quota system would be fairer! And I think Hollywood should extol people with brains and education! Perhaps Hollywood’s constant appealing to the lowest common denominator has had a dumbing-down effect? If they showed cops as educated, and kept showing them in a good light, that might have a trickle-down affect.
There’s been a terrible lack of Aussie bad guys in movies here. The mutants in “Mad Max” and some minor characters in the second “Crocodile Dundee” are all that come to mind. And New Zealand haven’t been pulling their weight either. Has there EVER been an EnZedd bad guy in a movie?
If they showed educated cops who don’t abuse people, that…well, that would be a little too common-place to make good theater. Moviegoers want the good guys to be Dirty Harry. Watching folks with college education talk to pawnshop clerks about stolen jewelry and break up junior-high schoolyard fights isn’t very engrossing.
How do we even divide the quotas? Should we distinguish between Texans and New Yorkers? Are all Australians Australian for our purposes, or should the quota distinguish between Tasmanians and banana benders? Are the French and the Germans distinct, or are they all “EU People” now?
If you thought that was funny, it’s probably bed time.
What do you mean, Sunfish? Russell Crowe was born in enzedland, as they’ll tell you themselves, and all those orcs in TLOTR were average kiwinese. Why do you think the biggest city is called Orcland?
Yes, you could do with a few Oz villains in movies; Hollywood is failing us all there! And I think if Hollywood just put in a few positive messages about learning,it would be all to the good!
I realise the quota system will be awkward, but the sooner something is done, the better! I know- if a european leader makes an anti-US statement in one week, then the villain in scripts being written that week will have his/her nationality! What could be simpler or fairer?