Back on topic. When I was off work in 2017 with cancer, reading was something I did a great deal of.
AROnline is a brilliant website with lots of independent essays on a whole range of topics relating to the British car industry. Also there is a light hearted documentary by Mr Clarkson called “Who killed the British car industry”.
The rot set in around the early 50’s. Yes as far back as that. That’s when the downward spiral was set in motion. My summary is like this.
Leonard Lord, buffoon egotistic ruled over a business with 50% market share and made it his job to set the price of the cars on his own. Really? They barely made a profit on all those cars. No profit means no reinvestment in engineering, quality or development of new cars. He also fell out with Lord Nuffield and vowed to get revenge.
The mini was priced too cheap. It should have catapulted the business into a new era but again, no profit to reinvest.
Too much reliance on Patriotic sales gave false indicators on the car market when others were active in market research and acting on it.
Wrong people in charge. Lord Stokes was a great salesman but a poor businessman. He failed to act to make BL lean and efficient. Some say he had an impossible job but he had no ruthless streak in him.
The rise of the unions and their power dragged down productivity and it never really recovered. The competition were far more proactive in building more cars per hour.
Reputations stick. Between 1969 and 1980 BL produced probably its worst batch of cars ever. Strikes were common and morale was rock bottom. Love him or loathe him, Michael Edwardes saw the problem and tried to tackle it. Too late.
Once the Metro started to dissolve on Britain’s highways, patriotism dissolved with it and we all took a serious look at foreign cars and found them to be rather good.
Honda was a blessing and a missed opportunity. Government should have knocked down doors to make the partnership permanent. Failed. By 1990 the Honda based cars were picking up a good following and in 1993 the Rover was and is a great car.
By the time BMW took over it was beyond saving and they took what they wanted and left a dying pig behind.
It’s been a fascinating read and I have asked my wife to get one of the children to buy me James Rupperts book for my birthday so I can try and learn a bit more!

No easy answer to this, as a Nation we spent much money on two world wars and were being overtaken as a world power economy by Germany and the USA both prior and during this time. We adopted are praiseworthy attitude of defending democracy and liberty which we could not afford in reality and bankrupted ourselves as a result. We made massive loans to allies some (Russian) were never repaid at all, Much of British industry became under financed less modernised and less competitive, management was old fashioned,complacent and much influenced by "the old boy" network, and workers were influenced by this and strong communist agitation, and a general "that's good enough" attitude. Post WW2 we launched into the massive money eating Social and/national health service another unaffordable scheme which reinforced the lazy attitude of many of our citizens and also allowed our education system,(not a particulary good one] to get worse by lowering standards so now literacy is lower than in 1944. There were and are bright sparks in this picture but that's what they are "sparks" and Government does nothing/very little to fan the flames. But hey what do I know- maybe someone will come along and try and change things, make us work hard,try harder, because things need to change or else. Cheers Chris.S.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you :bowdown:

These links really do need to be given a wider audience.

These threads seem to always result in blaming the unskilled British workforce. :eek:

If we use Post-Fordism for example, Britain was forced to become a service based industry because we were outdone at manufacturing, other countries simply produce better quality goods, plain and simple. ;)

We are good in the service sector, business services, retail and finance... that's it. :shrug: :getmecoat:

I would add Research and Development to that list Wes.

Excellent Summary - as I understand it Honda was truly mortified that our politicians treated them with such contempt. To be honest - I have always been surprised that Honda ever saw fit to trust a U.K. Government again.

I (still) blame Mrs Thatcher . . .

We are just pen-pushers Clive, good at creation and innovation. :D

In this modern age, its more like keyboard-tappers. ;)

I used to visit many manufacturing businesses during my working life. The research and development done was second to none. We produced products which lasted a lifetime, unlike the "lifetime" guarantees we get today! Some of the companies I visited included Mintex, Timken and Hepworth and Grandage. Built in obsolescence and the throw away revolution has made the "quality" items a thing of the past. Life is now a "marketing exercise" with "spares no longer available" being the current style. The spares that are available throughout manufacturing are generally poor quality items. We are being hoodwinked into buying more and more to be better than our peers. Remember the base, L, XL, Ghia and Executive models that appeared in the 60's and 70's? I was very proud of a family member who refused to go to his "Prom" as a protest about how much was being wasted.

Good heavens, banks that made exceptionally high risk loans totaling Euro400billion, to a country which had bankrupted itself by living way beyond its means, made a profit by charging interest. Whatever next - I guess my bank will want to charge me interest when I go in asking for funds to buy my dream Learjet and Sunseeker!

I was hoping for some statistical analysis centred around industrial buyouts - not links to political articles from newspapers about the unreasonableness of European banks charging interest. :shrug:

Rather than worrying about the car industry, for which it is far too late, an example of the question each of us should ask ourselves is this. With my broadband, telephone and mobile services, am I buying these from BT - the only telecomms company that makes huge investments in UK jobs and infrastructure - or one of the foreign owned/invested companies whose profits and much quality employment go overseas. The answer will tell each of us all we need to know as about ourselves and our patriotism as individuals.

Also, note that the French made equally bad cars but kept on buying them for reasons of national pride and patriotism. They had the same dynamics in terms of industrial relations as the UK if not worse. The result is that they have Europe's second largest car industry.

Gentlemen - the problems lies not with others, but yourselves as patriotic UK citizens.