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Originally Posted by victorgte
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!
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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.