Should we be getting behind Brexit by boycotting German cars
Discussion
LuS1fer said:
Have to say that German cars have never appealed to me.
I've had a few but I was never a fanboy.
It strikes me that if everybody suddenly cancelled their German car orders, Europe might suddenly start to wonder who will buy them.
OK, you might not like the other options but....
Despite the cynical / narrow-minded reaction from posters on here, this is actually a well discussed question in academic circles.I've had a few but I was never a fanboy.
It strikes me that if everybody suddenly cancelled their German car orders, Europe might suddenly start to wonder who will buy them.
OK, you might not like the other options but....
If Britain really wants to get rich, and thrive outside the EU, it needs to steal market share from the Germans, who currently own a huge 80-90% of the premium or near-premium car industry worldwide. Britain needs Aston, McLaren, JLR etc. to step up and make millions of cars and components in the UK in the £25-150k bracket, to generate billions and billions of extra GDP.
The ideal scenario would be London as a finance-insurance-legal-hi-tech-media-entertainment hub, Birmingham as a car-van-train-making hub, Manchester as a component-machinery-fracking-greentech hub, and Edinburgh as a tourist-mobile-AI-VR-robot-consumer-finance hub. Spread the wealth and start a second economic revolution.
But it is extremely unlikely to happen. Little more than a pipe-dream. The UK just doesn't have anymore the education, skills, management, finance, infrastructure, culture, climate or hunger to deliver it.
Yes, we should stop buying German cars. No, it won't happen. The Germans are too far ahead.
Hungrymc said:
And Vauxhall now owned by Peugeot and therefore partly owned by French government.
Let's not forget that Vauxhall is just a UK badge-swap for Opel, based in Germany - they've simply changed from US to French ownership. Your Astra's got a 50/50 of being Polish-built, rather than Ellesmere, anyway - and the rest of the range (except the Renault-joint venture van) is built outside the UK.Nissan - one of the UK's biggest carmakers, after all. Oops. Nissan Europe is French-based, and partly owned by Renault.
Toyota? Nope, they might have a Derbyshire factory, but Toyota Europe is Belgian-based.
Then there's Ford Europe. German, of course, not that they assemble any cars in the UK anyway. And obviously Mini's German, along with RR and Bentley. And that BMW-era Rover 400 that got mentioned earlier... Oh, it was a Phoenix-era one? Oh, well, that's OK, then.
So that'll be a nice British-built Honda, with Honda Europe being based in Bracknell (currently). How about a Jazz...? Suits the typical Brexit-voter demographic down to a tee. Oops. They stopped building that here three years ago. Civic or CR-V it is, then. In patriotic beige.
Or a JLR product - just not a TDV6, obviously, with that being a PSA JV engine. What could possibly go wrong?
LuS1fer said:
Have to say that German cars have never appealed to me.
I've had a few but I was never a fanboy.
It strikes me that if everybody suddenly cancelled their German car orders, Europe might suddenly start to wonder who will buy them.
OK, you might not like the other options but....
Are you totally forgetting that (for example) BMW has an engine plant in Hams Hall that makes motors which go into German-produced cars, or that MINI only exists because it's part of BMW? (likewise Rolls).I've had a few but I was never a fanboy.
It strikes me that if everybody suddenly cancelled their German car orders, Europe might suddenly start to wonder who will buy them.
OK, you might not like the other options but....
Or that Aston use Merc engines, or that Bentley is part of the VW group?
Yeah, cancel that German car order, stick it to the man. Just be aware that the man you're sticking it to lives in wolverhampton.
LuS1fer said:
RobM77 said:
LuS1fer said:
Have to say that German cars have never appealed to me.
I've had a few but I was never a fanboy
Why have you owned a few if they've never appealed to you?I've had a few but I was never a fanboy
Other than that, a knackered old Golf GTI 8v which was slow and very rusty.
Had about 30 cars that weren't German.
I said German as they do seem to be the major country in the EU and have the biggest car industry, I imagine.
In terms of purchasing, I am thinking in terms of supporting those manufacturers who produce cars and engines in the UK - if we don't, I imagine some will ship out Jag, LR, Toyota, Honda etc.
As for the "they can sell all they make", about 1 in 7 cars sold in the UK is German and the UK is their main export market.
So, in 2014, a fifth of their production went to the UK and about 820,000 vehicles were exported to the UK.
More recently "Germany sells about 14% of all the passenger cars it makes domestically to the UK, a little over one in seven. (That makes up about 18% of the passenger cars it exports, a little under one in five)".
So yes, if the small matter of 820,000 cars can be sold elsewhere, rock on.
The GMan said:
OK, so where does Mini sit as they are currently produced in Oxford? Or the supply chain in the UK that supports BMW?
No issue with that but the question is whether that will remain the case or whether they will leave the UK. Nobody really knows because it's all bluff and bluster, on both sides.What we need to look at is supporting whoever creates UK jobs, god knows we'll need them.
The GMan said:
LuS1fer said:
RobM77 said:
LuS1fer said:
Have to say that German cars have never appealed to me.
I've had a few but I was never a fanboy
Why have you owned a few if they've never appealed to you?I've had a few but I was never a fanboy
Other than that, a knackered old Golf GTI 8v which was slow and very rusty.
Had about 30 cars that weren't German.
I said German as they do seem to be the major country in the EU and have the biggest car industry, I imagine.
In terms of purchasing, I am thinking in terms of supporting those manufacturers who produce cars and engines in the UK - if we don't, I imagine some will ship out Jag, LR, Toyota, Honda etc.
As for the "they can sell all they make", about 1 in 7 cars sold in the UK is German and the UK is their main export market.
So, in 2014, a fifth of their production went to the UK and about 820,000 vehicles were exported to the UK.
More recently "Germany sells about 14% of all the passenger cars it makes domestically to the UK, a little over one in seven. (That makes up about 18% of the passenger cars it exports, a little under one in five)".
So yes, if the small matter of 820,000 cars can be sold elsewhere, rock on.
LuS1fer said:
The GMan said:
OK, so where does Mini sit as they are currently produced in Oxford? Or the supply chain in the UK that supports BMW?
No issue with that but the question is whether that will remain the case or whether they will leave the UK. Nobody really knows because it's all bluff and bluster, on both sides.What we need to look at is supporting whoever creates UK jobs, god knows we'll need them.
Make up your f
king mind.
Yipper said:
The GMan said:
LuS1fer said:
RobM77 said:
LuS1fer said:
Have to say that German cars have never appealed to me.
I've had a few but I was never a fanboy
Why have you owned a few if they've never appealed to you?I've had a few but I was never a fanboy
Other than that, a knackered old Golf GTI 8v which was slow and very rusty.
Had about 30 cars that weren't German.
I said German as they do seem to be the major country in the EU and have the biggest car industry, I imagine.
In terms of purchasing, I am thinking in terms of supporting those manufacturers who produce cars and engines in the UK - if we don't, I imagine some will ship out Jag, LR, Toyota, Honda etc.
As for the "they can sell all they make", about 1 in 7 cars sold in the UK is German and the UK is their main export market.
So, in 2014, a fifth of their production went to the UK and about 820,000 vehicles were exported to the UK.
More recently "Germany sells about 14% of all the passenger cars it makes domestically to the UK, a little over one in seven. (That makes up about 18% of the passenger cars it exports, a little under one in five)".
So yes, if the small matter of 820,000 cars can be sold elsewhere, rock on.
Lets take the boycott further and include France, what would happen to the car industry in the North East if that was to happen? I know already there is a lot of worry, considering the millions of £'s that has just been invested into the Advanced Manufacturing Park being built to support Nissan and its supply chain and hopefully other businesses that would utilise it.
LuS1fer said:
The GMan said:
OK, so where does Mini sit as they are currently produced in Oxford? Or the supply chain in the UK that supports BMW?
No issue with that but the question is whether that will remain the case or whether they will leave the UK.JLR's Slovak factory is opening next year, too.
TwigtheWonderkid said:
Yeah, like BMW/Merc etc don't sell every car they build, with ease. If we don't take them, someone else will. We'll probably be doing them a favour, as they will be able to cut down on their RHD production.
Yeah, it's basically an act of charity to go to all that trouble to sell 20% of their cars to us at all. But that's German industry for you, so sentimental. Still, getting rid of that big chunk of the right hand drive car market would not in any way affect their economies of scale in building cars for Japan, India, Hong Kong, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. After all, if you want to make something profitably, being able to cut down your production is definitely a great opportunity.
I think the last thing we want to do at this point is to give the impression that the European motor industry is going to lose our patronage.
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