How to restart the British car industry?
Discussion
Whilst we still have a volume car industry, none of it actually belongs to us these days. We clearly still have the ability to build cars as demonstrated by world class plants like Nissan in Sunderland, and we have a high quality engineering base with the motorsport industry and consultancies like Ricardo. Technically building a car isn't the problem, but the inability to run a manufacturer as a business seems to be.
Recent years have seen a few new start-ups. China's marketplace is evolving allowing new manufacturers to enter the business there, and in the USA the drive for eco friendly transport has resulted in Tesla and Fisker entering the market with ambitious plans for expansion. Why hasn't this changing marketplace been capitalised upon here and what would it take financially, politically and organisationally for a new company to start up here?
Recent years have seen a few new start-ups. China's marketplace is evolving allowing new manufacturers to enter the business there, and in the USA the drive for eco friendly transport has resulted in Tesla and Fisker entering the market with ambitious plans for expansion. Why hasn't this changing marketplace been capitalised upon here and what would it take financially, politically and organisationally for a new company to start up here?
Actually I have been rather negligent in my initial post and forgotten McLaren who having a proper go the moment, although I suspect they will not be ultimately aiming for the volumes which I am talking about. Massive credit to them for putting together a well finded long term plan though!
AJI said:
First we need to ban union activity in the UK.
Don't wholly agree. Look at how well the Sunderland & Cowley plants operate with unions. We need to work with them but try to find a way of ensuring that staff are happy with their lot but also productive. Unions are a good safety net in case things go wrong. The problem as I see it is that people are only too happy to go to the union to resolve a trivial affair rather than working with the business to resolve the issue.That, and the fact that churning out cheap sh#tboxes by the boatload in a high-cost part of the world is not going to be a very ocmpetitive prosposition any more, what with the Koreans having cornered the automotive white-goods market to a pretty high degree and the Chinese looking to do the same tenfold ...
pixieporsche said:
What about Jaguar? I believe they are still made and designed in Britain? So therefore are British cars, no matter who ultimately "own" them, no??
The current jag range is fantastic, and as you say designed and built in the UK. It's a great example of our engineering capability and shows that in that sense we can be competitive in the world marketplace. The focus of this thread should not be the semantics of what is a "British" car, but how a British owned car industry could be reborn. marcosgt said:
Reduce military spending by 25% and pour all that money into developing industries and skills that the market, national and international want.
Build up an economy that makes things rather than gambles with people's savings...
M.
They haven't had to do that in the states for Tesla and Fisker to get their funding though.Build up an economy that makes things rather than gambles with people's savings...
M.
AUDIHenry said:
It's not competitive to build in Britain. Many of our cars (I'm in the U.S.) are built in Mexico. Look at what unions (UAW, for example) did to the car industry. This isn't the 19th century, we don't need them any longer.
Why not? We still manufacture a lot of cars here. The Germans manage to build plenty at home too.VeeFour said:
Aren't we making more cars in the UK these days than the old British manufacturers ever did?
I think so.The British car industry (so workers in Britain building cars) is strong. The only gap is we don't have a "British" mass-market badge. I don't really see that as a problem.
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