The demise of the British car industry

[Chz]

remember the introduction by the British of front wheele drive slated by British press as nonsense, how many cars are now front wheel drive?

FWD is hardly a British invention, and the first successful mass market FWD auto was the Traction Avant. It's also popular because it's cheaper, not because it's superior.

Lean burning is a case of you not understanding the technology. It works counter to a cat. Lean burning increases harmful emissions and can clog up a cat, but it reduces fuel consumption.

 

[collectordave]

British car industry nowadays appears to be successful. What is this downfall you speak of?

Just a question. Can anyone quote a list of British Car Manufacturers? Not companies making cars in Britain but British companies making cars in Britain.

 

[collectordave]

Lean burning is a case of you not understanding the technology. It works counter to a cat. Lean burning increases harmful emissions and can clog up a cat, but it reduces fuel consumption.

Hm try this Lean-burn - Wikipedia.

No cat needed on lean burn engines so no working counter to a cat.

In crediting the British with inventing it I was wrong it seems to have been Citroen at least ten years earlier. Ah well good old europe.

 

[Slo-mo]

Just a question. Can anyone quote a list of British Car Manufacturers? Not companies making cars in Britain but British companies making cars in Britain.

It's not a massive list for sure. That said, in a globalised world does it actually matter where the shares of a company are traded?

For example Jaguar Land Rover might be owned by Tata, but it's still very much a British company and although its parent company might be Indian, their shareholders probably hail from all over the globe, possibly including some institutions based in Canary Wharf ....

 

[alex_]

It's not a massive list for sure. That said, in a globalised world does it actually matter where the shares of a company are traded?

For example Jaguar Land Rover might be owned by Tata, but it's still very much a British company and although its parent company might be Indian, their shareholders probably hail from all over the globe, possibly including some institutions based in Canary Wharf ....

Spot on, if we can find one owned privately by someone with a British passport - they’ll be a tax dodger and domiciled in the bvi anyway.

Alex

 

[DownwardDog]

Just a question. Can anyone quote a list of British Car Manufacturers? Not companies making cars in Britain but British companies making cars in Britain.

Ariel
Morgan
Ultima
Noble (are they still in business?)
Westfield
TVR
Aston Martin

Their must be a few others nobly pursuing the British tradition of making minute production runs of appallingly built cars.

What does it matter who owns the company?

 

[Chz]

Ariel
Their must be a few others nobly pursuing the British tradition of making minute production runs of appallingly built cars.

I've always found it surprising that it's the Brits, more than the Americans, who seem to think 5 lads and a garage makes a car company.

As for lean-burning engines and cats, my meaning was that they can't (until very, very recently) work with cats - they'd ruin them the same as a diesel. The NOx emissions were appalling because of it. It's basically taking your petrol engine and - under ideal conditions - trying to make it behave like a diesel. Unfortunately, it then pollutes like a diesel. Minus the particulates, so there is some gain there. Until modern technology found a way around it, it was a stupid idea for your average passenger car. Great for LPG generators, though! So it found some use in power stations and marine use.

The problem then, with these brand-new direct-injection, lean-burning petrol engines is that they pollute more (even with all their fancy, whiz-bang tech) than the engines they replace. But not by much, and they do drink a fair bit less petrol. They've used technology to create the always-desired, never-quite-mastered engine that's halfway between a standard petrol and a diesel. It remains to be seen if this is a good idea or not.

 

[Slo-mo]

Ariel
Morgan
Ultima
Noble (are they still in business?)
Westfield
TVR
Aston Martin

Aston Martin are obviously the biggest and best known of those, but they seem to have a large amount of overseas investors, including Daimler and some Middle Eastern banks.

If you are looking for a totally pure British car maker you probably need to look at Morgan which is still family owned.

In between Morgan and Nissan/Toyota (who noone would call British but make a lot of cars in the UK) there are plenty of shades of grey.

EDIT: the greyest area of them all being Vauxhall of course. It's been foreign owned for nearly 100 years but is still a separate British brand within GM and now PSA with British headquarters. In decline but still a big car maker with a lot of employees.

They are probably as British as Cadburys or Carling, to the extent it matters at all these days.

 

[Slo-mo]

This is probably worth a watch, despite the fact it is presented by that utter cock Clarkson.

Interestingly they don't mention Vauxhall at all, probably because they have never been a pure British car company.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Ariel
Morgan
Ultima
Noble (are they still in business?)
Westfield
TVR
Aston Martin

Their must be a few others nobly pursuing the British tradition of making minute production runs of appallingly built cars.

Next time you’re in the area take a drive from Chertsey to Woking and look right 3/4 of the way along.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Interestingly they don't mention Vauxhall at all, probably because they have never been a pure British car company.

And they’ve just binned off a further 250 workers today

 

[DownwardDog]

Next time you’re in the area take a drive from Chertsey to Woking and look right 3/4 of the way along.

Bahraini owned...

 

[Slo-mo]

Bahraini owned...

Caterham?

 

[DownwardDog]

Caterham?

Malaysian.

 

[ska invita]

If you are looking for a totally pure British car maker you probably need to look at Morgan which is still family owned.

I bet they're Norman (ie French).
Where are the Celtic car companies, that's what I want to know?

ETA hah, joke backfired, looks like Morgan is an ancient power family from Wales
Morgan (surname) - Wikipedia

 

[Slo-mo]

And they’ve (Vauxhall) just binned off a further 250 workers today

Jaguar Land Rover on the other hand seem to be doing pretty well by comparison.
Record annual sales for Jaguar Land Rover

Frustrating to hear them bleating about diesel taxes though. If you don't want to pay diesel taxes start making electric cars guys...

 

[Poi E]

Surprising that after starting with the Mini the British car industry did not maintain a lead in small FWD cars. FWD Corollas, Civics and Cherries underwrote the massive expansion of the Japanese car industry.

 

[Slo-mo]

Surprising that after starting with the Mini the British car industry did not maintain a lead in small FWD cars. FWD Corollas, Civics and Cherries underwrote the massive expansion of the Japanese car industry.

The problem, of course, was that its successors were the Allegro and the Metro and neither of them were very good.

That said, while nobody would say Ford were a 'British' motor company, the Fiesta and the Escort were both built in the UK (among other places). Both small-ish, and not too shabby (although our family's 1980 Escort was a rust bucket to rival any Metro)

 

[Celyn]

Just a question. Can anyone quote a list of British Car Manufacturers? Not companies making cars in Britain but British companies making cars in Britain.

I think the SMMT Soc. Of Motor Manufacturers & Traders might know. Worth a try.
2017 SMMT Motor Industry Facts

 

[Slo-mo]

Yes, because a new car sold is liable to VAT, from the sale of the car to tax on the insurance, the fuel duty and the road duty. Plus those making the cars pay tax and if production goes up the employees making cars pay more tax on any overtime or bonuses they receive.
Car sales are perfect for the market economy. They make consumers pay through the nose for cars and therefore give governments little incentive to create better public transport.

I have to agree with this point.

What I think some people on the left are slowly beginning to realise is that in some ways car drivers themselves are being fucked over as badly as anyone, especially drivers on the middle to lower income end of the scale. Forced to pay the earth for finance 'deals', because cars are so expensive, forced to pay the earth for insurance because cars are so dangerous and yes forced to breathe the pollution from the diesel cars we were told to buy because they were 'cleaner'.

Yes of course more people could and should make more effort to cycle or use public transport but there are so many situations where it won't fit the bill. I use the bus 5 days a week for work, but still need my car for other journeys, so I pay insurance and road tax on top of my bus season ticket.

 

[mauvais]

Forced to pay the earth for finance 'deals', because cars are so expensive, forced to pay the earth for insurance because cars are so dangerous and yes forced to breathe the pollution from the diesel cars we were told to buy because they were 'cleaner'.

Cars and motoring is probably cheaper than ever before in real terms, so the first two points don't make sense. Pollution is more complicated. The spirit of what you're saying has validity - lower income motorists have plenty of legitimate complaints - but you've misidentified the issues.

 

[Slo-mo]

Cars and motoring is probably cheaper than ever before in real terms.

Probably? Either it is or it isn't. That's not having a go at you personally. But this is surely something fairly easy to measure?

 

[mauvais]

Probably? Either it is or it isn't. That's not having a go at you personally. But this is surely something fairly easy to measure?

Go on then. You can figure out real terms fuel costs and the like quite easily, but beyond that, it becomes difficult to work out total costs, either in terms of an average or the minimum achievable. But since you can buy a new car for £6,000, I think it's hard to claim that cars themselves are unaffordable.

 

[Slo-mo]

Go on then. You can figure out real terms fuel costs and the like quite easily, but beyond that, it becomes difficult to work out total costs, either in terms of an average or the minimum achievable. But since you can buy a new car for £6,000, I think it's hard to claim that cars themselves are unaffordable.

Just to be clear, I wasn't suddenly expecting you to pull figures from a hat.

There are all sorts of variables to consider, the fact that cars last longer, for example, and do more MPG even when you allow for the way manufacturers fiddle the numbers. Or the fact parking has become more expensive. So has insurance.

I did say 'fairly' easy, not 'very' easy. With access to all the numbers and a couple of weeks to spare, I could probably come up with a definitive answer. So could you I would wager. That was the level of 'easiness' I was implying. It quite literally wouldn't be rocket science, just a lot of multiplication and addition.

 

[mauvais]

Just to be clear, I wasn't suddenly expecting you to pull figures from a hat.

There are all sorts of variables to consider, the fact that cars last longer, for example, and do more MPG even when you allow for the way manufacturers fiddle the numbers. Or the fact parking has become more expensive. So has insurance.

I did say 'fairly' easy, not 'very' easy. With access to all the numbers and a couple of weeks to spare, I could probably come up with a definitive answer. So could you I would wager. That was the level of 'easiness' I was implying. It quite literally wouldn't be rocket science, just a lot of multiplication and addition.

Lack of historical data and a change in trends (e.g. lease vs outright ownership) would make this very difficult.

I said the spirit of what you're talking about is right - but I think you should be looking at things like decreasing affordability of housing near work, or the declining feasibility of public transport, etc etc, all meaning that people have to travel further by car. The actual cost per mile of car travel must be, I think, near a low.

 

[Slo-mo]

The actual cost per mile of car travel must be, I think, near a low.

In real terms petrol prices are at about the same level they were in 1983, they have been both quite a bit higher and quite a bit lower in the meantime. So any improvement in fuel costs is likely to have come from MPG improvements, of which there obviously have been some, although not as many as some manufacturers would have you believe.
Petrol Prices

 

[Dogsauce]

Motoring costs are lower in real terms, but won't be for everyone. Insurance is ridiculously expensive for the young, it's no wonder some kids just go without it and pay the fine, there's probably a whole chunk of a generation that will never drive legally.

Meanwhile, public transport has increased in cost massively in relative terms, deregulated schools mean people driving halfway across cities to drop off their kids in the morning, people can't afford to live near their work/relatives (and don't stay at the same employer long term so can't plan their lives and housing around this), generation rent upping sticks every 12 months moving from one area to another and so on, all one big fucking inefficient free market mess.

 

[Slo-mo]

Lack of historical data and a change in trends (e.g. lease vs outright ownership) would make this very difficult.

Just out of interest I've found this. It's a shame it doesn't go back further than 10 years. Cost of motoring against inflation

The big red line is insurance. It says tax and insurance, but insurance is the bigger component and the one that has gone up the most. The green line is car purchase prices, which as you rightly point out have fallen. Overall the cost of motoring (black line) has tracked the general cost of living (light blue) pretty closely, but slightly outpaced wages.

So on this data (and other data might tell a different tale) motoring doesn't particularly appear to be 'cheaper than ever'. It hasn't rocketed, sure, but nor (overall) has it particularly fallen.

But these are just averages, and over a fairly short period really.

 

[Poi E]

the fact that cars last longer, for example,

I think overall reliability and potential longevity probably peaked in the late 1990s with Japanese cars. Now, cars only need to last the length of a couple of finance deals before recycling. No point in over-engineering things anymore. Sure, cars are more reliable overall, though. When did you last see someone spraying some points on a frozen morning?

 

[Slo-mo]

I think overall reliability and potential longevity probably peaked in the late 1990s with Japanese cars.

One of the reasons I'm loathe to part with my 2001 Micra, it (touch wood) just keeps on running.......the bodywork is finally starting to age, though