BMW to build the next generation of Minis in Britain.

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail....-Qashqai-Britain.html

German owned, Japanese owned, why can't cars such as this be made by British owned companies?

[Gromit]

1To survive these firms need to be large. When the British car industry was merged into a few large companies they were badly managed resulting in poor designs, wrong products, poor build, poor working relations and wasted money. They went out of business

[Zeuhl]

Brits can certainly make cars. I think UK is producing more cars now than for many a year.

Sadly, British companies produced bad products that people didn't want after they had tried foreign vehicles.
The original Mini was a sales success but the idiots who ran Austin/British Leyland or whatever it was called managed to never make a profit on it. In fact I think they made a loss on every one they sold.

It's no good pointing the finger at the workforce and strikes etc.
Even without them the companies were a shambles and it is ultimately management's responsibility to make any enterprise successful.

It is easy to forget how the auto industry product - has improved over the past 40 years of foreign company dominance.

My first car in 1973 was a Ford Anglia. At 7 years old it was considered a cheap, tatty banger.

Today, our expectation is for a car to give good performance for many years - 7 years old is nothing, the roads are full of clean, reliable cars of that age and more.

I'm afraid if it had been left to the old dinosaurs of the British industry we'd still be being offered unreliable, hulking great rust buckets.
.

[R1Geezer]

Because our car industry and a lot of industry generally was destroyed by the unions in the 60's and 70's. Even when they did produce cars they were poorly made hunks of junk. The foriegn makers just did it better. Management was deemed poor but in reality they could not actually manage because unions had such power that management where helpless. Red Robbo and co killed off their own industry.

[Zeuhl]

R1

please explain how the union inspired workers turned good products into <<poorly made hunks of junk>>

Sadly, the products were inherently poor regardless of what was or wasn't done to them on the production lines.

Poor market research, poor R&D, poor design, outdated engineering.

The Japs couldn't believe how easy it was to develop product for this market. introduce it and spank the established Brands.

The auto workers in France and Italy are at least as stroppy and work shy as ours; and yet their manufacturers are going strong and still home owned.
.

[R1Geezer]

Granted they where not all great designs but if they got built at all the workers just through them together.That's where the phrase "Friday special" came from. Most of the time they where on strike over some triviality anyway.

[R1Geezer]

In the Mid 80's toyota wanted to build a factory near Dundee, unfortunately the unions would not agree to a single union deal, they wanted their usall half dozen marxist cooperatives to make sure productivity didn't occur. Result the Japs went elsewhere. Thankfully someone learnt from this and Nissan did build a factory in Sunderland a while after that. Unions are the greatest threat to industry, always have been.

[Zeuhl]

You're right Geezer, my uncle was some kind of 'Production Manager' at Triumph and his stories were horrendous.

But along with the labour nonsense there were also tales of incompetence at the top and overall an uphill struggle to persuade everyone that the cars weren't cr@p because mostly they were.

[whiskeryron]

I don't know how true this is but I was told by a relative who worked for British Leyland that the company were known to occasionally force a strike from the workforce when sales were down in order to save money.they would announce for example that wash rooms & toilet blocks were going to be closed down for unnecessary maintenance & the workforce would have to use facilities some distance away, this would promote a strike because of losing the facility, & would allow the factory to be closed down saving enormous amounts in electricity & heating. Comments please.Ron.

[R1Geezer]

well ron, it would be a poor boss that didn;t spot the opportunties to induce strikes when it suited. In the climate that existed at the time I'd imagine it was very easy to prevoke strike action. You'd have though the unions would have seen some of them comming!

[Zeuhl]

True Ron

And the partly assembled cars were left out in a field to start rusting so that the poor sod conned into buying it by some Buy British campaign wondered why the paint was blistering within a year of owning it.

[R1Geezer]

I can remember once seeing a huge parking lot full of new cars on the news and there had been a lot of rain and a lot of them were up to the top of their wheel arches in water! Imagine ending up with one of those!

[R1Geezer]

I think though since then we have showed we are well capable of building high quality cars unfortunately it's all a bit late for British owned mass produces cars.

[jno]

Zeuhl, yes, they apparently lost £35 on each Mini they sold

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13285504

Doubtless it was all the fault of the unions.

[Gromit]

Odd that the same workforce that 'killed' the British car industry became the most productive in Europe when they wete properly managed.

[anotheoldgit]

To get our Car manufacturing back on track, should the Government use some of our overseas investment to start up a factory, to produce an all British made car?

We have the designers and the skilled workforce, If good management is a problem, then they could always employ foreign personnel to manage, after all that is not unusual in soccer.

Time this country change from being a service provider and became a manufacturing country once again.

[jno]

the lesson from soccer is to be managed by Scotsmen rather than foreigners. But given the scale required of modern manufacturing, I doubt that we can go back to it the way we used to.

[anotheoldgit]

Maybe not jno but we could make a start, and then work from there.

The guys with the 'big money' want an incentive to get their wallets out.