| 31 May |
Where Are All The Great British Cars? |
All of our contract hire cars and lease cars are made throughout the World, with very few of them being British. So what happened to the great British car industry?
Some people cite the role of the unions (particularly during the 70′s) to be the main contributor to the downfall of the industry, whereas others may argue it’s the lack of competitiveness and bad management that characterised companies in this period. In practice it was a combination of factors including all of the aforementioned.
Whereas British manufacturing was quickly deteriorating, foreign car manufacturers were focusing on steadily improving both their quality and standard of work. During the British car industry’s darkest period (the 1970′s), unions saw management so afraid of them that they were able to dictate to management the maximum number of cars that could be failed by the quality control team (meaning scores of unfit cars made it to the sales courts in the UK).
What the unions and its members in the car industry failed to take into account was that unless the customer could buy a good quality vehicle and have it delivered on time, which of course they couldn’t when production was constantly being disrupted by industrial action, they would start to go elsewhere. Gradually the number of British cars on UK roads began to drop, being replaced with steady rise in foreign cars. British cars acquired a reputation throughout the world as being unreliable and expensive to maintain.
Nowadays things are different, British cars are of vastly improved quality and reliability but how British are the British cars of today? Both Land Rover and Jaguar, previously owned by Ford, are now owned by Indian conglomerate Tata. Rollys Royce, a classic British brand is owned by BMW and Bentley is part of Volkswagen. The Islamic investment group Investment Dar, has a controlling stake in Aston Martin and Lotus is owned by the Malaysian car manufacturer Proton.
So do British cards stand a chance in the car leasing market? It seems unlikely with BNW, Audi and Ford car leasing proving much more popular with British customers. As more and more foreign cars begin to flood the British market it looks unlikely that successful foreign brands and manufacturers are unlikely to be replaced with British brands anytime soon.