Redwurzel
Well-known member
Ref Vehicle manufacture in the UK
In the last 12 months - I remember Honda have said they are closing all production in Swindon, Jaguar Land Rover are moving some of their production to Slovakia. Ineos are going to make some old design Land Rover Defenders in South Wales. Now Nissan are moving some Spanish production to Sunderland - mixed bag overall.
I remember in the early 1980s reading that British workers were rubbish at making cars, their workmanship was poor, quality control was not strict enough, Trade Unions reduced efficiency and called regular strikes. I had my doubts about this statement and Nissan has shown in Sunderland that statements made in the early 1980s were in general untrue. It might have been true that the Austin Allegro, Morris Marina, Austin Maxi etc were poor all around cars, but I thought it had a lot to do with poor management particularly at British Leyland. Nissan say their Sunderland plant is now the most efficient in the World.
There does seem to be a bit of a culture in this country that manufacturing is dirty and unglamorous, that clever people do something else like work as barristers or for a merchant bank or nowadays for Google etc. That at a push we can buy everything else into the country and don't need to make anything. And that attitude affected vehicle production until Foreign senior managers came in and showed the worker on the production line was not the real problem.
Ref Brexit/Vehicles - if plants in the UK are efficient we can still sell vehicles in the EU look at Honda they will be importing cars from Japan into the EU, BMW imports cars from the USA into the EU, there seems to be plenty of Korean and Japanese produced cars sold in this country. Then there is Just In Time Production across borders. I would be shocked if any car plant in the UK imports most of it components direct from the EU. Most suppliers will be UK based.
In the last 12 months - I remember Honda have said they are closing all production in Swindon, Jaguar Land Rover are moving some of their production to Slovakia. Ineos are going to make some old design Land Rover Defenders in South Wales. Now Nissan are moving some Spanish production to Sunderland - mixed bag overall.
I remember in the early 1980s reading that British workers were rubbish at making cars, their workmanship was poor, quality control was not strict enough, Trade Unions reduced efficiency and called regular strikes. I had my doubts about this statement and Nissan has shown in Sunderland that statements made in the early 1980s were in general untrue. It might have been true that the Austin Allegro, Morris Marina, Austin Maxi etc were poor all around cars, but I thought it had a lot to do with poor management particularly at British Leyland. Nissan say their Sunderland plant is now the most efficient in the World.
There does seem to be a bit of a culture in this country that manufacturing is dirty and unglamorous, that clever people do something else like work as barristers or for a merchant bank or nowadays for Google etc. That at a push we can buy everything else into the country and don't need to make anything. And that attitude affected vehicle production until Foreign senior managers came in and showed the worker on the production line was not the real problem.
Ref Brexit/Vehicles - if plants in the UK are efficient we can still sell vehicles in the EU look at Honda they will be importing cars from Japan into the EU, BMW imports cars from the USA into the EU, there seems to be plenty of Korean and Japanese produced cars sold in this country. Then there is Just In Time Production across borders. I would be shocked if any car plant in the UK imports most of it components direct from the EU. Most suppliers will be UK based.