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For me the key paragraph in Dominic Sandbrook's article is:
"From Britain's perspective, the tragedy is that we always had the skills. But we lacked the right management, the right unions, the right priorities, and, quite frankly, the right work ethic. And in the end, we paid a heavy price."
There's nothing wrong with the British workforce. Some of their fathers no doubt worked for British car makers in the 70s and 80s: they too, properly managed and with a decent product, could have made good cars.
I agree with Jamie about the Datsun 120Y, although I'd add the earlier Toyota Corona to the argument. As a killer of the British car industry, the Austin Allegro ranks high: the public wanted a reliable hatchback as a successor to the 1100/1300, and got it in the VW Golf. The rest is history.
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http://www.amazon.co.uk/books/dp/0715811479
Working for Ford by Huw Benyon is an eye opener for anyone who was not alive/interested in cars at the time.
Shows how militants tried to kill Ford- written by one of them..
The car industry was not only affected by its own industrial problems but by those of its suppliers. EG Lucas went on strike for weeks and UK car production virtually ceased. UK car management was poor but the Unions were frankly a hotbed of idiots who had political aims . And achieved them- but not the outcome they hoped for.
See Arthur Scargill who repeatedly claimed the UK Gov't were out to close the coal industry down - and then worked hard to help them do so. (In effect that is what he did although he thought he was trying to save the industry by going on strike)
The UK Print Unions did the same with the newspaper industry and ended up destroying jobs for their own workers. They also did the same in indutrial printing - think metal cans etc - with the result their union jobs were eventually destroyed. See SOGAT and the NGA..
The same mentality exists in parts today - see UNITE.
Edited by madf on 05/08/2013 at 07:48
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We now make more cars than ever in the UK,
summed up nicely!
Last night's Top Gear made the point.....there is a huge British motor manufacturing industry today...just not in the 'form' most casual obsevers imagine it should be.
I guess we now live in a global manufacturing world....China, for example, for a decade or so the world's manufacturing base, is now starting to struggle as workers there acquire material aspirations..much like Britain did in the last 1950's?
Japan went before it.
When discussing Britain's ''apparent' decline a a motor manufacturing country, too much emphasis is placed upon a few glaring examples of bad management, union militancy, and poor investment.
UNion militancy arose out of a management intransigence to talk...simples.
It is happening today, especially in government-managed sectors. [I hesitate to say 'public'.....as a very Un-civil servant, I don't 'serve' , or care about, any member of the great 'unwashed' public's opinion... & no, I don't 'feel lucky' to still have a 'job'....the taxpayer is paying me for my skills,which it cannot do without, it seems...tens of millions recently spent yet agin, to discover I, & my colleages, still represent the best value-for-money to the taxpayer!!]]
Nissan & Toyota have shown us how to run things, an intergrated workforce, where everyone, from the top down, is made to feel valued, and contributes..all to the advancement and well-being of the 'company'...
This country now seems to be doing better in the global automotive industry than even the good ol' USofA?
[witness the collapse of the Detroit-based car industry? Ford, GM, all going titsup?]
Most famous European car makers are now inextricably tied up with others...Mercedes and Chrysler, for example? Who saved who?
FIAT, is another?
I get the impression too many of us really want to see a return to the sweatshop manufacturing ethos of a century ago....? Fine, as long as we ourselves don't have to suffer under it, I suspect?
Britain still has an automotive industry.
However, instead of making mediocre products which were the outcome of British ideas and design, our design & developement is now found throughout the global industry instead.
See the bigger picture?
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A rose tinted report with so many inaccuracies.
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Absolutely.
The present generation of Civil Servants provide nothing of value to the public, being poorly managed and unionised to the point of negative benefit. Where have we seen this before?
We do not have a British motor industry. We have a UK automotive assembly industry.
There are no significant autonomous vehicle designers and manufacturers in the UK; all management and policy decisions are made abroad and that's where a good measure of the profits end up.
When the UK learns how to manage and motivate a workforce within a large organisation and when unions learn to negotiate constructively for the long term good of their members, we might once again be able to produce things of lasting value.
659.
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We do not have a British motor industry. We have a UK automotive assembly industry.
To the politicians and others who make the decisions that affect us all, there is not much difference. What matters to them is paid employment for the masses, who would otherwise make trouble. And probably the difference doesn't matter much to those masses either.
To those of us who can look at the situation 'in the round' as it were, the worry is what we sell when the family has no silver left. We made our pile in the 19th and early 20th centuries, basically digging up our minerals and using our know-how to sell them abroad. Nowadays we rely too much on the money-changers, who put rather too much of it into their own pockets. When that mirage fades we really are in trouble.
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This Sandbrook bloke seems to have taken his material from a single source: James Ruppert's book: "The German Car Industry My Part in its Victory". At least he featured James a number of times in the narrative, but should have given him more credit.
HJ
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BMW put the final nails in the coffin of MG/ROVER. By the time Towers and co got their hands on the company it was too late for it to recover.
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We do not have a British motor industry. We have a UK automotive assembly industry.
Aside from Rolls Royce I can't think of many instances where that's actually the case. I'm pretty sure the Honda plant does more than merely screw it together, but I struggle to see your point.
People who bash British motor manufacturing seem to want British owned companies to have factories in Britain, employing only British people, making cars out of entirely British parts from scratch. Do you have any idea how expensive that would be?
And how unneccessary it'd be? Why spend billions on developing a gearbox when Ford's will do just fine?
We live in a global world now where British companies have Indian owners, German CEO's and multinational workforces. Cars sold in Barnsley and Brazil share platforms. Toyotas bought in Japan were made in Britain.
Jaguar has its headquarters in Britain and builds cars here, but you'll say that doesnt count because the top suits are Indian. The fact Jaguar would've ceased to exist decades ago if but for foreign intervention doesn't come into it. Tell the 10,000 UK based employees that.
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Autonomy is the true measure of "motor industry" or "vehicle assembly plant".
659.
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On a slight aside, my father used to have a middle-management position at a now-defunct plastics moulding firm in the Midlands in the 1980s/90s.
Their main customers at that time were Rover & Pug, wheel trims, air vents etc etc anything plastic was their line.
They did try courting the Japanese to expand their business, but when the Japanese came to look round the factory they were less than impressed and amongst many issues, one that stuck out was that they didn't like the radio playing.
Needless to say, no Japanese car manufacturers were supplied by said plastics firm.
Also, somewhat "amusingly" was the scale of obvious theft from the factory, I think they had to allow 10% over-production of wheel trims as that's how many would go over the wall.....
Air vents weren't quite as popular on the thieving front!
I will continue to watch Mr Sandbrooks' programme this week.....
cheers
Stu
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DS crops up on quite a lot of general TV history programmes on the 1970's. He has also written a number of books on the decade and also presented the 3 part programme that BBC had on the 1970s about a year ago (SD1 featured heavily in one)
I bought my uncle one of his books for xmas a few years ago, both my dad and uncle said phrases like "BAHHHH man's a fool", "What does he know, he was only born in 1973", "The 70s weren't all that bad, we never had any power cuts" etc etc.
Now, whenever I see any historical archive from the 1970s (usually an elderly woman in a grey/black checked jacket pushing a trolley round a supermarket in the dark whilst trying to stop her candle from falling over) I also expect to hear Mr Sandbrook proclaiming doom and gloom....
Even before I saw the programme, with DS presenting I knew the way it was going to go!
cheers
Stu
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The UK was about the 6th largest manufacturing country last time I looked, so we're doing something right. Particularly given that our labour costs must be about the 6th highest and land prices much the same.
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The 70s weren't all that bad, we never had any power cuts" etc etc.
I can. The "Three Day Week" was aptly named. It was appalling.
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The 70s weren't all that bad, we never had any power cuts" etc etc.
I can. The "Three Day Week" was aptly named. It was appalling.
Our company (making automotive engine components) maintained a five day week, so did many others.
I remember interest rates on my mortgage were up to 15%, but we had a deal whereby wages and salaries were indexed to cost of living. Very lucky to have that, I know many other people suffered at that period.
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There seems to be quite a lot of documentation on what is was like to work on the production line in the old British car industry.
What I'd really like to know is what it's like to work in the UK factories which are now building Nissan, Toyota or Honda cars.
Do we happen to have one of those production line workers, as a member, who might like to tell us?
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I haven't worked on the line, but i collected thousands of Toyotas from Burnaston factory in my previous job.
Toyota take their QC to absolute limits, in the rare event we ever found something amiss when inspecting the cars before loading a chap in a white smock would be there in minutes and the car immediately went back for reworking, but i can count on the fingers of one hand how often that happened over the years, if anything it would have been a stonechip or tiny scratch that would have happened in the compound.
Similar absolute perfection at Toyotas import centres where vehicls are checked minutely, if it aint perfect it simply aint good enough and gets put right.
Thats how it should be but my experience of other makes has shown that to not be the case, mentioning no makes but i've known serious body damage to be sent on to the main dealer to get fixed, shocking and i wouldn't go near their rubbish or their dealers.
Friends who have worked out of Honda Swindon talk of similar high standards as Toyota.
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Our company sent a number of people to Toyota in Japan to study their manufacturing and QC methods; if a worker noticed a defective part, instead of fitting it for later rework, the line was stopped until the root cause of the problem was traced and fixed.A policy of "Continuous improvement" and no "us and them" between management and workers.
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Still akinda "on mesage" , in the glitzy new purpose built but unfit for purpose Belfast Audi showrooms, shortly after the A1 was launched with tremoundous publicity.
I was perplexed that the white A1 on display had a gobbing great paint run down the edge of the passenger door.
Which I took some delight in point out to the snotty nosed salesinfant.
Vorsprung der what?
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Vorsprung der what?
I did a search to find the exact phrase and somehow ended up here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWGZdYNpaSo
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I did a search to find the exact phrase and somehow ended up here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWGZdYNpaSo
Love it!
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Doesn't surprise me. My one year old Toyota Avensis (company car) has been utterly faultless. It's well built, smooth and quiet, an absolute joy on the motorway and I get around 47 mpg fully laden with regular aircon use. Having said that, if I ever meet the imbecile who decided to tuck the parking brake out of sight by my knee and set it to work back to front, I shall wring his neck. I imagine they'll improve it when the Mark IV comes out. ;-)
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The 70s weren't all that bad, we never had any power cuts" etc etc.
I can. The "Three Day Week" was aptly named. It was appalling.
And that was the period when companies' pay rises were restricted, so many of them dished out perks such as cars to make up for it. Before long the workers came to expect those as well. The early 70s (oil price hikes) were not a good time.
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The 70s weren't all that bad, we never had any power cuts" etc etc.
I can. The "Three Day Week" was aptly named. It was appalling.
In the '70s, inflation was 27% and mortgage interest was 15% - by comparison the 2008-2013 crisis never happened !
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I remember the 70s I was working for a central heating company three day week.We could clame 2 days dole and with bonusses was earning more than working five days.We where producing more radiators in three days than the five day working week.Now I am retired and have a little savings interest rates zilch.What is the world coming to.I don't think Germany ever lost the war they will always come back there work ethic is second to none.It is the way they are.
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Just by way of a kind of an update as to why Britain would continue to struggle to have a truly-British car manufacturing operation. Not the whole reason of course, but fundamentally it's not going to help matters, is it:
http://tinyurl.com/lobbyyj
A lack of UK engineers was the “biggest barrier” to growth at his company, “We have to be realistic in Britain: If we can get 300 we’ll be doing well. We would recruit 2,000 if we could.”
“Britain produces 12,000 engineering graduates a year – and there are currently 54,000 vacancies. It’s predicted that in two years’ time there will be 200,000 vacancies. India produces 1.2m engineering graduates a year. The Philippines produces more than us, so does Iran, so does Mexico. It’s not a sustainable situation.”
““More than 80pc of post-graduate science and engineering students at British universities are from outside the European Union. Out of 3,000 engineering post-grads, only 50 are British. The tragedy is that they go back home and take back the technology they have developed in British universities and become our competitors.
It’s absurd that British post-grad engineering students are expected to live on grants of £7,000 to £12,000 a year. They should be paid £40,000 a year in recognition of the contribution they will make,”
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Who wants to become a boring old engineer when we can sell each other houses and get rich that way?
Those pwoperty developers had the right idea after all.
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