Is The British Car Industry A Tragedy Or A Triumph?
Today we chronicled the last cars of a number of historically great, lovable British car companies. Is it possible, though, that the UK's car industry is doing better than ever before?
The point was debated by Too.Tired.To.Sleep and our very own Mate Petrany.
Too.Tired.To.Sleep
Yeah the British car industry is so shit that over a million cars were made here this year, over two million engines and eight formula one teams are based here.
*facepalm*
Mate Petrany
If you want impressive numbers, knock on VAG's doors. So F1, right. British engineers are great, and racetracks are in the blood of just about everybody on that island. F1 teams are based there because that is the best location for them. That has nothing to do with fact that great British brands had to die because of bad management and zero quality control for decades.
Too.Tired.To.Sleep
No argument but the article said the British car industry is decimated which is quite frankly, bollocks. And saying that the British car industry screwed up when GM & Chrysler went into liquidation and four years later still have huge chucks of their stock owned by the US Govt and Ford needed loan guarantees is a bit rich.
Mate Petrany
The fact that the Big Three screwed up as well doesn't make it less painful for the British to lose all those great brands.
Too.Tired.To.Sleep
We've kept our great brands — AM, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Jaguar, Land Rover, Caterham, Lotus, etc, etc. The only one on the list any Brit would consider 'great' would be TVR.
Too bad ownership wasn't kept. Who will the Germans buy next?
While we've listened to Clarkson and the rest of the car journalism world bemoan the demise of British carmaking independence, the corporate buyouts responsible have been largely successful, and there is still plenty of enviable British engineering expertise for sale over there. Maybe the UK's car industry hasn't been such a failure after all.
Photo Credit: onesnap