Our 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 say it lost out due to lack of competitiveness, some say it was the unions that brought about its downfall, whilst others blame management. It is most likely a combination of these factors that contributed to both the fall of the industry and the reputation of British cars today.
Whereas British manufacturing was quickly deteriorating, foreign car manufacturers were focusing on steadily improving both their quality and standard of work. During the 1970′s (arguably the most pertinent decade in looking at the fall of the British car industry) saw management so fearful of strike actions from the unions that they instructed their quality control departments to let everything pass, above a certain number (in some cases decided beforehand with the unions).
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. That is what happened and the number of foreign cars on Britain’s roads steadily increased. British cars acquired a reputation throughout the world as being unreliable and expensive to maintain.
These days, things are improving as British car manufacturer’s put a much stronger emphasis on price, quality and reliability. But how to the British cars of today stack up against their foreign equivalents? Land Rover and the ever popular Jaguar are both owned by Tata (a huge Indian corporation) and were previously owned by American car makers, Ford. 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’s not looking good, with BMW, Volkswagen, Audi and Ford car leasing proving much more popular with British customers. As foreign brands (particularly German manufacturers) gained the upper hand in the days when British cars had so little to offer, they continue to hold the upper hand and have no intention of relinquishing their hold on the British quality car market.
Incoming search terms:
- "british cars are unreliable" jaguar
- british cars are unreliable
- failure of british cars
