RISE, FALL, AND (UP TO A POINT) RISE

As another Motor Show opens in Birmingham,

Alan Judd charts the fortunes of the

British car industry

IS THERE a British motor industry? Up to a point, Lord Copper. In fact, up to the point where 1,532,084 cars were built here in 1995, compared with 897,560 in 1955 which, we're all agreed, is when there was definitely a British motor industry. There seems, therefore, to be more of one now than there used to be, except that the major British exporter of cars last year was Nissan, many fewer people are employed in the industry and, since BMW bought Rover, there is no British-owned volume car-maker. Does that matter? Lord Cop- per might have asked. Well, it's not ideal, but so long as we design and build rather than merely assemble, and so long as we keep 'em rolling, we can live with it.

The ever hoped-for lessons of history are few and sadly repetitive, but that doesn't mean we can't remember any of them if we try. The difficulty of learning from this par- ticular postwar decline, however, is that the list of causes seems identical to the list of symptoms. They fed feverishly off each other in a downward spiral and the only way to ensure our manufacturing future, in this and other industries, is to abandon the atti- tudes that led to them.

Structurally, the story is fairly straight- forward. Restrictive legislation, patent problems, social and financial structures and an excellent rail network meant that our late-Victorian workshop of the world was a slow starter in the motor industry compared with its competitors (it did bet- ter with bicycles, ships and steam-engines). By the time of the first world war, there was a wide variety of expensive idiosyncrat- ic products, but the adoption, thanks partly to Ford at Old Trafford, of American mass production techniques had only just begun.

Between the wars many small companies folded, but production methods improved and healthy home and (relative to the times) export markets led to the British motor industry becoming the world's sec- ond largest. Already, though, it was clear that the size of the American market meant that its industry could make the same mistakes as everyone else's but be less damaged by them. From the earliest days, economies of scale were significant.

The second world war brought with it an accommodation with the unions which led to postwar avoidance of unemployment as a mainstay of government and industrial polipy. This was understandable, but myopic and self-destructive because it resulted in a flight from industrial realities which prolonged and deepened the eventu- al decline. With sporadic exceptions, the motor industry in Britain sought to perpet- uate many of the structures and practices of the Thirties right up into the Seventies. The chill wind of commercial competition has the merit of making you realise that you must move or die, while sheltering too long — which is what successive govern- ments encouraged — freezes you into the glacier. Britain was still the world's second largest car manufacturer in 1955; by 1965 it was third, by 1975 sixth.

As the industry progressed, the number of cars you had to sell to pay for expensive and essential new capital equipment rose inexorably. Smaller manufacturers, of which there was a pleasing variety in Britain, couldn't survive. Mergers duly took place, mergers that look now like the faded photos of marriages destined for dis- aster, or of soldiers bound for the front. Standard, Triumph, Hillman, Austin, Mor- ris, Alvis, Armstrong, Jensen, Jowett, Humber, Lea-Francis, AC, Sunbeam, Riley, Singer, Wolseley, Lanchester — call for them now, and not a hoot will answer.

In 1947, 19 American manufacturers produced over 4 million cars a year with 42 basic models, while 20 British manufactur- ers produced under 400,000 cars a year with 51 basic models. It was unsustainable, yet in 1970 the supposedly merged British car industry still produced 18 completely different car engines and 30 body shells. In 1947, import penetration totalled 222 vehi- cles; in 1970, 157,956.

These were the mergers that weren't. The worst swallowed the best and, when they couldn't swallow, they fought. The men at the top still clung to their fiefdoms, the unions to their needless jobs and demarcations, new layers of management were added and government pressure not to add to unemployment meant that potential savings were wasted. Managers were rewarded with honours, the unions given their danegeld. With the door closed against the chill wind, everyone could pre- tend, for a while longer, that it wasn't real- ly there.

No one who followed the news in the Seventies can forget the depressing litany of British Leyland's strikes, reorganisa- tions, reports and new starts. With an awful inevitability, predicted from within and without, all the merged companies marched downwards in step to oblivion. It was the only activity they co-ordinated properly. When Michael Edwardes took over he found that no one in BL could tell him the profit and loss figures for each model. There was simply no mechanism for collecting them.

It is often true that there are no bad sol- diers, only bad officers, but if the officers are prevented by government from dispos- ing as they think fit — which would have meant literally disposing of the worst in order to save the best — we should not blame them entirely. There were also those in the unions who took money to foment trouble, managers who thought that having a minimum three-month wait- ing-list on the Land-Rover order book was a Good Thing (Toyota certainly thought it was), others who complacently exported cars to the Middle East without air-condi- tioning, or who refused to develop a five- door Range- Rover despite promises of orders from overseas police forces.

Yet the design of some of these prod- ucts was innovatory and good. The hatch- back Austin Maxi, the Range-Rover, the Jaguar V12 engine, the Rover 2000, the Rover SDI and, of course, the ageless Mini were all ground-breakers. It was shoddy execution and manufacture that was the problem — that lack of attention to small detail that makes the big differ- ence. Thus it was that after eight years of development of the SDI a spot-check in 1 realise In a spent force, but I can't remember where the hell I spent it all.' the year of its launch (1976) showed that 94 per cent of newly made vehicles were unfit for immediate sale. Later, the warran- ty factor built into the price of a Jaguar was £1,000, for a Montego £500, and for a Metro £250, while the average for Japanese vehicles as a whole was £2. When Ford paid £1 billion for Jaguar (more than it was worth, which was their fault for not inspect- ing it), they found what they called Third World conditions on the production line at Ryton: not surprisingly, for it was the old 1950s Standard production line which Sir William Lyons, founder and owner of Jaguar, had bought second-hand. Even when things were getting better, BL showed a worrying lack of awareness of the world outside. There is a story that they planned to advertise their spares rather than their cars — spares being cheap, avail- able and often needed, since the cars them- selves weren't too good — and the slogan `A coil for the Princess' was axed only when it was pointed out to them that that was the year of that other doomed merger, the royal one.

Whpre, then, is the British motor indus- try now? Where it always was — managing in difficult circumstances. It's actually in pretty reasonable condition. We're building them better and quicker than ever before, and they're selling. Manufacturers who could choose to site plant anywhere in the world, frequently choose here. We're not good enough and we've got to keep on improving, but we know that and there's the difference.

All the problems touched on above, plus others unmentioned, were symptomatic of attitudes to work, to endeavour and ulti- mately to life. Complacency meant that the customer was not only not king, he was the last to be consulted. Too many at all levels sought to get as much as possible for as lit- tle as possible, and the desire to be com- fortable outweighed the desire to be successful (a characteristic still frequently seen in Britain). Beneath it all, however, and more pernicious than anything, was the corporate and governmental flight from reality, the fatal erosion of the link between cause and effect. Whether in our personal or our institutional lives, this is a tendency we are forever seeking to indulge, and forever having to be jolted out of — if we're lucky. If you want to sell things you must make what people want. There were not postwar, world-wide markets just long- ing for Toyota, Nissan, BMW and Mer- cedes. They created markets for themselves by building good products. Rover didn't do enough of that, and they're now owned by BMW, so they probably will. Through our own failures, the alternative to a foreign- owned British car industry was not a better indigenous one but no industry, so we should be pleased to see it.

It is not impossible that one day there will be another British-owned volume man- ufacturer, but meanwhile we have to ensure that this country is a relatively cheap and absolutely good place to make Cars. That will come about only by cease- less striving and for that we have to be pre- pared not to be comfortable. Get the point, Lord Copper?

Alan Judd writes our motoring column.