Buying British?

[Sybarite]

Back in the 1960's the vast amount of cars were British, come the !970's and we have recession, other countries support there manufacturing, we don't, result firms fail, we import. The much maligned Marina was 4th in UK car sales one year, technically British designs were advanced, BL had a 5 seater that did 133 mpg.

We suffered then as to-day from banks not backing manufactures, I worked for Rubery Owen in the 60's, they had the most advanced structural steel plant in Europe. But could not use it as the banks would not finance large building jobs, and Rubery Owen were second largest Private company in the UK.

Add in the unions, strikes, closed shop, change in how management worked, British and foreign marketing, etc, etc, etc.

We try and make history so simple to-day.

Brian

I remember the time when unions were pushing through 20% wage increases per year. I think if one were to isolate any one major cause for the demise of the UK auto industry it was that.

I also remember the Chairman of Harland & Wolffes shipbuilders in Belfast saying that they could beat the world if they could count on two days work per week from their employees. Demarcation had reached ridiculous levels.

 

[WestWittering]

Hmmm memories of my MG1100 which collapsed around its suspension...

That wasn't the fault of the suspension - that was the British built road. I had a BMW M3 from new, suspension on rear did the same thing @ 7,000 miles! I have a Land Rover now..... *

Di

* Its at the garage - wiper arm fell off at 60,000 miles...

 

[Sybarite]

For a long time there was condescension in the British boat building when you were told that all berths should have lee cloths, that longish keels were more sea worthy etc. This was reinforced by boat review reports.

The French made boats for the type of sailing people wanted; eg a group of employees or students get together to charter a boat for the weekend or for a week. Probably less than 1% of time was spent over-nighting and the idea was to stick a crowd on the boat for fun. It was probably chartering which drove the French boat industry. But then chartering led to purchasing.

 

[Sybarite]

"That wasn't the fault of the suspension - that was the British built road."

I don't think that the British built roads caused the rust.

 

[maby]

That wasn't the fault of the suspension - that was the British built road. I had a BMW M3 from new, suspension on rear did the same thing @ 7,000 miles! I have a Land Rover now..... *

Di

* Its at the garage - wiper arm fell off at 60,000 miles...

Hmmm, we were long time Landrover owners - till their gearboxes became a consumable item - then, reluctantly, we switched to Toyota.

 

[Grumpybear]

As already said, the Beitish car industry succumbed to many causes. One of them was cost. It didn't occur to those marketing the original Mini to add up what it cost to build before setting the price.

Mark you, the company I worked for until 2010 went into administration last year. The MD told me before I left that it didn't matter what our customers said they wanted; I should tell them what we were prepared to offer and at what price, and see to it that they were duly grateful.

 

[wotayottie]

plus at the time we had a lot of National steel strikes.

Simply not true. We only ever had one steel strike

 

[wotayottie]

British industry is out there & can be supported (or not).

I didn't realise for example that Icom was British - so if I need electronics in the future I will look more closely at their product.

Icom are Japanese. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icom_Incorporated

 

[WestWittering]

Icom are Japanese. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icom_Incorporated

Aaaaaaaahhhh-so! When I looked on their UK website, they have an export department. When I look on the Icom America, it says 100% Japanese built. Busted

Di

 

[BrianH]

That wasn't the fault of the suspension - that was the British built road..

It was during those years that I bought one of the original minis in Canada - the entire rear suspension detached from the body frame to which it was attached due to rust, only the hydraulic brake pipes stopped it parting company completely. Was that the Canadian built roads?

That was after a new engine was fitted under guarantee because the entire crankshaft assembly had been fitted with wrong torque pressures at the factory. And that was following the constant-velocity joints that drove the front wheels disintegrated because the rubber boots that protected them shattered when it got below -10°C. No one in BL must have known that it gets cold in Canada before they shipped there.

 

[halcyon]

As already said, the Beitish car industry succumbed to many causes. One of them was cost. It didn't occur to those marketing the original Mini to add up what it cost to build before setting the price.

Cost prices were known, the problem was strikes, how do you cost them into the retail price ?

For example, by June 1963 the Cowley plant had seen134 strikes that year, same plant between Sept 1963 and Sept 1964 there was 254 un-official strikes which lost 750,000 man hours. Remember that these chaps were on £500 - £800 a week in current money so they were not badly paid.

Brian

 

[wotayottie]

You'd probably cause more damage to British business by refusing to buy things manufactured overseas than you would help. Most sensible British companies outsource the manufacturing to somewhere cheap while keeping the high value jobs (design, marketing, management, HR etc.) here in Britain. This has meant that British people, even the jobless, are better off than we used to be and therefore use more services (restaurants, cleaners, gardeners, coffee shops etc.). This has created more jobs than manufacturing gave us. Ask anyone working at Starbucks if they wish they could be working a mine and I doubt you'll get any takers. Same would probably go for working in a loud/hot/cold/repetitive factory environment. Manufacturing jobs are not skilled and enjoyable they are boring and repetitive with no scope for self development.

That last sentence could only have been written by someone with absolutely no knowledge of manufacturing. But ignoring that for a moment, we cannot survive on services. Most world trade is in manufactured goods - compare how much you personally spend on the manufactures you buy from the house to the car to the white goods to gas , electric and food with how much you spend on insurance and banking and IT and restaurants and you will see what I mean. And we are not different to other nations - we all spend more on manufactures by a long way

So trying to survive only on services is cutting yourself off from the largest part of world trade. What makes it worse is that most tradeable services can easily be transported overseas - for example IT is best done in places like India where highly skilled staff are cheap and the cost of communications and delivery is low with little or no capital equipment. Insurance and banking will go the same way too. As will the City - do any of you see a reason why chinese companies would come to London for finances rather than to HK or Shanghai?

We have a huge permanent deficit in our balance of trade and every day we have to borrow more money to finance our imports of manufactured goods. Unless we substitute somne of them with British manufactures we will simply go bust.

 

[halcyon]

Simply not true. We only ever had one steel strike

We had steel strikes all the time, or was it just the ones that supplied the firm I worked for back then ?

Brain

 

[charles_reed]

An interesting thread - suffice to say that I'm very proud of my daughter who IS an engineer, she's the Prof in charge of the Materials Dept at the School of Engineering, Southampton Uni.
They do research for RR, EADs, Boeing to mention a few.
Globalisation has resulted in a situation where it's impossible to say a thing has been "manufactured" in any one country and in fact "manufacture" in modern economies is a meaningless term. Far better to look at Value Addition.
It is interesting to note how German industry has developed over the last 20 years, gone is the obsession with making things and far more emphasis has been put on service application - that's where the pure profit lies.
The story of the decay of British manufacturing, unfortunately, is a repeated story of bad management coupled with greed. Williams set the trend for "releasing shareholder value", an accountant and wide-boy led activity of buying companies, squeezing their assets and order book and then moving on - never building a business. And when they ran out of "grazers" to buy and compress, so their business model collapsed.

For me, as purchaser, I look firstly for the performance/specification, then at the value and finally all other things being equal I'll buy British if it's in the top two.

Much of the argument here appears to be similar to the ructions in the 19th century CofE as to how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.