Death of the UK Car Industry - Part 1: BMC

in 1950 Britain sported 38 different car manufacturers Each of which filled various roles and market segments to create competitive machines with names and brands that resonated across the globe only for mismanagement Union Strife or and outdated designs a hesitancy to adopt Innovative technology and a fanatical desire to make a splash on the export Market leading to the entire collapse of the British Motor industry in April 2005 while what few remain are either small firms working with a handfu

l of Engineers and designers or are under the ownership of foreign multinationals while one of the more notable players in the British car industry was the roots Group which itself struggled and collapsed into bankruptcy over the course of the 1950s 60s and 70s the face of the UK's terrible fall from grace in the motoring world was that of British Leyland the nationalized car firm that held its pocket most of the country's renowned Marx and had all the momentum of State funding to push itself in

to being one of the most forward-thinking and Innovative car manufacturers in the world but instead was the culmination of disastrous policies personal feuds and weak governance that was decades in the making Britain's role in the motor industry goes right back to the original conception of internal combustion automobiles in the late 1800s so much so that by the 1920s there were hundreds of Individual Car producers big and small peppered across the country a majority of these firms being the bra

inchild of Soul engineers and designers who hope to make their Fortune with the next innovation in mainstream motoring while at the top of the hierarchy were the three domestic car builders Austin Morris and Hillman who shared the market with American interloper Ford which used Britain as the heart of its European operations and opened up a mass production facility for the Ford Model T in Trafford park near Manchester the only other major player in the UK motoring scene being voxel which from 19

25 had been procured by General Motors alongside the German car maker Opel and was similarly used to house their European operations essentially it was in this period that the seeds of the British car Industries inevitable collapse were sown as unlike the United States which saw a majority of the stronger marks such as Cadillac Lincoln Buick Mercury and Oldsmobile acquired very early on by the largest car firms thus resulting in the big three Detroit manufacturers of Ford General Motors in Chrys

ler dominating the market through various sub Brands by the start of the 1950s Britain maintained an unmanageable slew of dozens of individual car companies which remained highly suspicious of each other's practices the most notable being the two monoliths of UK mass production car building Austin and Morris with company Founders Herbert Austin and William Morris expending more of their resources trying to outdo one another rather than beating back the foreign competition both firms being based

in the West Midlands and thus fought tooth and nail for the same Market sectors and customers the Austin Motor Company had been founded in Long Bridge South of Birmingham in December 1905 by engineer Herbert Austin and was most famous for its Austin seven small family car a machine that revolutionized British and European motoring by presenting the first viable competitor to Ford's pioneering Model T and at the same time adopted a pedaling gear configuration that would help form the basis of the

modern driving Arrangement while Morris Motors limited had been founded in 1912 by former bicycle seller and repairman William Morris and had in its bid to match Austin created a slew of Highly Successful mass production cars that included the Morris 8 while also introducing from 1924 a dedicated sports car division dubbed Morris garages or mg which will provide lightweight but nippy handling roadsters that were incredibly popular during the Roaring Twenties and even through the Great Depressio

n as they provided a cheaper alternative to high-end Sports models built by the likes of Alfa Romeo and Bugatti into the mix however was plunged a man named Leonard Lord a former engineer at Vickers and Daimler who joined the ranks of Morris in 1923 proving his immediate worth following the firm's acquisition of the wallsley company in 1927 where he was able to comprehensively modernize that firm's production equipment thus leading to his promotion to general manager from where he ran the Morris

main Factory at Cowley near Oxford his work at running the business being so effective that William Morris appointed him as managing director of Morris Motors itself but soon developed a war of personalities that led ultimately to Lord resigning from the Morris firm in August 1936 his reputation meaning he was a hot commodity when it came to competently running a car firm as observed by the 72 year old Herbert Austin who having lost his only son in World War one was seeking a replacement as com

pany chairman in order to allow him to retire poaching Lord and placing him as manager of the corporation followed in 1938 as chairman of the company when Austin inevitably stepped down leading to the volatile situation of Britain's two biggest mass production car Builders being run by two men who held deep-seated personal grudges against one another thereby stifling any potential tie-ups or cooperation between the two companies by the time of world war II's end in 1945 the Morris company had fr

om 1943 expanded its influence into a dedicated umbrella group under which the sub-marks of the firm were held this organization being dubbed the nuffield group and derived its name from William Morris's peerage title as the vi count nuffield which was established in 1938 with Morris restarting production of the pre-war Morris 8 and 10 models while introducing Among The Wider nuffield group A Primitive form of badge engineering so as to save the cost of creating dedicated models for each of the

individual marks but these proved to be merely a stop Gap as the company developed what would be perhaps its crowning achievement the Morris Minor of 1948 a small family car designed by the then largely unknown engineer Alexis agonis this model adopting a simplistic Boris E-Series engine but Incorporated Advanced torsion bar independent front suspension and rack and pinion steering while also boasting a low center of gravity a monocoque chassis construction and 14-inch wheels that were specifica

lly developed for the car the overwhelmingly positive option for the miner by both Republican press causing the car to become the first british-built model to sell over 1 million units and launching isagonist to be one of the highest demand card designers in Britain although not long after the release of his creation he decided to move on from Morris and join the ranks of Alvis instead Austin meanwhile similarly restarted car production with pre-war models but rapidly moved to create new models

that incorporated the underpinnings of older vehicles examples including their initial Austin 16 which adopted the body and Chassis of the 1940 Austin 12 although by 1948 the company had introduced a slew of genuinely new cars including the princess the a125 shear line the a70 Hampshire and the 1.2 liter A40 Devon while also demonstrating For the First Time The fervent desire of Britain's car makers to appeal to the American Market by way of the Austin A90 Atlantic possessing a somewhat transatl

antic styling intended to appeal to customers both in the United States and Britain But ultimately failed to endear itself to potential buyers on either side of the pond a situation that would be repeated time and again over the course of the next several decades although much of the incentive to want to take the foreign market by storm stemmed from the national policies of Labor prime minister Clement Atley who demanded that British car makers Focus as much as their resources as possible into s

elling sport models in exchange for increasingly generous allocations of Steel rations based on their success while foreign intervention onto the UK Market itself was stymied by stiff import tariffs being placed on models not built on British soil creating an artificially inflated domestic Market that was strongly in favor of the UK car industry but opened up each of the individual firms to bad habits and complacents aside from attempting to woo the North American Market the British Empire was a

lso an initially strong export market for UK car builders but as the cries of Independence resonated across the post-war world the colonial Powers rapidly dissolved throughout the course of the 1950s with many newly independent nations implementing boycotts on the Imports of British products due to ongoing resentment and thus losing a major export market for the likes of Austin and Morris this coinciding with the formation of the European economic Community or eec during 1958 which was establish

ed in order to allow member states to compete industrially and economically on equal terms permitting the European car manufacturers of Germany France Italy and Scandinavia the ability to trade freely with each other while Britain was denied entry into the eec when it applied in 1963 and 1967 thanks in no small part to the intervention of French president and former wartime leader of the free French Charles de Gaulle who held a strong disdain for the UK and feared that with its entry into the ee

c it would demand its own conditions that Direct they contravened those of The Wider European community back at Austin and Morris years of blood feud between both parties had resulted in their products being built not to compete with the likes of Ford Vauxhall or the roots group but instead with each other specifically meaning their Rivals could easily fill gaps in the market not served by either company this self-destructive competition ultimately leading in 1951 to both manufacturers agreeing

to merge into a single firm dubbed the British Motor Corporation or BMC a large-scale manufacturer that would rival forward in terms of size and product range and thus create the fourth largest car builder in the world the company's establishment being completed by August 1952 and thus merged the various assets of Austin with the rabbit Warren of Brands under the nuffield group Banner the founding of BMC being made on fairly sensible principles and should have at the first opportunity work to ro

ot out those marks which were weaker in order to cut down the cost and complexity of the scheme while at the same time reorganizing the surviving box to match their respective market segments instead following the retirement of the 75 year old William Morris as bmc's first president Leonard Lord quickly stepped into the role and immediately set about maintaining the Bad Blood he had previously held with Morris directly placing as many advantages as possible in Austin's Court by appointing former

Austin Executives and in the every key management position replacing all Morris power units with Austin wands even when fitted to Morris badged cars and gradually transferring Morris's car design and drawing office elements from Cowley to Longbridge thus robbing Morris of any ability for it to design models on its own terms while being forced to keep alter cars on sale for unrealistically long durations this being most notable with the iconic Morris Minor of 1948 which in a healthy car industry

would have either been replaced or face lifted during the mid to late 1950s but was instead kept in production by BMC until as late as 1971. the general attitude among the former Morris staff being that what was pitched to them as an equitable merger was in fact a hostile takeover by Austin and they immediately became defensive of Their Own roles within the corporation this desire to keep alive the notion that Austin was better than Morris as indented by Lorde meaning integration between the va

rious workforces failed to materialize and a strong sense of them and US within the ranks soon became the ingrained culture of BMC with dealer principles remaining firm in their insistence that a separate network of showrooms and salesmen be maintained and that all cars being built have separate and distinct model ranges to sell in terms of products while the Morris Minor was an early commercial victory for BMC the remainder of the 1950s and 60s was a mixed bag an early attempt to create a dedic

ated export model in the form of the Nash Metropolitan a stylish economy car built by Austin at their Long Bridge Factory near Birmingham and distributed in the United States by the domestic Nash Motor Company proving to be a somewhat modest success but didn't perform in the manor hoped by the Austin sales team though this was offset during 1959 by the launch of the Austin mini a car built to meet the needs of customers during a period of fuel rationing caused by the 1956 sewers crisis and one t

hat would see enormous success across the globe thanks to its perfect mixture of practicality and Charming style although the reality was that the mini had been an incredibly rushed product forced rapidly through development at Lord's insistence so as not to lose the fuel crisis Market its complex mechanics and production ultimately leading to BMC making a loss of 30 pounds per car or 535 pounds in 2023 nevertheless the midi was still a major winner for BMC which coupled to the later launch of t

he Austin and Morris 1100 during August 1962 saw The Prestige of the British firm raised to the same standards as other more notable car builders such as Mercedes-Benz Citroen Ford Alfa Romeo and Volkswagen but with this Prestige came expectations to deliver highly Innovative and well-built cars in the same manner as its stablemates attached to which the archaic building facilities and corporate management was not equipped to handle as embodied by the continued pushing of the Morris brand furthe

r out of the mainstream picture until it was left simply Hanging On To The Wider BMC firm as a badge engineered subsidiary attempts to wrap up the Morris Mark and simply create a single BMC brand being blocked by the unreasonably influential car dealers who thanks to their direct connection with Lord ensured that not only were Austin and Morris models kept separate but that the management except that the corporation required autonomous dealer networks to sell them the idea of separate franchises

and separate model ranges having been derived largely from the business model of General Motors in amer America but could not be implemented easily for BMC as the firm was effectively just an extension of the Austin Empire at Long Bridge meaning that unlike General Motors which provided separate company managements for its various divisions despite sharing models and components BMC was operated by a single company board that was firmly at Austin's favor as creating a business with a corporate t

ree That Grew From two main sources rather than one strong single foundation and by the end of the 1960s the company was operating 42 individual assembly plants and factories that were becoming increasingly difficult to administer from its headquarters in Long Bridge regardless the Austin favored trimming down of former Morris assets continued allowing for huge economies of scale to be maintained by the widespread engine sharing of Austin power units with dealers remaining satisfied in the fact

that they could sell both the full range of Austin and Morris cars to customers who were exceptionally brand loyal and would buy individual Morrison Austin badged cars regardless of whether they were simply the same machine but with a different logo on the Bonnet this period being perhaps the most harmonious in bmc's turbulent tenure as at the very least it meant the management were ensuring that as much resource sharing as possible took place and allowed for cars to be produced for both Brands

as economically as possible the reality being that BMC was only being kept afloat by the economic miracle that was the policies of conservative prime minister Harold MacMillan who under the title of the new approach sought to bring unemployment to its lowest possible level and support the working classes by reducing inflation Bringing Down the cost of borrowing and allow for more public expenditure on housing and benefits for the needy causing the standard of living across the UK to rise eyes an

d allowed for many working-class families to buy for the first time a brand new car thanks to the significant post-war boom creating a strong seller's market as car ownership Rose exponentially with BMC selling their models wherever they wanted and thereby resulting in their domination of 39 in the UK domestic car market with profits assured however the short-lived boom period and artificially inflated Market meant many of the critical decisions needed to secure a viable economic and managerial

future for the firm were deferred as Executives emboldened by this sudden burst in their sales performance felt that making such rash corporate choices were no longer required and that they would be Revisited only if absolutely necessary the only major issue to clear this otherwise superb era for the car maker being the prevalence problem of strike action the magnitude of which especially in the ranks of BMC being demonstrated in that for all strikes within the British Motor industry between 194

6 and 1964 44 of all instances of industrial action had taken place within the company's plants while the Rival Ford of Britain only comprised 11 of all strike action experienced the causes for this being generally attributed to BMC retaining the complex peace work system of payment in contrast to Ford who paid their employees through measured day work this piecework system also existing in the factories of standard Triumph Rover and jaguar industrial unrest increased throughout the 1960s across

the entire British car industry as for each of their own reasons the trade unions butted heads with the management of various companies this being Illustrated in the ranks of the Premier Rover company which was riddled with disputes and Industrial Strife when they proposed upping the production rate of their best-selling P6 Saloon one of the defining cars of the decade while Jaguar was also facing its own Spate of industrial action due to a large Rift between company chairman Sir William Lyons

and the workforce culminating in a three-week strike during June 1965 when two polishers refused to do a three-minute job that was sent back to them as below standard leading to the entire polishing detail of 60 men stopping all work in protest and thus leaving the remaining 2500 man Workforce of the Browns Lane Factory Idol as they could not proceed with the car assembly process without the polishers while one may be forgiven for thinking that the root of all problems within the British Motor i

ndustry were caused by militant trade unions funded by subversive communist factions which even included the Soviet Union in the early 1960s before the Advent of mechanized assembly or even a basic health and safety regimen car factories were dirty noisy and cramped places where severe workplace injuries were a day-to-day part of the business while even without the dangerous working environment the presence of harmful materials such as asbestos solvents and pollutant Machinery exhausts meant res

piratory problems and Cancers were rampant among the workforce which in combination with the widening of the divisions between the general employees and the management who were perceived to be the rich men on high that refused to associate themselves with the line workers and could have them dismissed at a stroke as was the case when BMC brutally sacked 10 000 employees during the Autumn of 1966 only served to strengthen the resolve of the trade unions and create an air of distrust between the m

anagement and worker levels by the end of the 1960s the three leading trade unions of the British car industry were The Amalgamated Union of engineering workers the transport and general workers union and the national Union of vehicle Builders none of whom cooperated with each other to work for better working conditions and were more in rivalry for Prestige as demonstrated in August 1969 when the leaders of each Union met at the former Triumph Factory in Canley to discuss whose members should ti

ghten the screws on the dashboards of tribe 2000 Saloon cars with the auew considering itself the most important Union of them all as it was comprised mainly of skilled workers including electrical engineers and precision mechanics and thus demanded the highest raises in salaries when compared to the two other unions which eventually forced the absorption of the tgwu by the nuvb in 1972 so as to combine their influence and Vie for salaries that were on par with the opposing auew this demand for

increased pay largely fueled by a matter of working class Pride between the disputing unions being the root cause of much of the industrial Strife that would litter the Legacy of the UK car industry for the next decade the rampant influence of the trade unions within the car industry wasn't helped by the weak government of Labor prime minister Harold Wilson who attempted to dispense with the peaceworks system and accept a measured day work method during 1968 only to face an outright rebuttal the

power of the trade unions had in holding the nation hostage being Illustrated vividly during the 1966 Siemens strike when the national Union of seaman or nus launched its first strike since 1911 in order to secure higher wages and reduce the working week from 56 to 40 hours a crisis that severely damaged the already fragile economy of the UK and led to a state of emergency being declared any proposals to curb the control of the unions as per the 1969 in place of strife white paper drafted by Wi

lson and transport secretary Barbara Castle being abandoned due to members of the labor cabinet who had vested interests in the unions seeing it as an attack on the working class exacerbating the influence of the unions was Lord's mismanagement of the strikers early on as while many foreign car builders including Nissan and Volkswagen opted to face the strikers head to head and reach a compromise that wasn't an all-out surrender Lord following a demand for pay settlements by the unions no matter

how inappropriate was forced to cave in because the costs of these wage settlements would be outweighed by the potential cost of BMC through built cars lost with Lord's Pride refusing to allow even one potential car sale to be surrendered regardless of the price while in 1956 during a particularly disruptive strike Lord sent Joe Edwards managing director of The Press Steel company to settle a deal with the Union attached to which Edwards immediately objected as he was a production manager and n

ot a worker relations expert leading to his ultimate resignation when Lord refused to budge on the matter Edward's departure not only losing the company a popular man among the workforce but also an Innovative designer who had many strong Concepts that could have revitalized the product list including a much needed replacement for the Morris Minor that was planned for releases is 1959 the loss of Edwards leading ultimately to Lord introducing badge engineering on a vast scale coming initially in

the form of the Farina saloons that have been penned by the Italian karotsaria pininfarina the success of which led to a new corporate direction for the 1960s that would see badge-engineered cars be launched that were outwardly stunning due to their Italian styling but beneath were painfully conventional in terms of mechanics and underpinnings nevertheless productivity went through the roof and for 1960 the British Motor industry enjoyed its absolute Zenith year with 1.36 million units built an

d sold although this glorious moment appeared to be fleeting as for 1961 this figure dropped to just marginally over 1 million cars pushing Britain into third place behind West Germany and France as the largest car building country in Europe though regardless BMC under managing director George Harriman opted to undertake a huge expansion plan following the highly ambitious announcement that it would produce at least one million Vehicles a year as supported by a 49 million pound government-assist

ed program which involved the opening of new factories in lanelli near Swansea Bathgate to the west of Edinburgh and Ravens Craig to the southeast of Glasgow all of which was done as part of a wider government initiative to invest in areas of the UK suffering from significant economic deprivation and unemployment the results of this investment seeing bmc's output jumped to a record 731 000 cars per year by 1964 but failed to address the most fundamental problems with the company in that followin

g the launch of the Austin 1100 in 1962 and the Austin 1800 in 1964 no comprehensively new cars that extended Beyond Simple cosmetic or stylistic changes to existing models were in the pipeline for release during the mid to late 1960s while the creation of new factories further and further away from bmc's West Midlands Heartland only served to overstretch the Management's abilities to provide strong leadership and thereby leading to Human Resources being overworked and Industrial relations suffe

ring as employees felt underrepresented within the firm the biggest problem however was the fact that the company was needlessly losing profits regardless of the fact that it was building nearly 1 million cars per year as aside from BMC receiving thousands of warranty claims due to the shambolic build quality of its cars a deep-seated policy as dictated by Leonard Lord himself as carried over from his day's rivaling Morris was to ensure that his cars were the cheapest in their class no matter wh

at the profit implications with the likes of the mini and 1100 regardless of the fact that they had no direct Rivals being priced in such a Cutthroat manner that in terms of financial performance BMC had made a total of 26 million pounds profit on cumulative midi sales amounting to 347 million pounds for 1960 but by 1967 was making an overall loss of 3 million pounds on total sales that amounted to 467 million pounds despite the fact that more minis were being sold than ever before bmc's inabili

ty to break Lord's stringent pricing conventions in a time when the company was selling at the best performance in its entire history meaning the potential profits reaped by this enormous success well less than half what they could have been and in turn led to the company being unable to invest in forward planning the focus of the firm's management instead being squarely set on undercutting the competition and making as much money as possible in the Here and Now eventually Leonard Lord stepped d

own as chairman of BMC on his 65th birthday November 15 1961 leaving the company and the charge of George Harriman who had gradually been taking over a majority of the company's executive roles since 1956 although Lord would retain the role of Vice chairman until his death in 1967. while harriman's policy was to ensure that Alec isaganis father of the midi as well as many of bmc's other highly profitable models was promoted to technical director of BMC ensuring that these two men alone would dic

tate the future of the corporation sharing a close relationship but in so doing having a strong influence on the development of future models as was the case with the Ado 17 or Austin 1800 a family car that was styled to look larger than it actually was and thus gave customers the incorrect perception that they were buying a large Saloon rather than a mid-sized car which coupled to an impossibly ambitious sales output of 4 000 cars per week led to a sales Calamity upon its launch in 1964 as it w

as seen as too big to be a mid-range Saloon but was too small to be considered a large car the failure of the 1800 to meet its quotas meaning that the models it intended to replace including the Farina saloons and the ever-present Morris Minor could not be removed from the product lists as they were in fact selling better than the brand new car the downturn in sales for 1965 being brushed off by Harriman as simply a downturn in The Wider Market though by this point he too had realized that BMC h

ad no forward planning to speak of and no upcoming models with comprehensively modern underpinnings in the pipeline that could be delivered before 1970. in the midst of a new development and research Department being formed under the direction of planning director Jeffrey Rose which was manned mostly by inexperienced graduates and was but a fraction of the size of the market research division at the Rival Ford 1965 saw BMC gain unassailable control of the British Auto industry when despite conti

nued internal inefficiencies the company purchased the Press steel firm of Oxford which was later merged with Fisher and Ludlow to become press steel Fisher so as to bring the manufacturer of the company's body shells in-house this move being seen by those outside the company as a major step forward as it was undertaken using nothing more than the company's own funds and would provide an additional source of income from press Steel's other customers although the latter point was one of significa

nt note as with BMC now in charge of press steel they had access to inside knowledge of what the opposition were planning to build in the future and more importantly how much it was costing them to do so press steel also being the body shell manufacturers for the roots group Jaguar Rover Rolls-Royce and the Leyland group an incredible and severely unfair advantage that in the end was never truly exploited by BMC so as to try and undercut or even sabotage their opponents in June 1966 Joe Edwards

was brought back aboard by Harriman and made managing director and immediately set about identifying the firm's insurmountable number of problems including excess capacity that caused factories to be seriously over manned and thus led to the not uncommon site of 12 men performing the work of six as well as prolonged neglect at the Long Bridge Factory that had left the workforce undermotivated and less productive than they should have been his solution being to administer a series of cuts so as t

o improve the corporate health of BMC including the axing of 14 000 jobs at a Spate of factory closures the most notable of which were the body plants at Coventry and Castle Bromwich while much to his horror he found that due to the short-sightedness of Harriman and isaganis there was absolutely no forward planning for the firm and what little existed had been based more on Instinct rather than taking the pulse of what customers desired in a modern car Edwards demanding an immediate front-end re

start for the upcoming Austin Maxie to spruce up its archaic image only to find it was far too late to revise the model as the body pressings for the Maxi had already been and off and press steel was gearing up to produce bodies in white although one of the few successes he could accomplish based on his limited abilities was to commission newly recruited X4 designer Roy Haynes to face lift the mini into what would become the mini Clubman while alakazagonis worked on his own unofficial midi repla

cement dubbed the 9x more notable however was only a month after Edward's return to BMC the murder of Jaguar into the company's ranks at a cost of 18.2 million pounds the reason says to the sale of the company to the Long Bridge giant being due to the company founder Sir William Lyons not wanting Jaguar to lose its identity as per the terms of an earlier deal he had made to merge with the Leyland group as headed by Donald Stokes other incentives being lions having no one to succeed him as compan

y chairman following the death of his son in May 1955 the need for Jaguar to secure its body supply due to fears that BMC might cut off their main provider at press steel and thus hold the company for ransom and the need to acquire additional funds so as to bring the upcoming xj4 Saloon to production Jaguar despite its strong reputation for luxury sports cars and saloons being a comparatively weak seller and barely making any profits even on its venerable E-Type the result being the rebranding o

f the British Motor Corporation into British Motor Holdings or bmh the acquisition of Jaguar leading to a confusing reorganization of the product range as lines refused to surrender all of his influence upon taking a seat on the bmh company board with the Proviso being that in exchange for Jaguar now providing large luxury saloons such as the upcoming Daimler ds-420 bmh would not build a car larger than the Austin 1800 though this news came too late for the top end Austin 3-liter Saloon due to i

ts progression in development for which it would go on to have an inauspicious sales life of four years and less than 10 000 units produced the reality was however that Harriman had not appreciated his advantageous position when compared to Jaguar but rather than asserting himself and ensuring that Jaguar fell into line with the other elements of bmh he instead allowed them a degree of autonomy that essentially meant they remained a largely independent firm both during and after the merger Lions

wooing The BMC chairman with the prospect that his Wizardry in expanding Jaguar to an unprecedented scale over the previous 15 years with production figures jumping from 6647 in 1950 to 25963 by 1965 could be applied to his own firm with more product-led growth to come especially now that the world-beating E-Type and Mach 2 were now within the ranks of harriman's Corporation though before any of these prospects could come to pass more significant changes in the UK's motoring Market were afoot t

hat would ultimately change the face of the British Auto industry and thereby lead to the culmination of the many corporate inefficiencies and missed opportunities coming back to haunt the management with a terrible bite