BMW/Nissan/Toyota/Honda & Jag/Land Rover running @ almost full tilt (not to forget Vx).
France (1.9m) is currently 2nd to Germany (5.5m) BUT Renault & PSA both struggling with falling demand for their offerings (even in La Belle France!!!).
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/10119450/Britain-could-overtake-France-to-become-second-largest-car-maker-in-Europe.html
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Assembler of cars owned by them dastardly efficient furriners innit?
Groan, moan....
Let's see, what have we got left... the F1 industry in the Thames valley, Lotus of course, TVR, the ghastly (whatever people may say) Mclaren F1... ah yes, and the G-Whiz, or is that made somewhere else? You wouldn't want one anyway.
We've had our day as automakers. Now we just do tinbashing for the Koreans, Japanese, Germans and Frogs. I do hope they are paying us properly.
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Jaguar Land Rover is still Tech'd here AC as is Nissan to a lesser extent, there's Morgan, Noble, Lotus....
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>> Jaguar Land Rover is still Tech'd here
Yes, but they could have vanished if not rescued by India's Tata. I'd forgotten Morgan which was gaga of me... Noble is a supercar maker isn't it? Doesn't really count.
An American artist friend who lived here in the seventies was a keen biker and bought a new Norton (650 twin I think), fitted to my disapproval with those long Harley-style handlebars. He soon started complaining that it was badly made, and it's true the finish and precision of the powertrain seemed pretty rough. It leaked oil for example.
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There was a tale in one of the motorcycle comics last month about a Triumph Trophy behaving (think German style touring machine) badly - it was replaced by the factory. That's how it should be. The old Triumph would have laughed in your face.
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TVR effectively died a death some years ago I believe.
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>> TVR effectively died a death some years ago I believe.
>>
It's just been sold by its Russian owner to a British company: tvr.co.uk/
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>> and the
>> G-Whiz, or is that made somewhere else? You wouldn't want one anyway.
Are they still made? See a few in London but not on recent plates.
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Does this mean that, all along, the demise of the British car and motorcycle industries was the fault of senior management, and not the workers?
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oof nice one Haywain..;)
Someone with as big a set as Maggie should have smacked the heads of senior management and union barons together till they bled copiously.
A bit of unfashionable patriotism from all sides including the buyers and especially the electorate when voting wouldn't have gone amiss, and the country would have been much different now.
People then just as now blame government, conveniently forgetting they voted for the current and all previous regimes, too often with their wallets/benefits/short term gains in mind and not considered principles.
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>> A bit of unfashionable patriotism from all sides including the buyers
Too many "patriotic buyers" got their fingers burned.
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Both, in an unholy smug hostile collusion.
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Honda Civic or Rover 400?
I bought the British built Honda.
I made the right decision ;-)
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Riding the Triumph ST the other week made me think about the British motorcycle industry. British bikes were pants - absolute rubbish compared to what the Japanese made in the early 70s. I for one was quite glad to see the whole shooting match disappear below the waves. Guy who re-invented Triumph went to see how the Japanese do it and applied it to British made machines - years on now, Triumph has three factories in Thailand, a new one in Brazil and rumours of a plant in India - this is how it is today's automotive industries. I have no shame at all in buying a British designed and made bike - as good as anything else in the world.
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I remember in the 70s I could only afford cheap, old British bikes and therefore maintained I was a British Bike Enthusiast.
At the time I'm thinking of I had a Norton Dominator 99SS but aspired to a new bike, not that I could have afforded one.
It was very difficult to like the then current Norton Commando 850 when it was compared to the Honda 750-4 K2.
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>> Does this mean that, all along, the demise of the British car and motorcycle industries
>> was the fault of senior management, and not the workers?
>>
You forgot to add the directors and shareholders. They put profits above investment in R&D, tooling and market research.
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I read a quote from an old 1960s Rocker some years ago when he said the reason they were always so heavily outnumbered by the Mods at their seaside fisticuffs was that half the motorbikes that set out broke down during the journey.
Last edited by: Robin Regal on Fri 14 Jun 13 at 19:48
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I don't think the old Lambretta was at the top of the reliability stakes either :)
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>>they put profits above investment in R&D, tooling and market research.
The swine. Its almost like they were in it for the money.
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Just reading this week's Autocar (Test on the excellent and lovely F Type - I want one) - seems that JLR is pouring huge amounts of cash into R&D in the West Mids. Bit more than tin bashers !
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>> pouring huge amounts of cash into R&D in the West Mids. Bit more than tin bashers !
Tata money from India.
There was never a shortage of good, original car engineers and engine designers here. It was suits that bought up all the car makers and stuffed them into a gigantic, oversized BL. And then rushed unfinished, slapdash designs, or recycled thirties and forties designs, into production in factories dominated by crap unions and offhand, indifferent workers. What else do half of you gripe about when you are talking about BL and your much-loved Marinas and Allegros?
And by 'suits' I mean senior management, which of course includes directors who are supposed to have shareholders' interests at heart. The shareholders must have been so chuffed as those fat greedy stupid carphounds ran the whole thing into the ground.
Smug illegitimate people.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Fri 14 Jun 13 at 23:56
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>> Smug illegitimate people.
>>
Not all smug people are illegitimate and vice versa. My mother was illegitimate, but she was never smug.
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>> My mother was illegitimate, but she was never smug.
A lot of people are, technically. Careless of me to seem to be blaming people for their illegitimacy. But of course what I meant was b*st*rds in the polemical sense, which would have been censored by the filter thingy.
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>> >> My mother was illegitimate, but she was never smug.
>>
>> A lot of people are, technically.
There weren't so many of my mother's generation as there are now. I could have been related to the village idiot or it could have been the lord of the manor. I've tried finding out but I don't expect I ever will. There was no father recorded on her birth certificate.
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>> Did you know im
No Perro. I liked hanging out in Soho when very young - sort of 57-62 - but to tell the truth I was too shy, ignorant and generally inexperienced not to be a bit scared of those heavyweight pub regulars. They didn't suffer fools or twerps gladly and were extremely cliquey. Even the couple of people I knew who lived in Soho were older than me and a bit intimidating.
I must have seen the Bernard brothers en passant, certainly went in those pubs when I had the money for a beer, recognised and was on nodding terms with one or two Soho figures (like the spectacular drag queen Angel, and later Ronnie Scott) but like a well brought-up Victorian child preferred to be seen and not heard. This of course made me a boring person of no interest. I hadn't yet learned how to be thuggish, witty and overbearing.
Pre-yuppie Notting Hill was my natural environment.
I love the photo of mid-fifties Soho in the Oliver Bernard obit. Things have changed a lot visually.
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>>I love the photo of mid-fifties Soho in the Oliver Bernard obit. Things have changed a lot visually.
Aye, especially him!
I keep on going back to that photo in the comic, amazing what time, and a life worth living can do to someone.
I used to virtually live in the Crown in Leicester Sq., the Earl of Sandwich just down the road, or the Frigate nearby in those days, we didn't do a lot of drinking though funnily enough, did a bit of red Leb though ;)
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>> we didn't do a lot of drinking though funnily enough,
That too was a bit of a problem... being stoned on weed or hash tended to make me a bit paranoid in pubs and indeed in general. It wasn't so bad if you were with your own gang or clique of contemporaries.
We never smoked weed actually in pubs in those days though, fearing that landlords as purveyors of the main legal drug would turn us in for it.
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>>We never smoked weed actually in pubs in those days though, fearing that landlords as purveyors of the main legal drug would turn us in for it
It was a long time ago of course, and we were all usually under the influence, but I'm sure we used to have a puff downstairs in the Frigate.
I meant to mention on 'the other' thread about the fact I knew Graham Ovenden quite well when we lived up near him some years ago, he invited me and Laurie Smith the leather craftsman into his 'inner sanctum' where he kept his collection of Victorian artwork of pre-pubescent naked females.
I can well understand that anyone who didn't know him, would be under no doubt that he was indeed a paedo,
but he wasn't, of that I am sure, and the way the press vilified him, well, I'll never believe anything I ever read in the press again.
www.telegraph.co.uk/property/westcountryproperty/3902558/Property-in-Cornwall-Drawn-to-an-artists-work-in-progress.html
pics2.imagezone.org/image/graham%20ovenden
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Graham Ovenden was just an artist as far as I know. Those images don't look erotic to me at all.
One or two of those turn-of-the-century artists - I know Ovenden was much later - were pretty loose though, one in particular... but he was actually a great artist, the real thing, sculptor and dauber... I know a big bluestone bas-relief of his which is really sublime in an art nouveau sort of way.
Heavyweight artists in any medium aren't necessarily but can sometimes be appalling human beings. It tends to get magnified with them and no one is perfect really.
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>> >>they put profits above investment in R&D, tooling and market research.
>>
>> The swine. Its almost like they were in it for the money.
>>
Wanting to make money is excusable. To do so by being so smug and shortsighted is not.
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>> Wanting to make money is excusable. To do so by being so smug and shortsighted
>> is not.
>>
Exactly. You want to make money, continue making money and try to make lots of money.... and you aren't going to achieve that by grabbing a load at the beginning and neglecting the future.
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>>Wanting to make money is excusable. To do so by being so smug and shortsighted is not.
A fair point.
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>> Does this mean that, all along, the demise of the British car and motorcycle industries
>> was the fault of senior management, and not the workers?
>>
Yes. A British car manufacturer I worked for went under because they wouldn't move with the times. The next (mechanical engineering, but not car) company I worked for went under because they refused to diversify. Just imagine where Currys and Halfords would be if they had stuck to the same products as they sold, say, fifty years ago.
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UK to be 2nd largest car assembler.....in 5 years? - Armel Coussine
