When the Japanese motorcycle invasion began, the Villiers experimental dept bought a Honda and stripped it for examination; the two engineers looked at each other and said: "We're f****d." When BL introduced the award-winning Metro they fitted the ancient asthmatic Mini engine and shot themselves in the foot. My boss bought a Datsun Cherry, and when he showed me under the bonnet I was gobsmacked - the engine was all-alloy, clean, oil tight, quiet and mounted on rubber-bushed cross-tie rods. Our industry destroyed itself by lack of investment.

@MySteaming

Жыл бұрын

British industrial management has always only been interested in short termism & earning a quick buck. God knows how we outstripped the German war machine in output during WW2. But we now know how utterly useless the Germans were in 'total war' & mass production during WW2. Any nation that sends its army to survive a Russia winter without adequate cold weather clothing as the Germans did must be utter prats. But that's what Germany did. Their troops were walking around the battlefield in Russia with their feet wrapped in rags to keep warm.

@deanosaur808

Жыл бұрын

Urban myth! Maybe partially true, but still made up for dramatic purposes 😉

@trevortrevortsr2

Жыл бұрын

@@deanosaur808 Villiers made versions of pre WW2 DKW - nothing new

@donelmore2540

Жыл бұрын

The early Japanese cars sent to the American market were not designed for American roads. Their build quality was very good there. It took 2nd or 3rd generation Japanese cars to sell successfully as they were made larger and more powerful to be practical on American roads. I bought my first new car in 1976, a Honda Civic 5 speed (the most expensive car on the lot). It was a great little car.

@Bevrinton

Жыл бұрын

British Leyland workers ruined the car industry , sleeping on the night shift , always on strike , underperforming poor workmanship , most of the cars were absolute crap.

I worked in parts for a BL dealer from '74 to '78 - the busiest job known to mankind. I saw one of the launch Princesses come off the transporter. It started and ran, but was utterly gutless. The lads pulled the head off it to find the 2.0l engine was fitted with a 1700 crank. Imagine ...! Then there was the new mini that came off the transporter running on 3. One of the inlet valves was trapped open by a 5/16 UNF nut. The thickness of the nut was greater than the throw of the cam, so it didn't drop in there, it was put there deliberately. Foreign manufacturers didn't kill the UK car manufacturers alone. We had a pretty good hand in it ourselves ... 😢

@brianmorecombe2726

Жыл бұрын

Ill fitted parts were down to distribution errors mainly with BL.Huge management problems and strikes were the eventual demise.I particularly remember the news of TR7s getting exported to Japan and they had to re spray the bodywork on the vehicles.

@bimmeroo0906

Жыл бұрын

wow....amazing story.

@charlesc266

Жыл бұрын

Peter Mc's post reminded me of the learner driver who died when a Mini Metro caught fire putting a stop to all sales and further lack of trust in the British car industry. Volvo Jetta and other foreign made car sales were at a high from that point onward.

@paulthesquid3595

10 ай бұрын

Well'l it was a combination of the two really i think in all honesty BL cars were JUNK and Foreign cars were much better no Two ways about it.

@Billy-The-Goat

23 күн бұрын

that go to show that there's always the attitude to blame every one else for your own failed life. It only make you feel better for a bit then your back to square one and the UK still has this attitude

Interesting you point out the health and safety in U.K Car plant. My Dad worked as a spray painter in Linwood BMC Pressed Steel Div, painting Hillman Imp's. He said the bodies were hung on a constantly moving belt which passed by a team of painters who sprayed hot paint as they passed. Management, sped the line up, without notifying the workers which caused real problems. Someone stuck a large metal rod into the line, stopping all production. Management reset the line speed. My dad was given "Martindale Masks" to prevent the inhalation of paint. These were essentially, large sanitary towels that you would press against your mouth and nose with a soft metal "frame" which attached round your head. One was never enough so my Dad used three or four pads but would still finish the shift coughing up phlegm which was the colour applied that day. The Imp had a big asbestos mattress, colloquially called a "Tottie Scone", which was place in the engine compartment for sound and heat insulation. People who did this job weren't subject to the 1931 Asbestos Industry Regulations, so didn't get masks or routine x rays. Oh aye! Linwood went on strike due to someones lunch being cold..

@hurri7720

Жыл бұрын

I think it's typical for a class society like Britain that the toffs in charge don't give a shit about working conditions and things like that. Just compare any German, French or Swedish factory of anything to a British. I has killed British industrial production because it affects both quality and price too.

@arbjful

Жыл бұрын

Were there any long term health issues due to inhalation of paint, asbestos etc?

@mariuspetit8078

Жыл бұрын

@@arbjful Oh Boy! Now that's the dumbest question, if I ever heard one !

@arbjful

Жыл бұрын

@@mariuspetit8078 why?

@markholroyde9412

Жыл бұрын

@@hurri7720 You obviously don't know how the Trabbant was "built".... H&S, comical, a snowflake word invented decades later🤣

Back in 1969/70 I worked at Triumph's Gearbox Plant in Radford, Coventry, where we made gearbox components and back axles. The air quality was so bad inside the shop that, on a warm day, we couldn't see the opposite wall. In the heat-treat area, there were open drums of cyanide (used to case-harden components) everywhere. How we never killed half the workforce, God alone knows! We were turning out the same components (and on the same machine tools) for the Herald/Spitfire that we had for the Standard 8's and 10's in 1953. Engineering tolerances were +/- 10 thou', meaning that there was a potential 20 thou' slop on every component in the gearbox. One presumes it was the same on all of the driveline components. Four years later I later worked for Nissan, where the tolerance was +1/-0... I also worked for Rover at Solihull, where we had a rectification yard, in which new vehicles with defective parts were held, waiting to be fixed. Chalked on the back of one Series IIA 109" LWB Wagon with Safari Roof were the words, 'Wrong Chassis'. That would have kept the lads busy for quite a while!

@chae_shoko

Жыл бұрын

'wrong chassis' O_O oh my goodness this not good mistake lol it is very interesting read your experiances, living japan iam and i have UK automobile Triumph TR6. I love this despite having many small issue of fitment and such. ❤ From Chiba City

@chrisweeks6973

Жыл бұрын

@@chae_shoko Good for you! Nice to hear that you have a TR6. ❤ I used to own a TR7 Hardtop here in Australia; unfortunately, we got the US de-toxed model, so it was underpowered as well as underbraked. I too had similar issues to those that you have with your car.

@_Ben4810

Жыл бұрын

Huge spikes in cancers found in British Leyland machine shop workers...The cutting & cooling oils were only later found to be carcinogenic & in true British worker style at that time, no one washed their hands when using the bathroom & erm, handling their softest & most delicate of bodily organs(!)....

@chrisweeks6973

Жыл бұрын

@@_Ben4810 I'm not in the least bit surprised. The oils were referred to as 'Suds' and it was by no means unknown for machine operators to rinse their hands in the Suds stream. As for personal hygiene, many workshops still used roller towels; indeed, the washrooms themselves were pretty filthy.

Commonwealth here. Had a Hillman, a Wolseley, two Vanguards, an Austin 7, a Ford Anglia and an Austin Mini. Then came the Japanese vehicles and it did not take people long to realize that they offered more by way of performance, comfort, affordability, reliability, etc. It has been that way ever since, but now we see more and more Chinese vehicles on our roads

I never expected that BMC was already a dysfunctional mess, even before the establishment of British Leyland. The BMC era seemed like an appetizer before things got much worse with the main course.

@Sacto1654

Жыл бұрын

Ford of Europe's decision to combine their UK and continental European operations proved to be a boon for the company from the early 1960's to the early 1990's. No wonder the Cortina, Capri, Escort, Fiesta and Grenada sold in *HUGE* numbers in the UK, if only they were actually reasonably reliable compared to the BMC/British Leyland competition.

@ingvarhallstrom2306

Жыл бұрын

When the ADO16 was introduced, for the first full year it was only available as the Morris 1100 and only for sale at Morris dealerships, because it was such a long time Morris had anything interesting for sale and the company wanted to give them a bone.

@JamesSmith-qs4hx

Жыл бұрын

Better than your current choice of buying a milk float from China.

Owned an MG in 1971. Tore it down and found the valve stems sucking oil. Miked them found them .005 undersize.. Went to the dealer with my micrometer, told him I needed ones with the correct size. He sighed and brought an entire crate of valves to the counter, telling me to go through them until I found 8 that were correctly ground. He said that the factory unions demanded beer in the lunch room. By the end of the day, all the machinists were in the bag and turning out garbage. He said they were dropping their MG franchise because customers were bringing back every car they sold for quality complaints.

@forestghost7

3 ай бұрын

sorry to hear of your bad MG luck. I have owned 22 yrs now a 72 MG B GT, in show cond and driven at least 8K mi 13K km per yr mostly long trips . With a bit of patience, sorting out, and new tech and materials it's become the best all round car I've owned, staying w me forever ❤❤

The seeds of the demise of the British vehicle industry were in it's birth; Britain was "the workshop of the world". A workshop isn't a factory, it's a small scale producer of handmade products by skilled artisans. Much of the British vehicle industry struggled with the idea of scale and - as illustrated here - tended to scale up in ways that were antiquated. Compare the british vehicle industry with Honda of Japan who, when they designed the C50 Cub, designed the machine tools to build it, allowing production to be as effiecient as possible. The UK was still more or less hand building into the seventies and this lack of automation wnet hand in hand with poor management and a lack of understanding of what customers wanted to create poor products which were poorly built by companies which were poorly run.

@billpugh58

7 ай бұрын

How on eath did britain have the ability to build tens of thousands of tanks, vehicles, aircraft in the 1940s?

@stewartellinson8846

7 ай бұрын

@@billpugh58 we struggled; much of the production was in batches and we were much less efficient than the US. We weren't as bad a Germany or Italy in cost per unit terms but we never achieved the economies of scale of the US. in the postwar period, motorcycles were still being made in batches by being pushed along assembly tracks and car assemby was on a much smaller scale than competitor economies. This series talks about some of the problems but it's hard to understand how bad it was. In many way, fordist production benefited from looking at UK production and making it better; we never looked at ourselves though....

I’d love to see you give a similar treatment to the history of British Airways. Going from The World’s Favourite Airline, to an industrial relations nightmare with staff shortages, strikes and regular IT failures now commonplace.

@deanosaur808

Жыл бұрын

Like many British companies, they are no longer British! We have no control over how they are run now.

@klnine

7 ай бұрын

All by design , also

@dsd7004

Ай бұрын

Not even British now i think.

I worked at Carbodies in Coventry in 1966 we converted the Triumph 2000 saloon into the estate they came as a shell minus the boot lid and rear doors we did 12 a day. At that time we also made the Austin taxi the Standard Atlas van the Daimler limousine body and we sprayed the Singer VOGUE ESTATE. The work ethic of men in Carbodies was very good. In 1973 I worked at Chrysler in Coventry for 3 months on the Avenger we had plenty of strikes and the workforce had a couldn't care less attitude to quality.

@terrystevens5261

Жыл бұрын

I had a pre Chrysler Hilman Avenger estate, one of the best cars i ever owned.

@Cdr_Mansfield_Cumming

Жыл бұрын

My word, Carbodies brings back memories. As a kid, I used to play football on the social club pitch over the road at the Alivis Plant. The bus stop by the railway bridge on Holyhead Road used to be next to the doors by the Carbodies factory and I used to watch the blokes making the Taxis in the early 80’s when they kept the doors open. When the factory was being knocked down, my company got the contract and I could see the history in the place and understood why the company was called Carbodies and not London Taxis. So many vast factories are all gone now. I think Peugeot Ryton was the largest in the area.

@T16MGJ

Жыл бұрын

@@Cdr_Mansfield_Cumming "So many vast factories are all gone now." Such rust belts you describe are all over parts of the UK, South Wales and English Midlands particularly. They are not simply a feature of the many parts of the USA.

@Hattonbank

Жыл бұрын

I though that the Daimler Limo was fabricated at Park Sheet Metal, maybe Carbodies did some finishing work plus painting?

@rumcove07

Жыл бұрын

They exported the Avenger to the US and called it the Plymouth Cricket and it did suffer from poor build quality. I own one of five known roadworthy Crickets in the US!

Michael Edwards book about BL is well worth a read. Sloppy, idle incompetent management and marketing destroyed the industry. It is significant that ex BL engineers helped the Korean industry to develop....in the words of one such person that I spoke with "we only did in Korea what British management would not let us do"!

@iainmclaughlan1557

Ай бұрын

Do you know what the book is called? I cannot find it. Thank you

Excellent video - lived through a lot of this. My father was on the line at Leyland Motors for quite a few years, building trucks and later Atlantean bus engines. The original mini - plastic wire internal door handles, a bent nail as an accelerator, rubber on the clutch pedal for de luxe models, and mechanics hating to work on the engines. It could and should have been so much better. Ernest Bevin ensured W German car plants got the union issue sorted post war - one union. Not several bodies managed by wazzocks! It could have happened here. The narrow vision and single expertise of management, at the time, is so striking (no pun intended) today.

@lukewiseman9946

Жыл бұрын

I believe that the union/politics/class issues had a lot to do with the debacle. The unions in Germany were reorganised by the British, as you stated. The differences between the British, German and Japanese systems were known about in Britain, but there was, apparently, no appetite to give up petty privileges for the greater good.

A very good overview of a complex knotty subject. One thing often overlooked is how the Macmillan government assured Lord and Harriman that the UK's entry to the EEC in 1963 was a 'done deal'. As you lay out, BMC did little effective long-term planning but one of the bits it did do was to aim for huge increases in sales in Europe once Britain was in the EEC. That was a large factor behind the '1 million cars per year' target, with a lot of that increase coming from expansion in Europe. That was a factor in BMC's prioritisation of technically and stylistically advanced front-wheel drive product lines, which it was expected would be more to European tastes than British ones. Of course, the UK's entry to the EEC was blocked, leaving BMC reliant on the domestic market and its shrinking and high-cost North American and Commonwealth markets, to make up much of the slack. The Corporation had bet on a long-term high volume/low margin business model and then didn't have the market to sell enough cars to get that volume, while production was hobbled by labour disputes and warranty costs ate into the thin profit margins (where profit existed at all).

@hurri7720

Жыл бұрын

I suggest you just accept the fact that people in car producing countries in Europe weren't by any means overwhelmed with what the British car industry was able to produce. In fact I think they did astonishingly well in Europe. The Mini was very popular for a while, and a Jag was a Jag and so forth, but on the whole Europe produced much better cars, and then the Japanese came. And the rubbish quality of British cars become even more visible.

@jozg44

Жыл бұрын

@@hurri7720 I don't think I need to 'just accept' anything, because it's entirely correct that British cars were behind the pace in all sorts of areas in the 1960s/1970s - reliability and build quality being only two. I'm not remotely trying to blame, excuse or swerve that. But, as Ruairidh's says in the video, a big long-term problem that BMC built up for itself and its successors was "production over product" - they prioritised volume and capacity and all their long-term spending and development plans were based on their desire to be a million-per-year car maker. And a key part of that was going to be tariff-free access to the European market post-1963, which was when BMC was assured that the UK would enter the Common Market. When that didn't happen, BMC was left with the fallout from loads of wrong strategies - the wrong product strategy, the wrong marketing strategy, the wrong financial strategy and so on. Had the UK been in the EEC in the 1960s you're absolutely right that BMC (and the other British makers) would have equally struggled because its products were not good enough in all sorts of ways to the domestic competition. But that's an alternative history, not what actually happened.

@terrystevens5261

Жыл бұрын

@@hurri7720 Apart from the luxury brands in Europe, most of what it produced was dross as well. no better or worse than what the UK produced.

@hurri7720

Жыл бұрын

@@terrystevens5261 , I don't quite agree at all. It's hard to find anything in Britain that would compare with say the 2CV and Citroën DS or the Volkswagen and the Kleinbus. Fiat 500 and why not Saab and Volvo too.

@fredyellowsnow7492

Жыл бұрын

@@terrystevens5261 That's very true of a lot of makes in Europe at the time. The mechanical bits were often quite good, but electrically and bodywise the Continental mass producers didn't really have much to teach the UK car industry. Everyone there and here produced crap that didn't last long. Nobody undersealed or galvanised, nobody gave a stuff about trim fit or rattle and leaks. Of course, in the upmarket segments things were a lot better.

Macmillan's econonic mirage you mean. It caused overmanning helped, along with the militant trade unions and lack of investment into the business, lead to falling productivity and the devaluation of the Pound in 1967.

@huwzebediahthomas9193

Жыл бұрын

Rubbish! Tory management, public school and Oxbridge educated - they were worse than useless.

@T16MGJ

Жыл бұрын

A scenario which now infests the UK Public Sector to this very day. Riddled with modern day "Red Robbo" Union clones and their harmful to the Nation cries of .. EVERYBODY OUT Will make things far worse. Things can only get .. far worse.

Can’t wait for part 2!

@huwzebediahthomas9193

Жыл бұрын

Deserves at least ten parts.

@DaveSCameron

Жыл бұрын

#spoiler Death

@housemana

Жыл бұрын

@@DaveSCameron shut up weirdie

The early years were plagued with the British class system mentality which was never going to work when your business relies on cooperation between management and producers. Making vehicles then by hand with basic tech requires everyone in the process to be efficient and reliable to have good productivity with a predictable outcome which is why in later years the industry became more automated. It’s easy to look back now and see that the car industry in its earliest form was doomed to failure in the uk. We still have some of these problems from the past today which might explain why anything British is either a disaster or overly expensive and ends up in foreign hands.

@danimayb

Жыл бұрын

Nail on the head! Some things just never change in this country, And is one of the main reasons we are not self-made super prosperous, And our leaders are pig headed one track blind sighted fools! They prefer the quick easy bucks placing overwhelming favour over foreign investment and import rather than make something of their country and it's people.

Good video and learned some new-to-me tidbits, though I feel a couple clarifications are in order: 1) Of the American brands you listed, Mercury was not an existing marque that was hoovered up like Buick, Oldsmobile, Lincoln and Cadillac were, but was created whole-cloth by Ford to plug the rather mammoth price gap that existed between Ford and Lincoln in the immediate pre-WW2 years. 2) While GM's five American car divisions did have their own management structures, it's worth remembering that there also wasn't a massive amount of parts sharing, either. Yes, things like inner body structures/stampings, transmissions, axles and other components had commonality, but things like exterior panels, engines (At one point, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick all made their own unique 350 cubic inch V8s.), interiors, chassis and chassis tuning were devised separately, a practice that only really began to go away in the mid- to late-1970s. And there were a good many multi-brand GM dealers back in the day, often tandems that were one or two rungs apart on Alfred Sloan's prestige ladder; for example, my hometown had a combination Chevrolet and Oldsmobile dealer in the 1950s, but it also had a standalone Pontiac store a couple blocks to the west during that same period. Looking forward to the next three installments of the series.

I think we can say that, if Britain had an equivalent to the US Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, permission for the Pressed Steel merger would have been refused.

I thnk BMC launced the mini as the Morris Mini Minor or Austin 7, not an Austin Mini. There was also , later, a Riley Elf and Wolesley Hornet too

@MySteaming

Жыл бұрын

Yes. You are correct. Even early in the life of the original mini, the Austin 7 always seemed to have a more 'up market' & desirable image than the Moris Mini Minor. The front grill in particular was far more stylish on the Austin 7 than on the Moris Mini Minor. But both suffered from awful design flaws & build quality. The electrical connections for the Headlights & Indicators under the front wings for example. Totally exposed to mud & wet, they used to 'rot out' very rapidly. I bought a 1963 Mini Minor in 1968 & it failed the MOT that year due to rear sub-frame rot. I put a new sub-frame on myself in the back yard with the car jacked up on bricks 😂 The sub-frame cost me about £11 pounds to buy brand new... I kept the car until 1971. The sills had totally rotted & were replaced by me with Baked Bean Tins, pop riveted on and covered with black sticky underseal. 😂 But, all cars were crap in those days, cheaply made but expensive to buy for working people. Car workers were the prima donnas & cosseted workforce of the British working population. Their industrial power & constant striking killed the goose that laid the golden egg in Britain & allowed the Japanese to fill the void. Ultimately the Japs made a far better product than us & (just as importantly) the Japs gave the customer what they wanted & asked for in the way of extras & driver comforts. Our motorcycle industry suffered in exactly the same way to the onslaught of the Japs. We won the war & the Japs won the peace. Now Brits don't own any Industry & have become the slave labour to foreign ownership...

@neville132bbk

Жыл бұрын

I bought a 2nd hand Hornet in Dunedin in 1975... should have kept and fully restored it but as a low paid teacher....sold it two years later and bought a 16/60 instead...grey of course....dream to drive even on cross play tyres

@Mrtomcree

Жыл бұрын

I remember the Riley elf, many were taught to drive in it by a Miss Fairy in Skipton.

True. The current Rolls, Bentley, Aston Martin and McLaren ranges are brilliant (but none of them are completely UK owned). The modern Mini is brilliant. The Ford and Vauxhall ranges are brilliant, but they are looking like they might be sacrificed on the altar of 'Net Zero.' Jaguar and Lotus are looking very shaky. So, the problem aren't over yet...

Thanks for this. A lot I didn’t know. There’s a lot of Clarksonesque mythology out there about the British motor industry. Glad to see someone take a more balanced approach. The lack of market research and over focus of production volume in BMC is quite astonishing. While they were concentrated on cut price badge engineering, most other car builders were off designing cars people actually wanted rather than an appliance to get from A to B. But this is the story across much of post-war British industry who never seemed to get over the idea of the singular ‘big boss’ version of management which seemed more suited to the gentlemen’s clubs of London that the cut and thrust of a rapidly modernizing industry.

@maxant4285

Жыл бұрын

Clarksonesque 😂

@rob5944

Жыл бұрын

Clarkson behaves like an idiot anyway, but I would say that VW conducts badge engineering quite extensively, and successfully. I fail to see much difference, I suspect this is mainly due to the image that certain brands have acquired over time. One can apply this ideology, for that's what it is, to other consumables, not just cars. Even when the manufacturer is caught breaking the law on a huge scale, it's products still remain popular.

@Whatshisname346

Жыл бұрын

@@rob5944 On badge engineering; I should have qualified, ‘poorly’ badge engineered. I’ve personally no issue with platform sharing; it’s great for economies of scale and keeps production costs down. The issue with BMC badge engineering was that it was so obvious and basically amounted to brands such as Wolseley, MG and triumph being more like trim levels rather than different models. Contrast this with something like the Audi 80 and Volkswagen Passat which, although they operated in the same market segment and shared a platform; there were significantly different to justify similar price points and levels of desirability.

@blah7956

Жыл бұрын

Yeah but the unions really didn't help did they? Though by then the industry was past saving, they just didn't know it

@rob5944

Жыл бұрын

@@Whatshisname346 I partly agree. Some versions of say the Mini featured wood and leather, different front and rear ends. In the case of the Allegro they were sent of to be completely rebuilt to a higher standard too. So in a way, one could argue that BL was trailblazing a concept for others to follow decades later. Whether it was done well is another issue. In the case of VAG they still manage to shift cars despite a mediocre rating in customer satisfaction surveys for quite some time now and, as we all know, the clandestine circumventing of emissions regulations. Japanese and South Korean cars come tops according to my research.

It's interesting to hear how destructive the egotistical drives of the wrong man at the top can be. The more I learn the more I realise it wasn't just workers strking that was the problem, there was a serious absence of quality management throughout the company in its various forms.

@MrJimheeren

Жыл бұрын

All over the world the demise of a company is never the fault of the workers. It’s always upper management that is fucking up. And the British upper class is the worst of all. Better working conditions never brought a company down, greedy management on the other hand do it all the fucking time

@smellbag

Жыл бұрын

12 men to do the work of 6 does seem a bit excessive - same problems afflicted the Australian car industry which went the same way as the dodo,- kaput.

@th8257

4 ай бұрын

A lot of blame to go around. The car industry is really the story of wider British industry since the late 1800s. Brought down by a combination of chronic underinvestment, appalling labour relations and poor management. Added to that, an innate conservatism that wouldn't move to new products and techniques, and a huge level of complacency which had arisen from the captive markets of the Empire. As early as 1900, Andrew Carnegie was saying that British industry was being left in the dust by Germany and the USA because British firms were using machinery and techniques that even then were 20 years out of date.

The Japanese car industry had a fair bit to do with the demise of the British car industry too, especially in the export markets by producing reliable, well-engineered, mass-market cars at an affordable price for the former colonies. Here in New Zealand, British cars became renowned for their poor quality. A sad state of affairs for the UK. Of course, joining the EEC put the final nail in the coffin of trade in manufactured goods with the rest of the world. You could also throw in the drive to become a financialised and service economy too.

@GSimpsonOAM

Жыл бұрын

The factory at Lower Hutt was done to soak up unemployment and a lack of sufficiently skilled people meant poor quality assembly' I have an early Austin Allegro. I met a worker from the Lower Hutt factory that stated the design of the Allegro was rubbish and that he had driven one new from Wellington to Auckland and had broken down 3 times. I suggested my now 40 year old Allegro could do the journey without issue and perhaps it was build quality / poor workmanship of the new car? He changed the subject quickly. The poor build quality of even Japanese cars in NZ ended in the deserved demise of the NZ car industry. The 2nd hand imports finished it off. They got it right in the 90's but was too little too late. (I have NZ assembled 1992 Toyota 4Runner that is great)

@Mcfreddo

Жыл бұрын

@@GSimpsonOAM ah, but listening to fitzees fabrications, the Japanese used recycled steel in their cars and it wasn't refined well enough and rusted easily. Much wasn't painted inside in those body parts as well. This is in canada too. I remember the creeping body rust issues of cars in nz. Imported bare steel sections; coated in oil for exporting purposes, assembled in nz, but were only steam cleaned and not dunked in a tank. So yeah, crapy, cheap arsed assembly techniques. My father bought a holden kingswood back in the day. A reliable car, but a dreadful rust bucket. Not painted inside panels either. This had to come from the American owners from the top. They don't give a rats. Should have been sued.

@Colt45hatchback

Жыл бұрын

Yeah i agree, why would anyone buy a morris minor 1000 in the late 60's when you could get a datsun 1000, it didnt rust, looked modern, always worked and wasnt too expensive to buy or look after. Then when it came time to upgrade, the car was generally still in good condition and could be sold on as apposed to scrapped or forgotten about behind a shed. My dad didnt trust japanese cars at first, he always had a european car, renault, vw, vauxhall, then he got given a toyota crown by a friend of his whos son had bought it as a gift for him when he got promoted, the friend of dads hated the japanese due to war propaganda, so proceeded to sabbotage the car by mostly draining the oil and going for a long drive, when it inevitably spun a bearing, he left it there with key inside and was laughing to my dad about it. My dad asked if he could have it, and he said sure the jap craps on the highway near the servo. My dad put a new engine in it, and had a 3 month old car with 1000 miles on the clock for next to nothing. Had it for the next 10 years and never had a european car again untill he got mum a peugeot 504, which quickly got replaced with a toyota corona when he saw how much work it would be to put a clutch in the peugeot. Mum neglected that corona for 20 years, and it still wasnt dead when she sold it, just badly needed a timing chain and hadnt been washed in the 12 years since she left dad.

@GSimpsonOAM

Жыл бұрын

@@Mcfreddo I worked on my sisters Honda Civic (NZ assembled). I found the under-dash area was completely unpainted. Having scrap added to steel manufacture is normal and the grades tested during manufacture. I suspect the Japanese "recycled steel " story is an urban legend like the "Russian" steel" the Italians allegedly used. Virtually all vehicles rusted prior to 1980 and it was normal in the UK to strip your new car to have it waxoiled / fishoilined and underbody seal. The rust issue with NZ built Japanese cars was down to protective oil not being removed and inadequate painting methods. Having to have rust repairs at the first WOF was not unusual. (at 18 months from new) A friend had his 1985 Subaru written off due to rust at first WOF. He did live in seaside town but even so....

@Mcfreddo

Жыл бұрын

@@GSimpsonOAM oh. I disassembled a ford escort (english) to paint and it had original paint everywhere. The only patches of rust were in the front guards. Back and behind where the suspension strut securing area is, in the panel part that's near to the A pillars. Never rusted anywhere else. How long have they had static charged paining systems? That pulls paint everywhere. Draws it in really. There's been dipping bodies for ever as well. I think there never was an excuse not to finish vehicles properly?

My Mother drove an A55 before buying a Mini in the early 1960s. One time the fan belt broke on the Mini so we got out the complimentary tool kit that came with the car only to find none of the 'spanners' would fit as they were metric but the bolts etc. used were imperial (or maybe it was the other way around).

Wow, an excellent video! I've been curious about this subject for ages; as an American, I never knew much about the UK auto industry until recently. Getting a whole multi-part series about it is fantastic! Such a shame to hear ego and rivalry getting in the face of progress. I'm not pro-progress all the time, but, in this case, I find it lamentable that more was not achieved.

@BJHolloway1

Жыл бұрын

It gets worse - wait until you find out about how the Rover management screwed them up.

@tjm3900

11 ай бұрын

As a Brit coming to North America I have seen much the same disease in the US car industry, in that for years they have Blinkers on with regards to what overseas manufacturers were doing, and assume customers will continue to buy domestic cars out of .........Patriotism ? So they continue to produce outdated crap with shoddy workmanship.

Looking forward to the rest of the series. So many nuances to the story. Nice transition at 12:13 btw.

Being born and bred in Coventry, growing up in the street at the top of Rootes Hall, Canterbury Street, where Roots base of operations grew from and having family that all worked in the car industry. I cry at watching this. From being very young in the local school next to the GEC plant, we were groomed to become car workers upon leaving school. From the point of starting my schooling we had, Austin Morris, Leyland, Talbot, Triumph, Jaguar, Alvis, Standard, Massey Ferguson, Damlier, Car Bodies, Peugeot, BMW, Lucas Aerospace, Hillman and Chrysler. Today, only Jaguar and the successor to Car Bodies, LTC, WMG and NAIC remain in the city. Oh the days!

Excellent programme! Great research.

Excellent, subbed. Bring on part 2

absolute amazing work

Its worse than a horror movie. You know there is a 80 foot Megladon called British Leyland out there, but you just don't where it is yet.

As a former owner for 4 years of a, bought from new, 1966 BMC Morris Mini, it was an absurdly miserable/lousy built car and even the front screen leaked in water in the corners! Plus all the other places water came in! The doorframes I had to bend in with a knee in between, to meet the body + the paint peeled off round the hinges from the lousy cleaning process, before the paint being applied. Its mechanical function was also lousy. The heater had two positions, on and off! First gear had no synchromesh, and the wipers had to be stopped manually, when finishing operating, as they just stopped anywhere on the screen if not. It soon became a habit to do it, of course.

@keithcitizen4855

Жыл бұрын

My opinion of the Australian Ford car industry my xc falcon Ute squealing clutch from day one almost , the Leyland p76 was a Lemon but had a good engine perhaps.

@deanosaur808

Жыл бұрын

In other news.. 1966 was a fairly good year! ⚽ 😂😂😂

@Bevrinton

Жыл бұрын

But apart from that was you happy with the vehicle.

A perfect insight into a once great fully local motor industry, who self harmed itself out of existence.

Wonderful video and great research. I followed BMC and the end of Leyland Australia closely and I hope you cover this in part of your story. The P76 was a last grab from the local management and I was there when the last Force 7 V (the P76 Coupe) were auctioned off for very little money.

Thaank you for an excellent work.

Great content. Thank you

The Austin 1100 was introduced in October 1963, fully 10 months after the Morris 1100. You forgot to mention that William Morris hired Leonard Lord, then declined to remunerate him properly for his work, so he left to join Austin, whom he succeeded. So it is not surprising that Lord disliked Morris.

I had a friend that owned a jaguar in the early seventies, it was so bad he left the car in NYC with the keys in the ignition hoping someone would steal it. To his shock and surprise, the car was still there after a month on the street!

@peekaboo1575

11 ай бұрын

Maybe the thieves couldn't get the car to start, lol.

The inefficiency of the British car industry is typical of the entire British industry.

@XNick291X

Жыл бұрын

Yep, just look at the rail industry or the NHS.

that was really interesting - looking forward to Pt 2!

Thank you from New Zealand. My Grandfather got a Job at a Triumph/Leyland at 15 years old and retired at 65.

@MrPolicekarim

Жыл бұрын

From 15 to 50! That's amazing!

Thank you for the high-quality Contant, keep up the good work.

I can only add to what others have said - A brilliant and detailed series, well done and thank you!

Wow - I learned a LOT from this video. Thank you. ☮

Very nicely documented. I worked in a car spares shop in the 80`s and you could get parts for most things. As well as learning a lot about cars myself, most BL and Austin cars needed a Haynes manual. Then so did Fords. To own a car on 70`s 80`s you had to be a self taught mechanic, because things would go wrong. Not big things but small things. Changing the brushes in an alternator became a standard job, so did changing the clutch etc. You could tinker with a car because they were not complicated at all and the Haynes books were written very simply and gave you the confidence to have a go yourself. The truth is that foreign cars are better made, last longer and better value for money. Even though I did enjoy doing a service on my daughters 03 VW Polo. UK car brands are still sort after but maybe better investment would have helped. Also the lack of solidarity between within the manufacturers and then within the unions. They all wanted to be top dog, both manufactures and unions. In this case, competition from within forced a demise to the industry after Maggie would later advocate that competition made things cheaper.

Great video. British population and industry learned their lesson the hard way. The post-war afterglow of empire and the advantages it conferred squandered by petty territorial and personal disputes in the boardroom and later this behaviour was echoed on the shop floor. Same issues occured right across British Industry at that time. Its was the era of the "Great growing-up" . Whereas, the nations defeated in WW2 went on to prosper during this period possibly through a combination of their backs being really being against the wall. If their countries were to be re-built from the devastation of WW2 they had to co-operate. The whole process of restoring the defeated countries was bolstered by massive investment from the USA through Marshall Aid, something which UK industry didn't really embrace during this period. No way back now !

@buttyboy100

Жыл бұрын

European countries were devastated by war and effectively started from scratch after May 1945. In Britain it was a continuation of the old system with the same class system and outdated attitudes, laced by a hefty dose of exceptionalism.

The EEC did not include 'Scandinavia' when set up it was just Six, the BeNeLux trio plus Italy, Germany and France. Denmark did not join until the UK did so in 1973 with RoIreland. That made just nine members. The Swedes and Finns joined much later than that, mid 90s. Norway never joined. The UK had already set up EFTA with the Scandinavians and Swiss. Spain, Portugal and Greece were like the Eastern Bloc totalitarian/ military dictatorships and could not join until well into the 1980s.

Spot on and some interesting perspectives. Might have been worth pointing out that BMC also made trucks, buses and tractors, even Prestcold refrigerators and Bendix washing machines. Nevertheless, it's great to point out how poor/political the management was and how badly treated/ignored the workforce was (leaving them to reply on union influence) - something that Rover Group fixed with the help of Honda, etc.

@zerocool5395

Жыл бұрын

I'm in the automotive computer business, some brands use Bendix computers, are those the same people?

@thomasfrancis5747

Жыл бұрын

@@zerocool5395 Sort of - according to Wikipedia Bendix licensed the name but never built domestic appliances themselves.

This is a story also told in the book 'Wheels of Misfortune' (The rise and fall of the British motor industri) But more detailed. I recomend this book.

I know little of the UK auto industry, and it's sad to see how it ended up, my favorite car is the Aston Martin DB5 that James Bond drove in Goldfinger (1964)

@tonygray6587

Жыл бұрын

Try Aston Martin, not Austin Martin !

@supa3ek

Жыл бұрын

@@tonygray6587 try Austin powers, not aston martin 😉

It seems like Leonard Lord is a really terrible person, he's appeared to have both intentionally and accidentally started the decline of the British Motor industry with his decisions, even from the very beginning.

@aliabdallah102

Жыл бұрын

An evil englishman? If only we’d had thousands of years of prior warnings of such things. Oh wait. Yeah.

The Austin/Moris cars ended up being absolute crap. My father bought an Austin A40 in about 1957, it was made in the UK and had what was called a sunshine roof. The only advantage the A40 had was that the engine was accessible, which to needed to be. The sunshine roof leaked every time it rained, and the Australian local distributor tried vainly to stop the leaking roof. In 1964, when I visited England i bought a Morris Mini Van which was to be my mobile home for some seven plus months. It too was a heap of poorly made crap, I travelled approximately 18,000 miles around the UK and Europe. During this time the gearbox had to be replaced FIVE times!!!! The last time it failed it was locked in reverse gear. I had to drive ten miles in reverse gear to Acton Motors, London's largest Morris dealer. The time they told me it would take to replace the gearbox was three weeks!!! So, I was without accommodation for three weeks. Fortunately, I found an el cheapo tour to Morocco that cost less than accommodation in London. The Morris Mini Van when crossing across the Grossglockner Pass between Austria and Yugoslavia, could not travel for more than 500 yards without boiling so the trip over the mountain range was a very slow and frustrating one. In 1967 I was married to a lass that had an Austin 1800, it too was a bomb., twice the radiator dropped onto the fan blades and three times the air support "springs" collapsed leaving a long drive home with the three people sitting in the back, on one occasion, sitting on each other's laps for some 80 miles until we reached home. My then wife like the comfort of the 1800 and the local dealer assured us that about 130 faults had been removed from the new models, this may have been true but the new model had another batch of faults that made it a dangerous car to drive and, always driven, with the fear we would be stranded on lonely country roads where we liived. This happened several times causing us to get rid of the 1800 at a huge loss to buy VW passenger van that ran like a dream for years without any trouble. The German product was streets ahead of the crap made in the UK

Very informative, thanks for the detailed research and video. Cheers

Excellent piece - summarises a messy complex story nicely. And is the best example of the poor middle and higher business management that destroyed many Britiosh industries postwar. Maybe a better stockmarket in Britain to at least be comparable to Wall Street would have made business leadership a bit more commercially motivated rather than the top men being decent engineers over their head leading companies.

The later merger with Leyland was the death sentence of BMC. The failure of management to recognize the importance of exporting cars like the 1800 to the United States, where the market for compacts was steadily growing was another shortfall of management that was too focused on the domestic and Commonwealth markets. This missed opportunity opened the door to Japanese auto makers who flooded the markets with smaller cars from 1968 until the 1973 Energy Crisis came around and really made them a force to be reckoned with.

@stephenarbon2227

Жыл бұрын

It wasn't a merger, a near bankrupt BMC was more or less given to Leyland by the government, although some have described it as being conned by the government. Leyland was at that time a reasonably successful bus & truck maker, that exported around the world. It had not long before acquired a small collection of car makers, eg Triumph, but obviously didn't have the time, finance or management resources to fix BMC and still continue to develop its heavy vehicle line, and ending up destroying both businesses.

@hurri7720

Жыл бұрын

Being British is something absolutely outstanding for a Brit but not for anybody else.

Super video, cannot wait for the next! I won't presume that my question to you 2 weeks ago, in your "Rover R30 - The Car That Killed Rover" video, played any part in your decision to take a very deep dive in this fascinating subject matter, but still: Thank you so much for your excellent work! :) Some of my favorite youtube content, bar none!

Cars in the UK came out of the factory, rusty and falling to bits, two cars I bought in the 70's had to be treated for rust less than 1 year old & the quality of parts were shoddy with rip off spares prices...I remember repairing parts with strips of Meccano that were a lot cheaper & lasted...

Seems like the perfect combo of government, management, and labor, almost all mooches, while the innovators were kept pressed under their collective thumbs. Ayn Rand, more or less, described this perfectly.

@MrJimheeren

Жыл бұрын

Seriously Ayn Rand. The sweat of your own brow lady

11:52 Wow, that beetle dwarfs the mini!

great presentation. it fills in the gaps of my own personal knowledge of how the British car industry was destroyed.

Great informative and interesting video , regards mark

great vid roll on part 2

I can remember an old advert for a Malaysian car manufacturer. The headline was: “Built by intelligent robots that never go on strike.” The British workers were hurt and greatly offended.

@jonnyc429

Жыл бұрын

So offended were they by this comment, they went on strike immediately.

@deanosaur808

Жыл бұрын

So offended, we made sure very few protons survived in the UK 🥳🥳🥳😛

Top quality research and a very even handed explanation. The visuals are great too! Can’t wait for part 2.

Outstanding video!

The only Living UK / British car companies: • Jaguar, Land Rover _(Bought by TATA)_ • Rolls-Royce, Mini _(Bought by BMW)_ • Aston Martin • Vauxhall _(partner of Opel since 1980, Bought by GM, later sold to Stellantis)_ • MG cars _(Bought by SAIC)_ • Lotus _(Bought by Geely)_ • Bentley _(Bought by VW)_ • McLaren

@terrystevens5261

Жыл бұрын

And Morgan, Caterham, westfield, plus numerous successful kitcar companies.

@Hattonbank

Жыл бұрын

What about our aviation industry, world leader 60 yeasrs ago, just a parts maker now, steel industry, foreign owned, water, gas, electricity, foreign owned, Barclays, HSBC, Santander, foreign owned. 60% of UK manufacturing foreign owned, so its a British not just a car industry problem.

@deanosaur808

Жыл бұрын

@Bernard McGrail Rolls-Royce Holdings is still British! Sure a jet engine is a part. but it's a big part nevertheless 🥳

Fascinating video, some things in there that I was not aware of. Being 64 I lived through much of this period and remember the endless disputes well. Pity the English don’t learn from history, we are about to go through massive changes in the car industry, opportunity abounds and where are we, nowhere, everything’s foreign owned we get the scraps. All the money is flowing to Asia and China, I predict prices will continue to rise probably to a point where we can’t afford to have cars, we are there now but for PCP’s…..

@jonnyc429

Жыл бұрын

I think we've still got the mindset that we don't have anything to prove and we lean too heavily on our past still. Until we have leaders who want to push us forward and not just rely on "we used to be a great country", we'll just slip further behind.

@Steve-rv1ql

Жыл бұрын

@@jonnyc429 Exactly this, empire thinking without the empire, probably need to loose the monarchy, House of Lords and other relics from the past. On the the up side I think we still have strength in depth, anything is still possible in the UK if we accept that it’s not right and you have to work for it. Life is to easy for too many, we need strong focused leadership, long term thinking more investment in new tech, renewable energy being one. .

What an incredible amount of information.

I believe at one time BMC lost £40-00 on every Mini they sold, once average warranty cost per unit was entered into the equation...

Can't wait for part 2 of this.

Very interesting, indeed. Seen many Austin cars in my youth and everybody hated their quality and problems.

A good potted history, thanks for that, particularly the rivalry between lod and others. After a 1st watch I have some observations. 1) In common with many British owned companies, the investment in R&D was pathetic (you mentioned Marketing only in this respect). This was evidenced particularly in the Austin Gypsy, MGA Twin cam & austin 1800 (later the Triump Stag, Range Rover, Austin Alegro .....). This meant that well thought out products were released to the public in effectively pre-production status with the attendant unreliability. The 3 models stated first achieved such a poor image that no one wanted thenm so that, when the properly developed Mark 2 was released buyers had shopped elsewhere. I took a gamble (& lost) to buy a quasi secondhand MG2.0i in 1990, a potentially very good car except.... This illustrated the lack of R&D combined with lack of market analysis. i will leave my detailed observations for another time. 2) Under capitalisation. The famous story of the Jaguar paint shop that could never deliver a metallic painted car with all the panels the same shade ! 3) Availability on day 1: When Ford released the mark 1 Capri with the brilliant advertising slogan "The Car you've always promised yourself" it was possible to walk into a showroom on day 1 and purchase one of the 30,000 already built. in contrast, when the Austin 1800 was released there were just 500 available. When the Range Rover was released there were so few available that there was a black market for well over a year as Rover had not realised that people other than wealthy farmers might want one in order to look like a wealthy farmer. 4) As a note to the strikes, the most common stated reason was "parity with the midlands" meaning the wages that the piece work employees were able to make due to the manipulation of the system to their advantage, the famous Tally Clerks. This also extended to Rootes Group strikes in Coventry. One of Ford's biggest strikes "The Orange juice strike" was considered to have been created by management to half production. 4) Both Citroën & Renault had assembly plants in the UK that did not count as imports but in 1967 car imports to the UK passed the 50% level. The 1st effective Japanese imports to the UK being Toyota, Daihatsu in 1965 & Honda S800 in 1967. 5) The poor build quality, design & unreliability lost most overseas sales to German, French then Japanese manufacturers. It is therefore ironic that the Japanese imported the Austin A60 somerset in CKD form due to their quality and reliability; how the wheel turned !

Excellent, thank you. My early driving years where with BMC cars, amazing how long they kept the "A and B" series engines in use. The engines were very poor, you would only get 30-4000 miles before a rebore and crankshaft regrind, and a quick spray of gold paint to make it look like a gold seal engine. Remember "running in, please pass". I had thought the main industrial relations were in the Red Robbo era, but it appears there were many faults much earlier in the management side as well.

What a sad story, I visited their plants in1975 as a dealer delegate and could see the downward trend that was taking place.

You mean assembly line workers got paid based on how many widgets they produced or attached??? Thats nuts! Someone would have to keep track of all those workers' individual outputs! Youd have whole buildings dedicated to holding those file folders. And what possible benefit could it have? An assembly line moves at a fixed speed, theyll pretty much all do the same amount of work.

@emjayay

Жыл бұрын

Certainly not done anywhere else. A legacy of the workshop.

Outstanding series…👍👍👍

Very interesting upload as always. One point the Morris Mini Minor and 1100 were launched before the Austin '7' (later known as the Austin Mini) and 1100.

@irsw51

Жыл бұрын

Certainly the Morris 1100 was launched a year before the Austin but if the Mini-minor came before the Se7en it was only by a day or two.

Brilliant, thank you. The first analysis that delves deeply into the issues from the start of the industry I’m seeing on KZread.

@shanedoyle1057

Жыл бұрын

Jeremy Clarkson did a piece on it a few years ago think it’s on KZread.

Hope we see you at 100k very soon!

I always thought the downfall of the British car industry was due to the whole British Leyland creation. Seems it started before that with BMC.

@mervynstent1578

Жыл бұрын

I often wonder if Leyland Motors would have survived today if they didn’t get involved with BMC! As Rover, Triumph & Leyland Trucks-Buses were quite profitable before the disastrous merger with BMC in 1968

@Hattonbank

Жыл бұрын

Don't forget that Ford, Vauxhall and Rootes Group were wholly independent operations in those days before their styling and engineering was hived off to their European counterparts in Cologne and Russelsheim, and in Rootes case, sold to Chrysler then Peugeot. All of them subsequently closed their UK car production plants with the exception of Vauxhall in Ellesmere Port. So if you look at it in its entirety, what was left over from BL days, namely JLR and Mini, now exceeds in volume and value, the rest of the UK car industry, which is chiefly Japanese owned.

@jonnyc429

Жыл бұрын

​​@@mervynstent1578 Leyland may well have existed today. It was BMC who hadn't thought for the future and planned ahead. Would be a cool alternate reality to see the Leyland brands still going and probably operating as middle luxury marques.

@paulthesquid3595

Жыл бұрын

@@mervynstent1578 WEll'l they went from junk to super junk just about sums it up i think in all honesty there

@edwardbrown3721

7 ай бұрын

​@@mervynstent1578Leyland was more financially stable, more innovative and more nimble than BMC meaning it'd have adapted better I'm sure not only would it have survived, it'd have eventually eaten up parts of BMC after it's inevitable collapse, thus becoming one of the largest car manufacturers in Europe.

This narration albeit a very interesting film is far too rushed unlike the production of BMC during the 1970s. I'm glad that you also showed the awful turning circle of a Series 1 Morris Minor. My Dad had one and it was impossible to accomplish a three point turn in most suburban streets.

I was brought up in the 80s so im far too young to offer much insight but i do remember circa 1988 a neighbour owned an X reg Austin Allegro that attracted much curiosity simply by still being on the road! OMG build quality must have been truly dreadful!

Yeah, now in Europe we have mostly "German" "Das Auto", made in Mexico, Poland, Russia.

@MrJimheeren

Жыл бұрын

What are you talking about. Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Romania the Czech Republic all have strong auto industries. France has tree big companies alone. Renault, Citroën, Peugeot

@deanosaur808

Жыл бұрын

@Jim Heeren correct answer is two! 😉

@HEMI345S

Жыл бұрын

​@@deanosaur808 And those milking Chrysler of $$$$$$$$$, the same way like the Nazis did in early 2000s 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

@Tobi-ln9xr

4 күн бұрын

@@MrJimheeren Spain‘s Seat and Cupra are owned by Volkswagen, Italys Lamborghini and Ducati are also owned by Volkswagen, Czech Republic’s Skoda is also owned by Volkswagen, Romania‘s Dacia is owned by Renault, Italy‘s Lancia, Fiat, Abarth and Alfa Romeo are owned by Stellantis as well as France‘s Peugeot and Citroën. No, most of these countries don’t have a strong car industry. The global car industry is dominated by a few very large companies which own most of the existing car companies. For example the Volkswagen Group, Mercedes-Benz Group, BMW Group, Stellantis, GM, Geely Group, Hyundai, Toyota etc.

Nash Metropolitan! The car my folks ditched after I was born - too tiny! Wow, never thought I would hear that name again. Thanks as always for this great series of vids.🎉

Superb Video Thank you looking forward to the next Thank you. The UK car industry story is a metaphor for modern Britain am afraid!

Very interesting!

My first car was a Morris 1100, and back in the day Morris was seen as the more luxurious in comparison to the cheap Austin brand. I grew up near Longbridge, and still remember the evil of the trade union excesses. That's what destroyed the company.

@nevillewran4083

Жыл бұрын

A one-eyed view of history when you could have had some first-hand perspective, but chose not to.

Early congrats on 100,000 subs

Congratulations on your upcoming 100k subs, well deserved! 👏

@2:10 worth noting a small error: Mercury wasn’t an acquisition. It was an entirely new division of Ford, started by Edsel Ford, and part of a comprehensive ladder-step marketing plan that included the Deluxe Ford of 1938 and the Lincoln-Zephyr of 1936

Absolutely cannot wait for more parts to this. It’s an excellent subject. Any idea of when it will be uploaded?

@smellbag

Жыл бұрын

He's on strike for longer meal breaks.

@johnnywadd3020

Жыл бұрын

but u must

Congrats on 100k subs!

The green with black fender car (@5:13) has Volkswagen Beatle front head-lights!

It’s not surprising the car ‘industry’ failed in the uk

Really the story of wider British industry since the late 1800s. Brought down by a combination of chronic underinvestment, appalling labour relations and poor management. Added to that, an innate conservatism that wouldn't move to new products and techniques, and a huge level of complacency which had arisen from the captive markets of the Empire. As early as 1900, Andrew Carnegie was saying that British industry was being left in the dust by Germany and the USA because British firms were using machinery and techniques that even then were 20 years out of date.

Looks like De Gaulle was right in his sentiments about Britain 😆 it has come to pass..

Saturday morning, crumpets and coffee and a good video for breakfast.😃

Very interesting video. One comment at 5.44 ish you have narrative of the Morris minor but most of the accompanying visuals are for the Morris Oxford. They are visually similar at first glance but the heavy cast grille is instantly recognisable and a substantially larger car.

Anyone know why the British don't build computers? They couldn't figure out how to make them leak oil. I am the owner of a 1963 Healey mkIII .... It's okay

@terrystevens5261

Жыл бұрын

GT Britain built the first programable computer.

@johnking1381

Жыл бұрын

😂😂😂

@arbjful

Жыл бұрын

The BBC Micro built by acorn computers, I learnt programming on that machine. Before that is the ZX40 by Sinclair, we used to play games on that, the TV used to be the monitor, the keyboard was membrane type, there was a 8 bit extra add on ROM that you could plug in for extra memory. The games/programs were loaded using a cassette. Oh the memories they come flooding back. Yes the British did make computers…

@terrystevens5261

Жыл бұрын

@@arbjful I was thinking about Colossus developed in 1943 for the purpose of cracking German codes at Bletchley park. the Americans claimed to be the first but their effort was in 1948.

@arbjful

Жыл бұрын

@@terrystevens5261 true. Code breaking was invented by the British.

8;04 got me. The European Union set up so the Country's could compete ON EQUAL TERMS??????? Yes, is this why the vote went the way it did.