UK car production is in a sorry state, and it’s likely to get even worse

They’ve taken longer than usual to do the sums and sign off their final figures for the previous year. But in recent days, accountants representing the global auto industry have said that 67,674,745 is their magic number. This, they insist, is how many cars (not vehicles in general) were built in 2024.

At first glance, the figure seems healthy enough. But the world’s population is eight billion and rising. So tens of millions of new cars produced annually for the 8,000 million people on the planet could reasonably be described as huge under-production. Radio, TV, phone and personal computer makers have impressively exploited the benefits of truly global economies of scale, thereby putting their products within the financial reach of billions of consumers. Now’s the time for auto makers to follow suit.

The newer the car, the leaner, cleaner, greener, safer, more reliable and efficient it is. Wealthy people can still enjoy their luxurious and expensive models. But more important in terms of factory output, production-line employment and consumer fairness and democracy is that massively more lower-spec, sensibly priced and basic/dirt-cheap cars are made available to less well-off folk across the globe.

China did its bit last year, remaining the most productive car-manufacturing country after building 27.47 million of all classes, sizes and prices. Also on the podium were Japan (7.13m) and India (4.99m), with Germany (4.06m) plus South Korea (3.84m) not far behind.

Less obvious car makers were Spain (1.91m), closely followed by Brazil (1.89m). But the Czech Republic (1.45m) did the unthinkable by building more cars than the US (1.43m), which to be fair is now better known as a maker of pick-ups, commercial vehicles and buses. Indonesia (1.02m) rounded off the top 10, but Slovakia (993,000), Iran (977,776), Mexico (947,726), France (910,243) and Turkey (904,513) are desperate to nudge into it.

Propping up the foot of the top 20 are Britain, (779,584), Russia (753,754), Malaysia (744,604), Romania (560,102) and Thailand (549,752).

If, like me, you feel the UK is in a sorry state for falling so far down the league table – and likely to slump further still as Jaguar’s production line grinds to a halt – spare a thought for several of our near neighbours. Italy (309,758) is perhaps the saddest of all, but Belgium (201,561) and Austria (71,785) are seriously declining, too. The Netherlands (7,403) somehow allowed its car production to plummet 94 per cent in 2024 vs 2023.

Much further afield, a decade and a half ago, Australia made hundreds of thousands of cars annually. Last year, it built none. Not one. Let this be a lesson to on-its-knees Holland – and all other countries with car production lines that are sadly stalled or being deliberately and stupidly shut down.

Should the UK be building more cars? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section...