British car firms are battling with lethargy, a lack of new products and losing the will to live

Britain owes Nissan of Japan a long-overdue thank you – for being the largest car producer we have in the UK. If you drive south from the firm’s impressive Sunderland factory to its Rickmansworth head office, it takes about five hours.   

Travel east in a car from Dover to Selfkant (one of the closest German towns) and the journey time is remarkably similar – assuming the cross-Channel ferries and Chunnel behave themselves.

It can often feel like we Brits and our ‘distant’ German neighbours live and work in different worlds. But the English road trip between Nissan’s Tyne and Wear factory and its Hertfordshire admin centre is 274 miles. Yet a multi-country car journey – including the sea crossing – from Dover to Selfkant in Germany’s western quarter is 20 miles shorter.

Although Britain is very detached from the European mainland, we are physically closer to Europe’s wealthiest, most productive nation than many people care to believe. Thanks to faster cross-Channel routes and free-flowing continental motorways, Brits and Germans can be considered near neighbours. As the crow flies, it’s less than 200 miles between the deep south of Britain and Germany’s most westerly point.

Germany has succeeded the US as the western world’s most successful and productive car-making nation. Also, the Germans – along with the Chinese, Japanese, Indians and South Koreans – are members of the Global Top Five club. Unlike Britain, Germany doesn’t stage an annual national motor show. Instead, it has its IAA Mobility event, which is poised to become Europe’s greatest car fest now that the Geneva show has gone.

At this month’s IAA bash in Munich, Brit brands MINI (owned by BMW) and Vauxhall (in conjunction with Opel) flew the flag for Britain. They were joined by the Germans, Chinese and South Koreans, who all played leading roles, while manufacturers from the Czech Republic, France, Spain, Sweden and Turkey also starred.

Yet with the UK’s car industry still, officially, listing four mainstream makers, seven producers of sports and premium models and 60-plus specialist firms, how come such a tiny percentage turned up at the Munich Motor Show just a few hundred miles from their factories and global HQs? I’m not sure if the problem for Brit car firms at the minute is lethargy, lack of new product or losing the will to live on the world’s automotive stage.

But I am certain that they’ve got to design, build, sell, speak and collaborate much more – if only for the sake of 800,000 UK folk who work in and around the nation’s vehicle-making industry. This month, some of their production lines have been temporarily shut down. We hope and pray these closures are not permanent. The last thing they and we need is another Rover Group-like disaster.

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