The Chinese are the UK car industry's best hope for revival

There’s no point in trying to sugarcoat the hard-to-swallow fact that car production numbers in Britain are tumbling at an alarming rate. Before I explain how I reckon the unsustainable decline can be seriously slowed, halted or even reversed, it’s important to look closely at and understand our productivity, past and present.

In 1955, Blighty’s brave, bruised and battered workers, still recovering and rebuilding after the trauma of World War II, produced 897,560 cars – mightily impressive given that their factories were primitive, conditions lousy and automation was either low priority or non-existent.

Come the seventies, a very different tribe of workers was revolting, as they repeatedly downed tools at plants that were low-tech by today’s standards. Still, annual car production in that tumultuous decade never fell below a million, and, in 1972, reached a record high of 1.9 million.

By the mid-2010s, more refined and reliable, better-trained workers at mostly safe, modern, often highly automated plants, were almost as productive, with annual output around 1.7m.

Yet for three of the last four years, this same generation of employees has been building fewer than 800,000 annually. The figure for 2025 is just 717,371, and that’s unacceptably low.

Put another way, a decade ago we built more than twice as many cars as now. Around half a century back, we made over 1 million more per annum than today. And, astonishingly, almost three-quarters of a century ago (1955) in a post-WW2 Britain, car production was around 180,000 up on the just released and disastrous figure for 2025. Progress, eh?!   

Are our leading and wealthiest entrepreneurs queuing up, ready, willing and able to build cars in their/our country, creating more jobs for more British workers in the process? Hardly. Richard Branson briefly dabbled in the vehicle retailing game. James Dyson produced a prototype of his ‘British’ car that hasn’t been built in Britain (or anywhere else). Professional north of England billionaire bloke Jim Ratcliffe makes his ‘British’ Ineos 4x4s in, er, France.

For all the above (and countless other) reasons, currently the Chinese are our best hope of ramping up UK car production and safeguarding factory jobs. Already in existence is the Chery Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Co. Ltd – a 50:50 joint venture also known as CJLR.

The Chery half of the partnership needs more capacity in Europe so, logically, would quite like to build some of its China-designed and badged cars at under-utilised JLR plants here. The Chinese will get the ready-made UK production lines and trained workforce they crave. JLR’s profits from the deal should be healthy. Local factory workers will presumably be more productively employed, and less likely to face redundancy. That’s my idea of a win-win-win.

It now seems likely that Chery is establishing a facility on Merseyside that will serve as the home of its research and development, engineering and commercial operations in Britain.  Chery UK director, Victor Zhang, claims "we're not just bringing products to the UK - we're building a British business."

Production figures at JLR's Halewood, Liverpool factory have been disappointingly low in recent years, so there's plenty of spare capacity that the Chinese firm can exploit. And as Jaguar effectively mothballed its UK production facilities almost one year ago and has failed to build and sell many new Jags since, it's possible that its under-utilised Midlands factories and factory workers could provide other opportunities for Chery to consider. 

Chery, in cahoots with JLR, making Chinese vehicles in Britain is hopefully as exciting and significant as the arrival in the eighties of the Nissan factory in Sunderland and the Toyota plant in Burnaston.

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