After reading on twitter someone confidently proclaiming that there aren't any British car manufacturers left, I felt the need to gauge opinion on this. Ask most people in Britain today what major car companies are still British and they will tell you none. Is that true? If we look at the major players:
MINI - Considered now to be German despite being designed (at least partly) and built in Britain.
Jaguar - Foreign owned, despite being designed and built in Britain, and Jaguar Cars Ltd being a UK registered company, worldwide headquarters in Britain.
Land Rover - As above
Bentley - Similar to JLR, foreign owned designed and built in the UK, UK registered company, UK worldwide headquarters
Vauxhall - Foreign owned, foreign designed, some UK built, UK registered company
Rolls-Royce - Foreign owned, UK designed and built, UK registered company, UK headquarters.
So people tend to class these as no longer being British because the parent company is foreign.
But why then are we not consistent with this about car manufacturers in other countries?
For instance, people will claim that Seat is Spanish (its parent company is German),
Volvo is Swedish (its parent company is Chinese, the same company in fact that owns the London Taxi Company),
Fiat and Chrysler are Italian and American (their parent company is based in the Netherlands),
Saab was Swedish (its parent company was American).
So how is it that Seat is still considered to be a Spanish car manufacturer, when JLR isn't considered to be British?