Posted 03 April 2012 - 09:11 PM
My son lives in France, but works in motor-sport as a design consultant. Most of the guys working with him are Brits and they do the top-end work including the CAE, CFD, Structural Analysis, power-train, etc.
BMC/BLMC/ARG/Rover had a big union problem which was fed by the labour gov't of the 70's and the management did little to resist this as the taxpayer pumped money in to keep producing what was really, in the main, junk. Basically they were a nationalised operation. In particular the Princess range was really badly engineered and they were simply dreadful to drive. They bought Jaguar and nearly ruined that company's reputation for quality. I had a new '78 XJ6 and it was so unreliable I bought a new BMW in 1980 and have had them ever since. I used to do a lot of business with BLMC et al and they were a nightmare to deal with and took 180 days to pay their bills. In the end I told them to 'stuff it' in respect of new business and many other good suppliers did the same. They were doomed even when british Aerospace and hen BMW took them over. It was all too late.
Ford & Vauxhall always produced good cars, but of course that was American money, although the profits were usually re-invested here, or in Europe.
Now Nissan totally engineer about 1/2 of all their vehicle models in the UK and consider themselves a joint UK/Jap operation, Toyota & Honda are also well established here and are as British as Ford & Vauxhall have always been.
As an example of Rover's stupidity, a procurement manager at Rover once told me that I should carry out work for them at cost-price to my company (i.e. profit free!) as it was a priviledge to be a sub-contractor to the only UK car company. The reply was 2 words, the second of which was 'off'! By the same token we could not work for some other motor manufacturers unless we could show that we were making a sensible profit. That says it all.
