31 replies to this topic

[r3k1355]

 

 

Vauxhall - Foreign owned, foreign designed, some UK built, UK registered company

 

 

 

 

The recent Vauxhall advert really gets my goat "Vauxhall - British company since 1903 bla bla bla"

 

Yet sold to the Americans in the 1920's

[pusb]

 

 

 

Vauxhall - Foreign owned, foreign designed, some UK built, UK registered company

 

 

 

 

The recent Vauxhall advert really gets my goat "Vauxhall - British company since 1903 bla bla bla"

 

Yet sold to the Americans in the 1920's

 

 

Volvo still claim to be Swedish, so whats the difference? 

[nicklouse]

 

 

 

 

Vauxhall - Foreign owned, foreign designed, some UK built, UK registered company

 

 

 

 

The recent Vauxhall advert really gets my goat "Vauxhall - British company since 1903 bla bla bla"

 

Yet sold to the Americans in the 1920's

 

 

Volvo still claim to be Swedish, so whats the difference? 

 

only the similarity is the company that owns Volvo. Vauxhalls range is only partly made in the UK thats it.

[pusb]

 

 

 

 

 

Vauxhall - Foreign owned, foreign designed, some UK built, UK registered company

 

 

 

 

The recent Vauxhall advert really gets my goat "Vauxhall - British company since 1903 bla bla bla"

 

Yet sold to the Americans in the 1920's

 

 

Volvo still claim to be Swedish, so whats the difference? 

 

only the similarity is the company that owns Volvo. Vauxhalls range is only partly made in the UK thats it.

 

 

Peugeot's range is only partly made in France, its still a French company isn't it?

[nicklouse]

Peugeot and Citroen are owned by France and designed in France (now some parts in Germany as has been so for a few years)  and yes they make outside of France their biggest site is IIRC in Spain and with the addition of Opel/Vauxhall they have many more EU sites.

[Spider]

It's a very subjective question and one that you're not likely to get an agreeance on.

 

It depends on what point of view one is coming from with it.

 

One of origins or manufacture or ownership ?

 

But even here, the waters can become quite 'muddy'.

 

As an example, we had a very large BMC (later Leyland) plant in Sydney, Australia. It was owned by BMC in the UK. The cars we were making there, up to 1973 were all of British Design, though, 'they' did allow us to tinker around the edges, partly in an effort to bring the local parts content up to qualify for a local Government grant and partly to make the product better suited to the local market. The cars that came out of this plant, were promoted as being Australian.

 

Mokes (not Mini Mokes) are regarded locally as being Australian.

 

In the case of these cars, I see them as both and possibly equally, British and Australian, but the reality of it all was that they were British, The British owned the plant, the product and the profits went back to the UK.

[r3k1355]

Profits??

 

You guys managed profits??

[HUBBA.HUBBA]

 

Isn't it still the same?

BMC made cars overseas, what made them British was the design, research and development being done in the UK along with other core bits of business that were still necessary for the company to operate even if they had only one production plant.

I think cars will still be made in the UK as there's a large enough domestic market for manufacturers to care about staying on the right side of local content regulations for tariffs etc.

 

 

It is the same, that's my opinion.

 

I find it curious as to how we in Britain consider Seat to be Spanish whilst owned by VW, but Bentley to be German because its owned by VW.

 

Habit.

[HUBBA.HUBBA]

 

Isn't it still the same?

BMC made cars overseas, what made them British was the design, research and development being done in the UK along with other core bits of business that were still necessary for the company to operate even if they had only one production plant.

I think cars will still be made in the UK as there's a large enough domestic market for manufacturers to care about staying on the right side of local content regulations for tariffs etc.

 

 

It is the same, that's my opinion.

 

I find it curious as to how we in Britain consider Seat to be Spanish whilst owned by VW, but Bentley to be German because its owned by VW.

 

we? do we?

[pusb]

It's a very subjective question and one that you're not likely to get an agreeance on.

 

It depends on what point of view one is coming from with it.

 

One of origins or manufacture or ownership ?

 

But even here, the waters can become quite 'muddy'.

 

As an example, we had a very large BMC (later Leyland) plant in Sydney, Australia. It was owned by BMC in the UK. The cars we were making there, up to 1973 were all of British Design, though, 'they' did allow us to tinker around the edges, partly in an effort to bring the local parts content up to qualify for a local Government grant and partly to make the product better suited to the local market. The cars that came out of this plant, were promoted as being Australian.

 

Mokes (not Mini Mokes) are regarded locally as being Australian.

 

In the case of these cars, I see them as both and possibly equally, British and Australian, but the reality of it all was that they were British, The British owned the plant, the product and the profits went back to the UK.

 

BMC in Australia is an interesting comparison to Ford here.

 

I've heard plenty of people refer to early Escorts as British because it was made here

[pusb]

 

 

Isn't it still the same?

BMC made cars overseas, what made them British was the design, research and development being done in the UK along with other core bits of business that were still necessary for the company to operate even if they had only one production plant.

I think cars will still be made in the UK as there's a large enough domestic market for manufacturers to care about staying on the right side of local content regulations for tariffs etc.

 

 

It is the same, that's my opinion.

 

I find it curious as to how we in Britain consider Seat to be Spanish whilst owned by VW, but Bentley to be German because its owned by VW.

 

we? do we?

 

 

Plenty of people do

[Spider]

Profits??

 

You guys managed profits??

 

Yes, we did !

 

While Unionised, we didn't have the strikes and issues anywhere near that of the UK plants.

 

 

BMC in Australia is an interesting comparison to Ford here.

 

I've heard plenty of people refer to early Escorts as British because it was made here

 

 

Well, that's another and probably more difficult one.

 

Ford, American of course, but the Escort was designed and manufactured in the UK, so more British than our BMC was Australian.

 

From the early 70's, our local BMC Plant did set about designing an all Australian Car that did reach production in 1973, the P76, however, the UK operation went bust in 1974 and sold off what ever assets they could to recapitalise. In that sell up, was our Zetland Plant and that was the end of the P76. They did relocate some production to another site, but we lost may models, our Roto-dip (only other one outside of the UK), Panel Presses and much else, ie, it became a very much smaller operation.

 

The closure of Zetland made it clear that it was indeed a 'foreign' car company, as internal company events, outside of Australia, that closed that profitable operation. It was a real shame on many levels actually, as the way the plant was laid out and indeed operated, it was a fantastic model in the corporate world not just for tuning out product, but also for employee welfare.

[A-Cell]

Hi Moke Spider.
Such a shame that BL withdrew from Australia. The P76 styled by Michelotti was a great car. Just right as a competitor to Holden and Ford. Shame the other derivatives never made it into production, the Wagon and the V8 engined Force 7.
The Marina with the P76 six cylinder 2.6 litre I think was superb. We had one in Longbridge Experimental in about 1974. That was fun to drive.
At the close of BL Australia one Mr Richard (Dick) Hill joined us in the UK from BL Australia. What a great guy and engineer. He sorted the Princess into the Ambassador in terms of body structure stiffness and suspension improvements. Subsequently moved on to work for GKN.
Happy days.
I recommend people to read about the P76. Another missed opportunity! https://en.m.wikiped...iki/Leyland_P76
As you say That era was probably the last time that the corporate world truly was interested in providing employee welfare.

[Spider]

A-Cell,

 

What has happened on our local market since about 1974 (in one particular regards, even earlier) has been nothing short of heart breaking.

 

While there has been a whole raft of factors involved in the loss of our Motor Industry, I lay 90% of the blame at our successive Government's feet.

 

It was all kicked off with Government incentives just after WWII. We did have some small scale manufacturer here, with Ford at Homebush (Sydney) being the biggest player prior to this, but it was all seen as an American operation (which it was). The Government provided some incentives (and it seems much done behind closed doors !!) to Holdens who had been assembling various chassis for a variety of manufacturers, including Ford as I recall, to design and manufacture a 100% Australian Car. I think around this time, GM stepped in to the back ground of Holdens and so it became GMH.

 

As Government money was on offer, Ford stepped up their game and established all their large scale pants in Victoria, Chrysler did the same in South Australia. GMH established their operations in Pagewood (Sydney). The late comer to it all was BMC who set up shop at Victoria Park (later called Zetland).

 

All the manufacturers were given a variety of scaled incentives to add as much local content as they could to their product through the late 50's, 60's and early 70's. From memory, I think our Minis at that time had around 90% local content.

 

While these incentive schemes were in place, the Government through their shortsightedness did much to make it expensive for the local component manufacturers and in some other ways, the car manufacturers too, while putting in place barriers on exports in some areas, particularly for the component sector. The manufacturers really needed to gear up to around 3 - 4 times their output so they could survive on a world stage. I think too, their was some disincentive from the actual masters of these big 4 to stay out of many markets. While they did see the need to gear up, they were too uncertain of committing such capital in the short term as Government policy around the sector wasn't stable enough.

 

Then just as the Gov, gave, they taketh away. From the mid 70's, there's been a scaling back of import duties and also a withdrawal of Government support for the Industry. It wasn't going to last forever the way it was, sure, but the Gov really should have scaled back it's incentives much earlier on, so the Industry could have better structured itself on it's own foundations, rather than artificial ones.

 

I saw some of this in the dying days of Leyland in Australia and also the beginning of the end for Ford, in 1990. I was a contractor to Ford for many years and at the end, it was me who actually turned off the lights at the Homebush plant. It was a very surreal day, thinking back even now, it still seems like a bad dream. All those people, the skills, they ingenuity that kept it all going, gone in a day. The plant had been operating since very early on in the 1900's assembling Model T's that were sent CKD from Canada. In the mid 30's they expanded the plant a great deal and again in 1978 as escort production was starting to winding up in anticipation for the next model to be produced (the Ford Lazer, which was a Mazda 323) and they had to completely revolutionise the whole assembly floor as the method of assembly was completely different to all cars made prior.

 

The building for the most part are still standing today, it was a truck depot last time I saw it. GMH was taken over by British American Tobbaco for a while, not sure what's become of it now.

 

Chrysler in SA has only been knocked down in the last 6 months. This is actually a bit of a significant part of the Leyland story as since they lost their press shop at Zetland, they contracted body pressings to Chrysler since early 1975, who pressed all the panels for the Minis and Mokes up to 78 (for the Mini) and 81 (for the Moke).

 

The BMC Zeltand plant was purchased (conveniently) by the Australian Government and used as a Navy Store (of all things) for a few short years before on selling it to developers, who have knocked it all over and put up high rise.

[nicklouse]

oh i could tell tales about modern car companies and how they can make things suit their wants, and how many just don't understand their product and market place.