Automotive industry in the United Kingdom
The automotive industry in the United Kingdom is now best known for premium and sports car marques including: Aston Martin, McLaren, Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mini and Lotus.
[4] However, in subsequent decades the industry experienced considerably lower growth than competitor nations such as France, Germany and Japan, and by 2008 the UK was the 12th-largest producer of cars measured by volume.
[4] Since the early 1990s, many British car marques have been invested in by international companies including BMW (Mini and Rolls-Royce), Tata (Jaguar and Land Rover) and Volkswagen Group (Bentley).
[5][6][7][8][9] Notable British car designers include David Bache, Dick Burzi, Laurence Pomeroy, John Polwhele Blatchley, Ian Callum, Colin Chapman, Alec Issigonis, Charles Spencer King and Gordon Murray.
Simms acquired the British rights to Daimler's engine and associated patents and from 1891 successfully sold launches using these Cannstatt-made motors from Eel Pie Island in the Thames.
[11] In June 1895, Simms and his friend Evelyn Ellis promoted motor cars in the United Kingdom by bringing a Daimler-engined Panhard & Levassor to England and in July it completed, without police intervention, the first British long-distance motorcar journey from Southampton to Malvern.
[12] In 1891 Richard Stephens, a mining engineer from South Wales, returned from a commission in Michigan to establish a bicycle works in Clevedon, Somerset.
[14] Under this regulation, light locomotives (those vehicles under 3 tons unladen weight) were exempt from the previous restrictions, and a higher speed limit – 14 mph (23 km/h) was set for them.
[21] Standard-Triumph's attempts to reduce costs by embracing a modern volume production strategy almost led to their bankruptcy in 1960, the result was that they were purchased by the commercial vehicle manufacturing company Leyland Motors.
[citation needed] In the context of BMC's wide, complex, and expensive-to-produce model range, Ford's conventionally designed Cortina challenging for the number one spot in the domestic market, and the heavy reliance of the British economy on motor vehicle production, in 1968 the Government brokered the merger of the successful Leyland-Triumph-Rover and the struggling BMH, to form Europe's fourth-largest car maker, the British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC).
[citation needed] Ford's competitor in this sector was the Anglia, which featured unconventional styling but was still one of the country's most successful cars from its launch in 1959 up to the end of production in 1967, after which it was replaced by the Escort.
[citation needed] Larger family cars enjoyed strong sales in the 1960s, namely the Ford Cortina (launched in 1962), Austin/Morris 1800 (1964) and Vauxhall Victor (1957).
[citation needed] The iconic Jaguar E-Type sports car, designed by Malcolm Sayer, with a top speed of 145 miles per hour (233 km/h) and the choice of a coupe or roadster bodystyle, was launched in 1961 and would remain in production until 1975.
Its arrival on the UK market less than a decade after the end of World War II was met with hostility, with many examples being vandalised soon after being distributed, but it quickly became popular, with nearly 10,000 being sold in 1959.
The Government rejected the idea of a merger between the two companies, and instead Chrysler UK received a loan and BLMC was subjected to a series of studies to determine its future.
British Leyland's overseas outposts in countries like Italy (where cars were produced under the Innocenti brand) were gradually closed down or sold to other carmakers, so by the 1980s; it was entirely a British-based operation.
Foreign carmakers continued to gain ground on the British market during the 1980s, with the likes of Renault, Peugeot, Citroen (France), Volvo (Sweden), Volkswagen (West Germany) and Fiat (Italy) proving particularly popular.
Zastava's Yugo-badged cars, based on Fiat designs from the 1970s, also sold reasonably well in Britain during the 1980s, but the carmaker was forced to halt imports in 1992 due to sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia as a result of the civil war there.
The decade also saw the arrival of purpose-built people carriers on the British market, starting with the Japanese Mitsubishi Space Wagon in 1984, and then the market-leading Renault Espace in 1985, but by the end of the decade this type of vehicle still had only a very small share of the British market and there were still no British-built people carriers available, although a few seven-seater estate models including Austin Rover's Montego were being produced.
It did, however, continue to offer the German-built Opel Manta to British buyers until the end of production in 1988, replacing it with the Calibra (also built in Germany) a year later.
Production of MG sports cars finished when the Abingdon factory closed in 1980, although the brand was quickly revived on higher performance versions of the Metro, Maestro and Montego.
[29] BMW's ownership of the Rover Group saw the development of several newer, more upmarket models, giving the British brand an image to match that of its parent company.
BMW also revived the MG marque in 1995 on a new affordable sports car, the MGF, as well as strengthening Land Rover's position in the off-roader market.
Three months later, the firm's assets were purchased by another Chinese carmaker – Nanjing Automobile – and Longbridge partially re-opened over the summer of 2007 with an initial workforce of around 250 preparing to restart production of the MG TF which was relaunched in August 2008.
[45][46] In 2007, Ford sold Aston Martin to a British-led Consortium backed by Middle East investors, retaining a small stake in the company and agreeing to continue the supply of components including engines.
[65] In an interview with Reuters in the same month, Carl-Peter Forster, the Chief Executive of Tata Motors, revealed that Jaguar Land Rover would be investing over £5 billion in product development over the succeeding five years.
[66] In June, Nissan announced that the replacement for its Qashqai model would be designed and built in the UK, in a total investment of £192 million safeguarding around 6,000 jobs.
[71][72] Later in the same month it was announced that the Jensen marque would be revived, with a new version of the Interceptor to be built by CPP Holdings at the former Jaguar factory Browns Lane in Coventry.
[73][74] In November, Toyota announced plans to make the UK its sole European manufacturing base for hatchback versions of its next C-segment family car, resulting in the investment of over £100 million in its Burnaston plant and the creation of around 1,500 new jobs.
[120] Formula One motor racing has made its home in the UK,[120] with seven of the ten teams competing in the 2024 season based in or having their European headquarters in England: Formula One engine suppliers: Other major motorsports teams and organisations: Currently inactive British automotive marques include: Allard, Alvis, Armstrong Siddeley, Austin, Autovia, Daimler, DeLorean, Gilbern, Gordon-Keeble, Healey, Hillman, Humber, Jensen, Jowett, Lanchester, Lea-Francis, Morris, Napier, Reliant, Riley, Rover, Singer, Standard, Sterling, Sunbeam, Sunbeam-Talbot, Talbot, Triumph,
