Death of the UK Car Industry - Part 1: BMC

Comments · 814

• CH

  @chrisweeks6973 · 3 years ago (edited)

  Back in 1969/70 I worked at Triumph&apos;s Gearbox Plant in Radford, Coventry, where we made gearbox components and back axles. The air quality was so bad inside the shop that, on a warm day, we couldn&apos;t see the opposite wall. In the heat-treat area, there were open drums of cyanide (used to case-harden components) everywhere. How we never killed half the workforce, God alone knows! We were turning out the same components (and on the same machine tools) for the Herald/Spitfire that we had for the Standard 8&apos;s and 10&apos;s in 1953. Engineering tolerances were +/- 10 thou&apos;, meaning that there was a potential 20 thou&apos; slop on every component in the gearbox. One presumes it was the same on all of the driveline components. Four years later I later worked for Nissan, where the tolerance was +1/-0...<br>I also worked for Rover at Solihull, where we had a rectification yard, in which new vehicles with defective parts were held, waiting to be fixed. Chalked on the back of one Series IIA 109&quot; LWB Wagon with Safari Roof were the words, &apos;Wrong Chassis&apos;. That would have kept the lads busy for quite a while!

  168

• CO

  @colinmartin2921 · 3 years ago

  When the Japanese motorcycle invasion began, the Villiers experimental dept bought a Honda and stripped it for examination; the two engineers looked at each other and said: &quot;We&apos;re f****d.&quot; When BL introduced the award-winning Metro they fitted the ancient asthmatic Mini engine and shot themselves in the foot. My boss bought a Datsun Cherry, and when he showed me under the bonnet I was gobsmacked - the engine was all-alloy, clean, oil tight, quiet and mounted on rubber-bushed cross-tie rods. Our industry destroyed itself by lack of investment.

  425

• PE

  @petermc1743 · 3 years ago (edited)

  I worked in parts for a BL dealer from &apos;74 to &apos;78 - the busiest job known to mankind. I saw one of the launch Princesses come off the transporter. It started and ran, but was utterly gutless. The lads pulled the head off it to find the 2.0l engine was fitted with a 1700 crank. Imagine ...! Then there was the new mini that came off the transporter running on 3. One of the inlet valves was trapped open by a 5/16 UNF nut. The thickness of the nut was greater than the throw of the cam, so it didn&apos;t drop in there, it was put there deliberately. Foreign manufacturers didn&apos;t kill the UK car manufacturers alone. We had a pretty good hand in it ourselves ... 😢

  177

• IN

  @indigohammer5732 · 3 years ago (edited)

  Interesting you point out the health and safety in U.K Car plant. My Dad worked as a spray painter in Linwood BMC Pressed Steel Div, painting Hillman Imp&apos;s. He said the bodies were hung on a constantly moving belt which passed by a team of painters who sprayed hot paint as they passed. Management, sped the line up, without notifying the workers which caused real problems. Someone stuck a large metal rod into the line, stopping all production. Management reset the line speed. My dad was given &quot;Martindale Masks&quot; to prevent the inhalation of paint. These were essentially, large sanitary towels that you would press against your mouth and nose with a soft metal &quot;frame&quot; which attached round your head. One was never enough so my Dad used three or four pads but would still finish the shift coughing up phlegm which was the colour applied that day. The Imp had a big asbestos mattress, colloquially called a &quot;Tottie Scone&quot;, which was place in the engine compartment for sound and heat insulation. People who did this job weren&apos;t subject to the 1931 Asbestos Industry Regulations, so didn&apos;t get masks or routine x rays. Oh aye! Linwood went on strike due to someones lunch being cold..

  306

• RI

  @riazhassan6570 · 3 years ago

  Commonwealth here. Had a Hillman, a Wolseley, two Vanguards, an Austin 7, a Ford Anglia and an Austin Mini. Then came the Japanese vehicles and it did not take people long to realize that they offered more by way of performance, comfort, affordability, reliability, etc. It has been that way ever since, but now we see more and more Chinese vehicles on our roads

  75

• HO

  @hopkin2006 · 3 years ago

  I never expected that BMC was already a dysfunctional mess, even before the establishment of British Leyland. The BMC era seemed like an appetizer before things got much worse with the main course.

  100

• HE

  @herschelmayo2727 · 2 years ago (edited)

  Owned an MG in 1971. Tore it down and found the valve stems sucking oil. Miked them found them .005 undersize.. Went to the dealer with my micrometer, told him I needed ones with the correct size. He sighed and brought an entire crate of valves to the counter, telling me to go through them until I found 8 that were correctly ground. He said that the factory unions demanded beer in the lunch room. By the end of the day, all the machinists were in the bag and turning out garbage. He said they<br> were &nbsp;dropping their MG franchise because customers were bringing back every car they sold for quality complaints.

  56

• SH

  @sheriff0017 · 3 years ago

  I think we can say that, if Britain had an equivalent to the US Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, permission for the Pressed Steel merger would have been refused.

  27

• CH

  @chunkyboyjames · 3 years ago

  I’d love to see you give a similar treatment to the history of British Airways. Going from The World’s Favourite Airline, to an industrial relations nightmare with staff shortages, strikes and regular IT failures now commonplace.

  68

• ST

  @stewartellinson8846 · 3 years ago

  The seeds of the demise of the British vehicle industry were in it&apos;s birth; Britain was &quot;the workshop of the world&quot;. A workshop isn&apos;t a factory, it&apos;s a small scale producer of handmade products by skilled artisans. Much of the British vehicle industry struggled with the idea of scale and - as illustrated here - tended to scale up in ways that were antiquated. <br><br>Compare the british vehicle industry with Honda of Japan who, when they designed the C50 Cub, designed the machine tools to build it, allowing production to be as effiecient as possible.<br><br>The UK was still more or less hand building into the seventies and this lack of automation wnet hand in hand with poor management and a lack of understanding of what customers wanted to create poor products which were poorly built by companies which were poorly run.

  59

• JO

  @Joe-jn5li · 3 years ago

  The corporations were paying workers by the “piece” into the 1970’s. Also, 3 unions in the same factory is counterproductive . No wonder they had labor problems. The corporations were treating their workers like crap.

  6

• RI

  @richardmortimer8147 · 3 years ago

  True. The current Rolls, Bentley, Aston Martin and McLaren ranges are brilliant (but none of them are completely UK owned). The modern Mini is brilliant. The Ford and Vauxhall ranges are brilliant, but they are looking like they might be sacrificed on the altar of &apos;Net Zero.&apos; Jaguar and Lotus are looking very shaky. So, the problem aren&apos;t over yet...

  8