3 ms·

There are lots of manufacturers in the UK right now who have fantastic quality. Rolls Royce aero engines. Lots of pharmaceuticals. Airbus wings and landing gear

There are lots of manufacturers in the UK right now who have fantastic quality. Rolls Royce aero engines. Lots of pharmaceuticals. Airbus wings and landing gear. Lots of cars as well. Medical devices. The list is endless. The UK manufacturing sector was worth $279 billion in the last year. https://www.makeuk.org/insights/reports/uk-manufacturing-facts-2025 https://www.makeuk.org/insights/reports/uk-manufacturing-fac...

jacquesm 1y ago
That's all true. But the list could have been a lot longer. The UK had a lot more industry than it does today and there definitely were quality issues. At the same time: competition that wasn't even on the horizon back then (for instance: Korea) became a major factor and at some point you need the scale. For the UK driving on the left side of the road made that all of their exports had to be made for domestic or foreign use, foreign manufacturers often chose to simply not field a model in the UK, so that was an extra cost. It's funny, I've a complete love/hate relationship with cars from the UK. I love them, love the looks, love to drive them. But I hate the unreliability that was part and parcel of it and I hated even more to buy a spare part and then to find out that it subtly didn't fit because of some defect in body geometry with as a result that it looked like crap (fenders... subframes... don't get me started on that one, I can bore you to death about the kind of crap they sold). The Metro could have been what the 206 was for Peugeot, instead they made fairly nice design in the most cheap and unsafe way possible. In comparison the 206 was a little tank.
pjc50 1y ago
This is an under-appreciated point: the UK manufacturing sector is highly successful, but only where it doesn't employ large armies of workers, and is instead either automated or very small volume/large margin. News coverage of this is, as expected, completely dire.

jacquesm 1y ago

That's all true. But the list could have been a lot longer. The UK had a lot more industry than it does today and there definitely were quality issues. At the same time: competition that wasn't even on the horizon back then (for instance: Korea) became a major factor and at some point you need the scale. For the UK driving on the left side of the road made that all of their exports had to be made for domestic or foreign use, foreign manufacturers often chose to simply not field a model in the UK, so that was an extra cost. It's funny, I've a complete love/hate relationship with cars from the UK. I love them, love the looks, love to drive them. But I hate the unreliability that was part and parcel of it and I hated even more to buy a spare part and then to find out that it subtly didn't fit because of some defect in body geometry with as a result that it looked like crap (fenders... subframes... don't get me started on that one, I can bore you to death about the kind of crap they sold). The Metro could have been what the 206 was for Peugeot, instead they made fairly nice design in the most cheap and unsafe way possible. In comparison the 206 was a little tank.

pjc50 1y ago

This is an under-appreciated point: the UK manufacturing sector is highly successful, but only where it doesn't employ large armies of workers, and is instead either automated or very small volume/large margin. News coverage of this is, as expected, completely dire.