British Leyland Cars | British Car Manufacturing | TV Eye | 1980
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 พ.ย. 2018
- This is a slightly shortened version of the original programme.
With British Leyland the producer of popular cars such as the Mini and Austin Allegro struggling to keep a foothold in the market due to a combination of foreign imports and industrial strife, ‘TV EYE’ looks at the plight of those who supply parts to British Leyland - 7000 companies with over a million jobs.
Says a union official: “If Leyland goes down the West Midlands will be an economic desert”.
First shown: 14/02/1980
If you would like to license a clip from this video please e mail:
archive@fremantle.com
Quote: VT22424 - ยานยนต์และพาหนะ
I worked for British Leyland from 1966 until the 80s. What a chaotic affair. The engines were ancient, the body designs were cobbled together with existing panels they thought would fit to save money. We had almost monthly management changes. The machinery where I worked had war department on them and most were worn out from the war years. The workforce was largely disaffected and most of us knew we were on a sinking ship. I remember one day my manager coming up to me and saying come with me. He knew I was a car guy and he took me round the block to where a new Triumph TR 7 was standing. He said what do you think of that. You could have painted it with a tar brush and it would have been an improvement. Ghastly times.
Thank you for sharing! It's always great to hear from people who actually lived through these events.
Well in GDR it was not much different but they still made good Wartburg and Trabant cars there and great trucks and tractors.
Good, old engines work better and are more fun.
As a child, I used to walk to school because by the time my mother had got the Allegro started it was 11AM.
What was she doing in the mean time? Seriously, man, unless she had to put a new carburetor in every morning thats just a tall tale.
@@mattharvey4770 Face it, Leyland built absolute rubbish vehicles.
@@karlos543 who built better though, vw? I think not.
🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 So funny
@@bigteddy66 err every Japanese car . Oh and every Beetle that hit our roads was better built than anything we brits could knock out!
All,
Many thanks for your kind messages regards my parents (The Cunningham's) and their company's plight in the 1980's.
I'm pleased to report that my parents continued to manage a number of successful businesses over the next 38 years and still own QuTec Pershore LTD, which is a growing and successful Metal Pressing and Fabrication Specialist Company and is still very much a family run business today.
My father still likes to be involved in the engineering and commercial focuses, albeit, very much on his terms. At 75 years of age, he has had a magnificent career, which included diversification into other very successful business ventures, which he has either gone on to sell, or chosen to be bought out. He remains highly respected by all of our past and present customers and suppliers alike and is a true Old school Engineer and Gentleman......
Best Wishes
Greg Cunningham
" Diversification ".Right there, is the key.
@@ronvbbaatjes he was a business owner. How does an auto-worker "diversify?'
@@mattharvey4770 quite simple really.Workers need to create their own business-generating capacity, through pooling resources and skills.I concede that that in itself presents numerous challenges.But bear in mind: capitalist bosses generally to not incude in their agenda( nor mindset) the upscaling of " mere" workers.And heaven forbid,do not try to persuade them to " share" a portion of the business with said " mere " workers.
I just did a search on your parents' firm out of curiosity, and was very happy to see that they were able to weather the storm. Cheers from Canada!
Thanks for the update on a good news story
i was in 1978 in the VW factory in Wolfsburg, plenty of robots, plenty of cars shipped off by trains... plenty of union workers, plenty of no workers on strike.... working hard and earn money for the Spanish vacation and a new car every year...
I feel a lot of empathy for Micheal Edwardes. Brought in to fix a company that consisted of a militant workforce, antiquated machinery and tooling, poor design foresight, lack of investment and so on.
Considering how many changes he made, the fact he improved productivity and efficiency about 30% over his tenure, his total lack of willingness to compromise....I think he did pretty well. However he was fighting a losing battle against a house of cards that was already starting to fall.
I'd say that you're pretty well spot on there. The mistake he made, though, was to leave too early (although it's been speculated that Margaret Thatcher got rid of him, in effect.) He left in 1982 in the "surefire knowledge" that the upcoming Maestro and Montego would continue the huge success that the Metro had achieved. Of course all three of those cars turned out to be unreliable rotboxes - at least in their early years. If he'd stayed on a little longer he may well have ensured that Quality Control continued. As it was, BL/Austin-Rover lapsed back into its bad old ways. Collectively - the management, shop floor workers, finance team - just never seemed to learn the lessons of the past.
People are quick to blame a militant work force and poor machinery butbi would they where only a small part. Vauxhall motor where using machines from 1900 at ellesmereport right up to mid 1990s yet they produced cars equal in quality to German products and the plants where quicker more efficant than those in Germany. The difference was vauxhalls could cut the dead wood from work force. People had to work better and have pride in the work or they lost there job. BL could not sack people the politicians gave the workers a job for life regardless if they could do the job. Micheal Edwards had his hands tied and investment cut. These mass meeting where you had to public vote where a joke because people where bullied into voting for strike.
BL bosses need to be able to sack and invest. State industry failed because it was not allowed to be an industry. It was a dumping ground for un employable people.
@@keithnewton8981 I think you’re right on the money, but one thing I’d change.
Vauxhall at the time was losing money like no tomorrow, it didn’t make a profit from the 60’s until PSA got hold of them in 2017. Their tooling was old, that’s true, but GM continued to throw money at them every year regardless. So in a sense, they didn’t do much better than BL, just their owner wasn’t the government and had deeper pockets.
One point I’d hang my hat on though, is that the rise and fall of BL had a lot of components, but one key that was most at fault, was the government. They pressured and badgered Leyland and BMH to join together, while a lot of the press at the time said that the government ‘encouraged’ a tie up, they effectively bullied them to do so.
BMH was a basket case, even back then. Losing money hand over fist while having no significant vehicles in development for years, it was expected for Leyland to whip them into shape, but the creation of British Leyland created a massive firm which was a juggernaut of problems that no single person could effectively control. Add into it the union issues, the lack of investment, the ossified old plants, decentralised production and so on.
In my industry, we call massive conglomerates “BL’s in waiting”, because they always have to shutter/farm off/divest or sell massive amounts of their business to stay afloat, because they have become too big to control. Even big businesses like Lufthansa, P&G and GSK have nearly collapsed on a number of occasions until selling off a big chunk of their holdings to rationalise and stem the flow. BL wasn’t allowed to do this, as they’d been smashed together and rapidly went bankrupt. Then the government took over and told them that sell offs were unacceptable, at least until the dying throes of their last days when the Thatcher administration desperately tried to flog it all.
Crap state of affairs all around to be fair. My dad worked for BL from the mid 70’s until it’s rebrand to ARG, then it’s metamorphosis into the Rover Group and then finally into MG Rover. He fortunately took retirement in 2004, so he didn’t lose his pension in the implosion of 05.
@@davidkmatthews You’re right, him leaving was a massive blow that I think sealed their fate in the end.
In Edwarde’s book, he made it clear that he was told it was leave or be pushed, he didn’t get much of a choice in the matter. That point was confirmed by others at the time. If he had stayed, I think the momentum he build could have continued over time. He spearheaded the joint venture with Honda with the Acclaim, and had a very uncompromising view of product quality, which was lost once he left.
A shame all around.
Best chance they had, shame he couldn't have continued on for longer
That Thames introduction always reminds me of when Benny Hill's show was coming...and the subsequent "GO TO BED NOW!" from my parents that would follow.
Classic
LOL!
hahahaha that's EXACTLY!! Was I was thinking to write... love that Benny Hill Girls when I was a teen ; )
@Tomasz Klisz Ahh... Eastern Europe in the 70's and early 80's (However, I think Poland is considered Central Europe today, correct??)
Class..same🤣🤣🤣🤣👍
'You don't think the car of tomorrow is going to be the Metro?'
'No.'
Well, that was brutally honest lol.
and accurate. There was no symmetry to the Metro on any level and it was outclassed before the first one was born :(
@@simonlovett151 It was not worse compared to an Opel Corsa MK1
In 1978 my dad bought a Datsun 120Y. Our elderly neighbour didn't speak to us for a few months and she owned an Austin 1100. The slow post war decline of our motor industry is a very complex issue with multiple reasons for why it took place.
I think it was more to do with the Japanese being the enemy in WW2:than anything else
Or maybe her husband was captured & tortured by the Japanese in WW2?
My grans brother was captured in 1942,by the Japanese (In Singapore:-) & mistreated & tortured by them:for 4 years.
He was freed from Changi Jail at the end of WW2:leaving as a matchstick man.
He came home like one & until 1975,my gran would never,ever touch,any Japanese goods.
She reluctantly bought a brand-new,(remote-controlled:-) Hitatchi-tv:in 1975,as its electrics were far superior to Ferguson tellies,of that time.
BB-xx3dvthese days there are no real "imports" in the car market (exotic cars being the exception of course). I live in America and we have had Nissans and Subarus built here for years.
BB-xx3dv fair point. I remember when GM shut down Holden.
I don't blame anyone for buying foreign cars in the 70s because they were more reliable than BL. When I buy a car I being the buyer wants something reliable.
This video is just like what happened in Flint, Michigan except with a British accent. And at the same time too.
All part of the continuing big plan 😮😮😮
For a brief period in 1978 I had a job selling Leyland's cars. Every single new car in the showroom had to have a drip tray underneath to catch oil leaks. And when a potential customer wanted to look in the boot of a Rover 3500, the mere draft created by opening it was enough to detach the carpet which was held in place by just a few blobs of glue; it all fell into a pile in the middle of the boot. We even had cars supplied with body damage which we had to try and stand in front of when a customer was looking round. Personally, I found it impossible to sell a product which I had zero faith in.
Who kept buying them for all those years?
Fascinating insight. To be fair I always doubted the quality. Very shoddy indeed.
@@user-xg8yy7yl1d My parents had an Allegro for 2 weeks before they took it back to the dealer
The oil leaks were especially shameful in the context of 25 or so years of oiltight designs from the Continent and Japan...even Australian cars had just about got that right by 1978!
*draught
R.I.P Longbridge.
Very sad to see it all gone, to be replaced with coffee shops and supermarkets! 😥😥😥
There is still MG on site, but yes most of it has sadly gone.
Thank god!
Even for 1980, that factory and product looks archaic.
No investment, I wonder what happened to the profits, pitiful though they were.
Fiat Estrada. Handbuilt by robots.
BL cars? banged together by old men.
1:45
The engines and their plant were indeed outdated, but the welding plant for the Metro was newly purpose-built, and started assembling bodyshells for production cars in 1980. It was state-of the art, with computer measuring devices, which could take a complete shell, and automatically guided (driverless) vehicles to move stuff about.
The engines were replaced by a new range in 1989. Things were still not great, but most of the work was done- another few years of nurturing and the firm would have been strong. Much of the bits of it survive to this day, doing sub-contract work for foreign-headquartered multinationals.
@@agfagaevart
Strada, not Estrada. Regardless of your comment it's far easier to find a BL car from that era for sale on eBay and you still see the odd couple pottering around. There's a tidy little Allegro in that funny purplish colour near me still in use as what appears as a daily driver.
The last time I saw a Strada I had a lift in it (Italian guy I bought my house off traded in budget classics, this was a D reg mk2, cool car) and that was in 2004.
I'd love a Mirafiori but they're all but extinct. Super cool and best in that pale blue or bright orange.
Not really. And who buys cars? Robots or people? People buy cars
BL Cars had many optional extras, But rust and unreliability came as standard
Mercs, BMWs and anything Italian rotted like hell too!
To be fair most cars from that era had that issue. Ford's defenatley!
@@cambs0181 defenatley?
Chin up kings the datson rusted much much quicker
Every manufacturer rusted until they galvanised the body’s and added top clear coat to the paint,the Japanese motors in the 70s and 80s were the most reliable
It can't have been easy for Edwardes - running a conglomerate all day and rushing home to learn his lines for On the Buses.
bluegtturbo and being interviewed by Shakespeare
Oh Stan.....Olive?...Ooooh Arthur.
😀He did look like Reg Varney ! But I think Reg Varney was more talented !
2:46 Or being interviewed by William Shakespeare.
I remember Private Eye had a tiny cartoon of him from around this time which exaggerated his oddly asian looks. In the caption someone was commenting " have you seen his eyes lately?" It was a clever dig at the state of the Japanese car industry compared to BL and the inroads Japanese manufacturers were making into the British market.
Right at the end, VW worker using air powered tools, all parts in trays. Leyland mini using hand power and woodwork boxes ...
yup, noticed that too.
Very interesting and obvious indictment of the state of manufacturing (ancient) still happening at that time. When Rover was competing against Triumph and others (pre BL) there was competition and forward looking designs. After BL there was nothing in design or racing development. A terrible decade of decline that VW and Toyota took full advantage of...
@@roberthayden1527 BL was just ahead of its time. Even today, Land Rover languish towards the bottom of JD power reliability surveys. People don't care. They just want the badge, even if it does break down.
@@roberthayden1527 While everything else you said is correct, there was still racing development in the UK after BL. Cosworth, Judd, Jaguar, McLaren, Lola, Lotus, TVR and TWR were all still going at the time and are still renown names in racing today.
The Mini was an old design from the 50s u couldn't update its manufacture to compete with say the Fiesta.
The problem was created in the 60s. In the 60s Leyland should have invested in a new Mini with a new engine and body but they only half heartedly did this as a result in the 80s the Metro arrived with A series engines and gearboxes from the Mini and bodies still using too many out of date ideas (if u sit in a Metro the wheel is at a similar angle to a Mini giving away its origins). Out of date ideas that meant old slow expensive manufacturing methods.
It was a miracle that they kept going for another 25 years.
True english cars from the late 50's through the 80's were CRAP.
@@paulthesquid3595 I beg to differ. They had great ideas but operational problems.
@@adampowell5376 Well'l just the odd few exceptions i think in all honesty there.
Engines assembled by old men smoking a pipe and banging a hammer, the absolute epitome of careful attention to detail.
And that guy endlessly rubbing that Rover SD1 bonnet on the assembly line. 😂 What the hell was he doing? “You can polish it as much as you like, Mate. It’ll still be a sow’s arse!”
The epitome of British build quality. Shody made crap. No wonder foreign cars took over as most peoples purchase choice.
Eric Morecombe's side line job. The Beeb should have paid him more.
You obviously never drove an Allegro!
They're very proud of British cars in Kovintroi don't ye know.
I have lived in the West Midlands for about 1.5 years and I have to say that it now has exactly become what the guy at the beginning said: an economic desert. Sad but true...
Look at that comparison between the German and British door locks. That alone tells you everything.
Yes, they had pneumatic screwdrivers, the BL guy was using a manual screwdriver ffs 🤷🏼♂
The timestamp of this is 22:03.
The footage comparison is spectacular.
Yes, a lack of investment.
But compared a new Golf with a Mini that’s already old…no disputing the problems in BL but not a fair comparison.
This is incredible, watching all this stuff being made by hand. Keyhole punches being stamped on an ancient manual hand press! And line workers wearing ties! Great video
I remember a summer job in the 1970s, subcontract engineering work on a German made machine dated 1897. A failure of imagination and foresight on a monumental scale.
@@borderlands6606 What machine?
@@zeeteavathepipe3184 A lathe. Don't remember anything else about it apart from its age.
When my family bought a new Fiesta in 76, my dad specifically wanted one assembled in Germany, feeling it would be better made than a Dagenham built car.
And that is why you no longer have any british owned mass produced cars is because people would not support the home team.
@@matt8787fat It wasn’t the “home team” for us, we lived in Belgium at the time.
@@matt8787fat Why support a home made product if it’s inferior to what they producing elsewhere?
Gosh this was a good show. Sad that so much of the footage did not survive. But honestly we need a show like this again. This was quality journalism, intresting and educating. We really miss out on shows like this nowadays
We just don't get this level of quality in programme making anymore, everything is just skimmed over and soundbites.
Sadly regular current affairs programming seems to have gone from ITV in favour of more episodes of soaps. This Week/TV Eye and World in Action were top quality programmes that could easily stand with the best the BBC produced.
I remember this period well. BL nailed together some pretty dreary vehicles to be sure. The Austin-Morris range never excited anybody at any age. And cars that they made that people liked, Range Rover, Jags, Triumphs and 3.5 Rovers were assembled in a shockingly bad way. I remember a strike in 1982 when a BBC reporter was standing outside the gates at Longbridge and the workers were driving out of the car park in Datsuns, Toyotas, VW, even Fiats ! If they didn't buy the products they were making, how did they expect public to buy them? Nutters!
After 3 Morris or Austin 1100's / 1300's, my mother bought a Marina in 1977. It had self-tapping screws holding the tail-lights in, and the pointed ends would snag and rip things put in the boot. The writing was on the wall. In 1979 she finally bough foreign, a VW Polo, and never bought British again to the end of her life, when she was on her second Prius.
Hmm, Austin 3 litre comes to mind, Austin or Wolseley 2200, MG 1300, Riley Hornet, Allegro Equipe were gems in amongst the stuff, the Austin 3 litre was close to coming into Rover P5b turf but like its predecessor the Princess 4R just failed to sell. The Princess 4R, prob the most luxurious Austin-Morris car ever built failed to sell even a handful and were mostly given to dealers and works managers but they never lingered long in people's ownership as they were very problematic and Rolls Royce refused to give its engines to A-M from that point.
It's crazy my grandfather used to work at the Ford plant in Leamington and almost all the cars in the staff car park were Fords, probably helped that in the 90s Ford were very generous with staff discounts my grandfather could afford a brand new Mondeo Ghia every 4 years.
@@tarikwildman Hahahaha I guess she must have got one built on a Monday or Friday then 🤭🤭. I actually had a 1.8TC Marina which I had to replace the back axle on after trying to pull away in a race against my mates 1600E Mk2 Ford Cortina 😂🤣 I would have won if it wasn't for the axle and gearbox which a few weeks later destroyed 3rd gear due to the engine being way to powerful for the drive train. I also owned many Ford's,Vauxhalls and Triumphs. I bought a Toyota Auris Diesel and have never looked back. At least it was built in the UK. I highly recommend Toyota,s to anyone who doesn't want to be left stranded at the side of the road.
Looking at the machinists assembling motors with soft hammers makes it look as if it was filmed in 1880, not 1980, when you compare it with modern robot-assisted assembly plants. I do miss the Spitfires, however. Great design.
I consider myself lucky for my first car to be an old Spitfire, actually. She of course does not come without her issues, and was indeed built more than a decade before the filming of this video when their quality was less shoddy. But as a young fella, I love to keep her on the road because the Spitfire is a design worth preserving :)
As a teenager I saw first hand what happened to the BL system of producing cars. My dad had set up a business in the early 80's and after 5 years of hard graft decided to take the plunge and buy 3 new company cars. One top of the range Rover SD 3.5 V8 Vanden Plas and two MG Maestro's. After two years of constant returns to dealers for various issues, from dodgy fuel management, misfitting doors, unspecified mechanical issues with the auto gearbox and numerous others he chopped them all in for Toyota's...he never looked at the brand again.
"He chopped them all in for Toyota's."
Was your Dad a Pakistani then?
Couldn't resist that one ;)
Couldn't agree more I had a ford fiesta mk2 and that was a complete rotbox.
It breaks my heart a little bit because so many innocent people were just trying to earn a living. It however gorgeous the SD1 was and however well received the Metro was, they just weren’t good enough cars. When Rover went bust in the early 2000’s people played hell about British people not buying British. But even then the cars were old hat, poor quality and completely out classed by cars such as the Ford Focus. The successful 200 range in the ‘80s and early ‘90s were replaced by an average car that was too small for the sector it had established itself in and was overpriced. It all went very badly. The sensible money simply had to go on either a Toyota or a Honda. Citroen et all weren’t particular reliable but were at least more contemporary!!
1:45 Christ almighty! No wonder British cars leak so much oil. They hammer in the parts like rail road spikes.
Hahaha yep I noticed that as well 😂😂😂
apauling
Sabotage caught on film 😀
EXACTLY why I drive Nissans!
I hope that's not how he makes love. BAMM! BAMM!
I cant stop watching it's crazy.
It’s like an episode of Monty Pythons Flying Circus, without the funny bits.
The great shame for me is that Britain, especially at a political level, through the 70s and 80s decided to turn it's back on manufacturing and heavy engineering. It was seen as old fashioned and outdated and the new service economy was seen as the future. The tragedy is that at exactly the same time, Germany and Japan demonstrated that if you invest in high tech plants and a highly skilled workforce, you can absolutely build a modern economy based on manufacturing and engineering. We rushed to replace the clank and smoke of heavy industry with shopping malls and call centres while they replaced it with the hum of robots and high tech machinery. The VW plant at Wolfsberg now employs 60,000 people producing modern, well engineered, desirable products which they export around the world. Imagine the west midlands today if Longbridge had chosen the same path.
It required a level of investment that British management and its get rich quick mentality will not commit to
ThamesTV you are awesome, more like this please!
No other broadcaster in the world has produced innovated,thought provoking & quality programmes as Thames and its subsidiary Euston Films.
airscrew1 an absolute disgrace what happened to
Thames. I remember the decision day too, shocking!
Truly a wonderful video archive. Great historical importance.
@airscrew1 sadly the same is probably true of most of the businesses in this film. Oh and don't get me started on "lidls / Costa opens on flattened factory site 'creating ' xx jobs" what blinkered bullshit
@airscrew1
blame Thatcher for its demise...
I'm watching this the same day my Jag xj6 (Leyland era) passed it's 35th MOT! :-)
you must have spent 500000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 pounds on it over the years
😍
Fortunately Jaguar were a little more isolated from the mayhem (except the labour disputes) but they were dragged into the mire eventually. Keep the cat purring!!
In reality I don't think a Jaguar XJ6 is any less reliable than many other classic cars. Any car still on the road and running after 35 years can't be that bad. Plenty of cars achieve a bad reputation which they unfairly hold onto long after all the issues are ironed out.
I have owned and run 3 series jaguars through the late 80's and 90's they were great when they worked but I have spent plenty of time waiting for breakdown recovery, I am a real Jag fan and still have a couple of 60's cars but they were a love hate relationship in the past
Unlike the cars, this journalism gets better and better with age. Thank you Thames.
As a child and teenager in the 1960’s and 1970’s, our family drove British cars as Land Rover, Morris and Austin models. They were always in the garage and we were ecstatic on the days they would start in the mornings. Many were lovely and comfortable to drive in, but the less comfortable although much more reliable Japanese vehicles convinced us all to switch away from anything English. It is a shame what slowly happened to the car industry in Britain. Eventually, in the future, very few or no cars will ever be made there. I have a collegue now with a new Range Rover with transmission problems, and I could never understand why she would buy a vehicle made in that unfortunate manufacturing country.
I can relate to that. My family went from unreliable junk Ford's, Vauxhalls and Rovers to Toyota and Honda. And NEVER looked back 🎉
01:30 Pipe Smoker of the Year 1980
I bet instagated a few of the strikes. This machine work is getting in the way of my pipe smoking, Cant have that now!
Of all of the companies mentioned, Vanguard Pressworks, survived and is still going strong under a different name
Yes now called Qutec. Funny how the smallest company survived and prospered and is now quite big.
No surprises there, Brian Cunningham is a Mason!
suite.endole.co.uk/insight/people/327566-mr-brian-william-cunningham?page=companies
The most telling bit is at the end, when they compare how long it takes to mount a lock - Mini vs. Golf. The poor old chap doing the Mini has to bend over, use a manual screwdriver and use force and repetition due to excessive tolerances.
Great video. We can learn so much even today.
Brilliant to have these videos resurfacing! Anything period about the story of BL, AR etc all the way into the 21st century is great to have :)
Lack of government investment and interest, and the government shifted from a manufacturing based to a service based country, and killed off the whole manufacturing sector.
Lack of investment in training a new generation of engineers.
The Japanese come up with manufacturing techniques such as Kaizan, Kan Ban, JIT. They were away ahead of the British.
As a student, I took a summer job at a local family run car hire firm. They ran new Marinas and All-agros. The poor build quality and lack of reliability was breathtaking. They eventually switched to Fords.
Even worse move going ford
So many small suppliers just to make a simple door lock, not to mention the one small supplier that makes the tool to make the key hole that was made by another supplier. That's just crazy!
18:18 that golf was still in the road up until 1999 according to the UK registration lookup. I doubt any of those BL cars shown made it past 1985.
This programme predicted exactly what happened to the British car industry all those years ago.
We were complacent building outdated, unreliable pieces of scrap, whilst the Europeans invested in their manufacturing facilities, understood exactly what the market needed and left us all to rot.
Like it or not, the Japanese showed us how to build quality into our cars, and remain world leaders in automotive manufacturing.
It's a shame, but the kick up the arse the British car manufacturing had, was probably the best thing since the invention of the wheel!
So true , Leyton Thomas . We spent our North Sea oil profits on the en-employed when perhaps a little dealing in Gold ; investment in production and some foresight could have saved all of those skilled jobs. Once again these good people were Lions led by Donkeys .
Thanks Fremantle / Thames - more archive please!
The good old days when you could smoke a pipe while working in a factory
I met a former sales manager of Dunlop. He went to shake up the sales side of the business and soon found out what a hopeless case they were . The tyre moulds were so old they could not produce true round tyres. They actually dated back to WW2 When he questioned this he was told BL will take any old rubbish and it didn’t matter. He had previously worked for Goodyear.He was incandescent but it made no difference and no investment was authorised. When he dealt with the sale of the business to ,I think, Sumimoto of Japan their executives were astounded that a wonderful British institution had been so badly managed.
To this day I don't buy Dunlop tires because my uncle; a former BL-dealer; told me they were not round.
Dunlop at Liverpool was at the old Mustang aircraft factory on the airport. They were still using equipment from Mustang manufacture in WW2 in the late 1970s. Crap company, crap products.
The British auto industry sounds like the Romanian ones in the bad days.
@Random Biker it's why they are known as Dunslop. Sloppy, truly sloppy.
@Random Fisher 2021. I have had dunlops on motorbikes and remove at the first oppertunity. I would rather take the bus for a week than to waste my money on Dunlop rubbish.
A company that didn’t invest being beaten by companies that did invest - best summation I’ve ever heard of Leyland
From 1977 to 1979, I sold new MG, Triumph and Jaguar cars at British Motors of Sacramento. No shortage of customers, just a shortage of cars too sell.
WOW!
I guess at least in Sacramento rust wouldnt be too much of a problem?!
@@rogercliftonville-acton1574 No rust, whatsoever, I'm still driving the 1978 Midget, I bought new from them.
- well said
in high school i had a 61 tr3 triumph
It still astounds me how we managed to make such a bad fist of the post-war period. Meanwhile Germany and Japan who were bombed to pieces got back on the horse and won the manufacturing race. There's a lesson there about entitlement.
Indeed. It seems the Germans and Japanese, for good reasons, wanted to put the war behind them and rebuild their societies.....
The British on the other hand seemed to go backwards and never stopped talking about the war!
British arrogance emerging as victors from the war - we ended up broke but without the mass destruction of infrastructure that allowed us to start over. This mindset put paid to our general competitiveness in a wide array of industries (compounded by militant trade unions hindering productivity increases). Instead of investment, successive governments offered tax cuts; a classic victim being our railways, which are largely Victorian. Consequently we have an under skilled work force and an appalling track record of making or building anything. This cycles has meant virtually anything is up for sale to foreign buyers; our businesses, our housing stock, our money laundering financial sector.
You also lost the colonies.
Germany had overtaken mainland Britain before WWI already in terms of industrial capacity. Japan has even more ppl with a good attitude so thats not surprising.
How britain messed it up this well and thorough however is quite astonishing.
After all the brands are good…
Entitlement is probably right. If i only hear: "we cant let leyland fail bcs one million will be jobless"
In other words… continue to waist ressources especially man power producing a bad product nobody really wants or is happy with and then prevent the import of better quality
Germany in particular had money thrown at it to rebuild its society. The Marshal plan didn’t include Britain.
@@tonysquirrell I lament the fact that we failed on two occasions to establish long-term sovereign wealth funds: i) North Sea oil revenues and ii) the privatisation dividend. Both windfalls were squandered on tax cuts.
Can't wait for brand new British car production after Brexit. The engineering drawings for the Allegro, Marina, Austin Princess, must be lying around somewhere. All that's necessary is a British Union Jack in front of the driver to ensure fantastic success.
Bykermann great looking cars, I would consider buying one
1:40 Can't believe that guy is wearing a tie! Good to see them wearing gloves. As there are so many videos from the '20s to the '70s where the machinists (men and woman) are working all day with no gloves, in filings, sharp cuttings, oil and machining liquids.
Was a worker with class 🤵🔨
Amazing documentary. As a kid then I wrote a letter to 'em askin' for car catalogues. I still have them.
10:43 An elaborate combover, including a cowlick. Well done, sir!
Yes
An excellent document that leaves out the strategic marketing errors of the management.
British Leyland were a hopeless conglomerate of small brands that were individually uncompetitive on level playing fields with their European or Japanese competition. Their offer was tailored to protected or captive markets, and internal competition like Triumph vs. MG or Triumph vs. Rover was not rationally dealt with.
The passing popularity of the Issigonis designs of the 1960s could not hide that a large part of the lineup was made of cars of a very outdated design with a very limited synergy with the Issigonis models. Badge engineering for the sake of maintaining certain dealer networks (and certainly also an excessive management headcount) added cost not value, and did not help export into big markets that opened up on the continent, but had never heard of a large number of the old BMC brands like Riley, Wolseley and the like. These had effectively run their course well before 1960.
Probably BL would have a chance of turnaround if Britain had joined the EEC in 1957. It would have exposed the weaknesses of the British brands much earlier and forced a change while the industry was growing healthily, not contracting under the pressure of the first oil crisis and the resulting tougher competition.
No argument with the points you make.But it will be good to mention the part extreme and overly-aggressive unionism played in the demise of a once solid industry.
@@ronvbbaatjes British car brands were collapsing en masse long before union involvement. British cars were innovative, over engineered and under financed, or mass produced and built down to a price using life expired designs. Workers became cynical at the incompetence of management who were selling old tat in a new hat. Shop floor politics thrive when the writing is on the wall.
British Leyland was on the road to failure the day they were created due to the government forced "shotgun marriage" between Leyland and British Motor Holdings in 1968. British Motor Holdings was the successor company to British Motor Corp, after the Labour government of the day coerced them into buying Pressed Steel Ltd. in 1966, based on the erroneous idea that General Motors wanted to buy P.S, and that it should be prevented from falling into American hands. B.M.C was already in financial trouble prior to this thanks in part to the larger Isogonis designed front wheel drive models, in which B.M.C had invested heavily, and whose sales were dropping thanks to ugly styling, and premature rust issues. Leyland Cars was making a profit in 1967-68, B.M.H was not, and forcing a marriage between an almost insolvent company and a profitable one usually results in a larger unprofitable company not a profitable one, unless extreme measures are taken.
Just imagine if they had ruthlessly cut down the number of marques in 1952, beefed up the MINOR and built it like VW built their Typ 1 (laser focus, beautiful quality, incremental improvement) - they could have launched that car in the US via Canada and cleaned up!
That was a lot of the problem, although BL was one company the different brands competed with each other, MG v. Triumph etc. A good example was the Triumph Stag which should have had the Rover 3.5 V8, but Triumph wanted their own engine which was unreliable, and led to poor sales. Also the Allegro and Marina, two second rate cars that competed for the same market. Why not develop one decent car instead of two crap ones. The workers and management never worked together, it was always a 'them' and 'us' situation. I am not against BL, I've owned many BMC, BL and Rover cars over the years, its a shame they couldn't of done more to stay competitive.
Im amazed you actually got any working footage, from what i remember as a kid they were constantly on strike
Yes you're rite and Jeremy Corbyn wants us to go back to them black bleak times ...
What idiots support's him and his Marxist corbynov party beggars belief
22:01 - Wow...that last door lock comparison was awfully telling.
That is common even today in having multiple companies supplying parts.
Yes. But the German was not wearing a tie Sir ! Not cricket old chap.
@@johnburns4017 I meant the comparison of how the German car and the Brit car have a door lock installed at 22:01.
1:42 Man picks up a Birmingham precision screwdriver! 😆 🤣
Ah stepping back in time, classic - thank you
I was lucky enough to work in the skilled engineering sector from the 70s and I could always find another job. I earned enough money to run a car as an 18-year-old apprentice and had some spare, how things have changed. In 1982 I bought a new Metro, it had 5 visits to the dealers for repairs under warranty in the first year, the rest is history.
One reporter once found the entire nightshift asleep. Adds new meaning to asleep at the wheel,
In 1982 I bought a New Mini Metro to support British industry, it was in the dealership for repairs no less than 5 times in the first year because of build quality issues. I sold it after only 18 months to cut my losses. No surprise that no one wanted to buy them.
Yours is one of many similar stories here.
How much did you lose? The other folks mention about 45% loss.
The Leyland logo even looked like the whirpool in you sink when you remove the plug- well it did all go down the plug hole!
Poor management is unfortunately a British tradition. I've seen it with so many companies, Safeway, Telewest, Jaguar etc. The company has problems, they employ someone new in management who's never worked for the company, they have no clue, workers get disgruntled, manager leaves with a big payoff, workers suffer, company goes under.
You could be talking about nearly every company I've worked for in the UK, terrible politicians terrible management a recipe for disaster.
@@-DC- Yes, in fact I'm trying to think of a UK company I've worked for that isn't like this. BT? Nope. Safestyle UK? Nope. Mailcom? Nope.
A lot of it is due to the unrealistic views of the workers, IMO, who get led on by bad management.
Right at the end, they trusted the 'phoenix four' (or whatever it was) because John Towers promised to return Rover to a volume car maker. In the event, they raped what was left of the company and fled with millions.
Meanwhile, Jon Moulton had a fully costed, pragmatic plan to downsize Rover...but that was rejected because it would have meant large scale job losses.
In the end, we got total job losses.
Roger Cliftonville-Acton it was sad and frustrating. They went with the Phoenix 4 and it did not seem thought out.
Yeah, bang on,
You know you are getting a quality product when the engines are assembled with a hammer.
All about detail and build quality.
Once people discovered Japanese reliability, BL was finished.
Excellent programme - which tried to concentrate on fact-finding rather than the modern lazy journalism which is so prevalent. Amazing to see how many companies were involved in a relatively small item such as a door lock. Perhaps a bit unfair to compare production of the Mini with a Golf, as the Mini was ancient even in 1980, but I have a feeling though that even a comparison with newer BL models of the time would still have been unfavourable. I love these Thames programmes - pity we don't get this level of quality today.
Wasn't the comparison mainly on just how long it took to put the door lock on? I guess the Mini being and older design may have been a factor, but I noticed that the German man was using a powered driver, while the British man was using a manual ratchet driver. So it was probably down to investment again.
@@kvmswitch42 Yep - good point!
They shouldn't have been making the Mini anyway as it had never made a profit.
@@kvmswitch42 The Unions refused any modernisation saying it would cost jobs (and probably the management was happy not to invest) The end result was inevitable-everyone lost their job. The 80's simply underlined how hopeless BL was. As soon as companies such as BT Gas, Electric. Post Office weren't forced to buy BL (and the UK public got more choice) it was the end. Clarkson was right; Government, management and unions all killed BL. The VW Golf and Datsun Cherry made the death complete.
The lock segment was to illustrate how the plant closure would effect other suppliers and businesses. There's a big clue if you listen to the narrative. He tells you this. :)
I don't know anything about cars or engineering, but watching this was interesting. In my experience in factories, I can put a bet on there being some very smart individuals scattered in these places who knew if something was not right, but maybe did not have the power themselves to make changes for the better... and just had to go along with the way it was.
Bloke at the end is fitting a lock in a brown mini. I've got a 1980 mini that was once brown and my other half just pointed out I may have just watched my door lock being fitted 😂😂
At 1:45 watching a guy wearing a tie banging parts in with a hammer tells you all you need to know. Even by the standards of 45 years ago, this was just ancient
Good of Eric Morecambe to help out - 1:25
22:02The British worker was using hand tools, while his German counter part used power tools...seriously?
300 Million per year in government funding buys alot. Leyland was set up to fail, it was part of the Thatcher "counter-revolution."
old world craftsmanship
@@mattharvey4770 VW isn't owned by the federal government, so the 300m wasn't public money.
Besides, Germany was already in tue EU so extensive public help is a no no.
Very cool, thanks for uploading!
It is amazing that it kept going for another 25 years.
I own a 1982 Rover SD1. It starts every single time, even after sitting for weeks and everything apart from being able to adjust the clock works on it. Maybe by '82 they improved the build quality!! Or mine was just built on a really good day.....
If your Rover never breaks, it must be defective. 😉
I have read that the later builds were far better than the early ones.
I rode a real estate agent's 83 V8 example in 1998 and it was a solid feeling car. No rattles at all.
Mine was one of the first Cowley built ones where quality was upped and they didn't put their half eaten sarnies in door panels out of spite so maybe that helps too!!
I have a 1978 sd1 and it also starts first time and never let me down. Great car
They're a beautiful shape, whatever their year and have aged well.
British design under Japanese or German leadership. That might be the solution.
Hey wait a minute!
Ya you guys gave it all away buy buying foreign cars and you left your own to die! Pretty sad have some national pride.
One of the Allegro III 1500 HL (silver grey with black vinyl roof) seen driven through the cobbled streets of the medieval city of Pérouges in the Ain department of France was mine!
Such great cars especially the TR7 with its brand new V8! They will never fail.
Is that William Shakespeare doing the interview!
Chris Robin Thank you!!!!
That was my first thought too!
It's all about product. They could have seen it coming.
In 1963, the Mercedes 600 was introduced. The most technologically advanced car at that time. A Rolls-Royce still had leaf springs and drum brakes.
In 1968 the Jaguar XJ came out.
Then in 1972 the W116 S-Class, which was a far superior car in engineering.
The Beetle, though a pre-war design, was built in a modern factory with modern machines. Its build quality was ahead of any other small economy car. And they could produce them in vast numbers. VW workers were ready to build the Golf, in an efficient, modern way.
BL could have designed a great, modern car, but they were never gonna build it properly or efficiently in those old plants.
After the war, german factories were rebuilt, and they purchased the most modern machines. That, together with skilled engineers and workers who took pride in their product (german work ethos: do the best you can) was basically their key to success. Try imagining 70's West-Germany workers on strike...
don't forget the class system was obliterated in germany after the war,while we still had lord this and sir that in charge of everything regardless of what merits they didn't have
But why GB, if it did got some loans under the Marshall Plan didn't started to modernize the production?
@@zeeteavathepipe3184 because UK used this money on army.
This reminds me of an old joke: “a motorist asks a passer-by how to get to a particular place. ‘If I was going there, I wouldn’t be starting from here’ replied the bloke’...” it was a bit like that with British Leyland. Once you reached this stage, it was in too much of a pickle. Great little video.
Having stated at BL in 1980 to begin an apprenticeship, I can remember the start of the Metro. It was the first model launch I had seen, soon fter they were making 3000 per week. Yes BL had its problems management and union, but because it was nationalised it had to beg for money from the the government.
It did keep a lot of people employed in and outside of BL. What else was 100,000 mostly men were going to do, there were nothing of the shops or warehouses like there are today, almost as though if as planned to be like that.
The true success is not mentioned which was when BAe took the company over in 1985, Honda took a 40 % share and developed joint models and began investing internally in Computer generated manufacturing, improve working methods. More important engineering manufacturing was kept internally (mostly anyway).
Rover Group was a good buy for BAe, so good that it led to the 'sweeteners' scandal with the government who were desperate to privatise it. BAe never made much attempt to integrate Rover with its other operations. BAe left Rover alone, fed it with minimal investment, and waited until it could (under the terms of the purchase agreement) sell. That meant any time after August 1993, which it did and made a princely profit.
Seen lately on a Rover 3000 in Germany, a sticker saying "British Elend" instead of British Leyland. Sounds similar in German, but means "British Misery". Sadly true enough for a lover of British cars.
Love old mate smoking his pipe whilst assembling engines at 1:27
The Fresh Prince of Dapto let me tell you, it was a fine Peterson pipe too, not a cheapy!
Back in da day!
Yea that is a skill in itself 😃
Excellent documentary.
This is the classic example of the problems that have bedevilled Britain. The country has been in economic decline since the 1800s due to a combination of chronic underinvestment, short term-ism, very poor education, outdated skills and machinery, and an inherent conservatism that made us reluctant to move to new products, methods and industries. By the 1970s, we were also paying ourselves more than the value of what we produced - what prosperity that there was was a mirage. The whole system an unsustainable, ticking time bomb.
James Callaghan famously pointed out the problems in 1976. Britain was borrowing money from abroad and pumping it into massively inefficient industries with no future. We were borrowing foreign money to kid ourselves that we had a decent standard of living.
Sadly yes, eclipsed by Germany with UK decline starting in the early 1900's with continuous UK downgrading of the status of engineering, absence of protective engineer titles, short-term business financial outlook preventing investment etc. British Stanley screwdrivering pipesmoking assembly process summed it up well.
Germany had a taste for qualty and later on inovation.
But in '20's and '30's Britain wasn't inovating and modernizing any longer?
1:44 oh sweet Jesus tell me I did not just see a guy whack in a crank cap without lining it up properly 😂
Dony worry. If it was on a motor for an Allegro the car would have fallen to pieces long before it would have caused a breakdown.
You sure did. You sure did 😀
I hope that's not how he makes love.
@@edgarbeat275 He likely never 'made love' in all his days...he may have 'shagged' a few times in his twenties until his frigid wife turned off the tap after the kids were born.
@@saxongreen78 😀 you can feel the frustration in his hammer blows.
@@unclekevin5094 hahahahahaha
By 1980 cumulative problems going back to when BL was formed in the mid sixties could not be resolved . I had a mini at the end of the 1970s ( I had to wait a month for it because Lucus were on strike and couldn't supply the headlights ) and the build of it particularly the shoddy thin paint that eventually blistered in several places put me off BL for good.
Ah Lucas, Prince of Darkness as they used to call it.
@@PurpleWhirple Heard that one.
Or what is the slogan of Lucas: Get me home before dark.
What great timing releasing this. This is scarily coincidental with what is happening with GM in the States.
Doesnt GM go bankrupt every 10 years or so?!
However, they're unionized, so make big donations to politicians, and get bailouts in return, and so we're never rid of GM or their crappy products.
Roger Cliftonville-Acton That sounds exactly like BL at that time. This could almost be a video for GM in either Australia (Holden) or USA.
@@DiscoFang Aye. Shame how many once great brands BL ran down (Healey, Triumph, Morris etc etc) and GM (Buick, Oldsmobile, Saab, and now Holden is really no more as a seperate designer and producer of cars...just rebadged Opels/Chevrolets)
Like Holden with the Aussie market designs BL Australia also produced some awesome cars for the domestic market eg. the P76.
Holden also raped the Aussie population & government by taking the $200 million govt bailout then reneging on promises and sending $150 million back to the parent company GM in USA. Absolutely criminal.
This is a nice nostalgic reminder of the manufacturing giant Britain once was. These days though, Great Britain is mostly selling pencils from a cup.
It's more assembly from imported components.
I think Vauxhall will die in 2019.
@Biggles
Bestline7 Britain is the 7th largest car exporter in the world. At least until Brexit happens.
You'll find its the Western world NOT JUST BRITAIN. Apple makes its phones in China. The British company that designs the chips for those phones make them in China.
It's not a British thing its a Western thing.
@@nudisco300 ARM is now owed by Japanese, SoftBank Holding.
And those pencils are made in China
And in the 80s recession the midlands was hit very hard
Nice to see the Cunningham's made it and own QuTec Perhsore Ltd.
22:31 That music! Like the soundtrack to a bad acid trip!
6:15 That gentlemen has "a disaster!" written in his eyes and voice. Gives quite an impression about levels of stress, people were experiencing back then.
West Midlands, where they invented striking.
In an interview with the producer or director (can't remember which) of the Professionals, he outlines how they booked a meeting with the sales manager of Leyland to arrange for the hero characters to drive Leyland cars. When they traveled up for the meeting, the sales management team were nowhere to be seen and no-one could get hold of them. After that, the producers approached Ford, who willingly obliged. From then on, all the good guys drove Fords - Bodie and Doyle with their Capris, Cowley with his Granada, and ancillary characters with their Cortinas. Result: Half an hour of free marketing per week for Ford on primetime TV's No.1 slot. That's the difference between the luddites at BL and a company that wants to exist in 5 year's time.
Brian Clemens...
Fascinating watching this in 2020
My parents had always had BL cars ; Austin A30, A40, 1100, 1800 and, as a bit of a curved ball, an A90. They also bought a series of Vauxhalls; HB and HC Vivas, Cresta PC, VX4/90, Ventora and Chevette. After 12 months my Mum decided she didn't like the Chevette and took it on as my first car. It was replaced by a bright yellow Mini 1000, CNA 877T straight from the factory. Well, straight from the dealer's compound anyway. My Dad, as was his want, checked the car over as soon as he got it home and on checking the boot found Leyland had left him 3" of mucky water with a mouldy bacon sandwich floating in it as a thank you for buying the car. Obviously as the Mini was powered by a transverse engine from the A30/35/40, which had the engine longitudinally mounted this meant what had been on the side, was now on the front, namely the distributor. It used to get drenched when driven in heavy rain or spray. And stopped working. By 1979 a sophisticated device had been employed to prevent this, namely a piece of plastic which cured the problem. Not quite sure why it took the best part of 20 years but, well you can't hurry genius. Mind you the plug leads used to run over the rocker box and fray. The Japanese cured this kind of thing with a 20 pence plastic clip. Like l said, you can't hurry genius. Despite the company's bravery in some of its decisions it was the Germans and Japanese with their conventional, psteadily evolving engineering who won the day, not the slightly weird Brits and Frogs.
Quality cars the Metro. The AA bloke just used to follow me around in the end.
A C 😱😂
When I had my 1984 Austin Metro the RAC wrote to me saying I was using them too much.
The Triumph Acclaim, a rebadged Honda, was made in the UK. It proved that British workers, when given quality components and state of the art manufacturing plant can built cars to the same levels as the Japanese. Well the workers did not matter, it was the management that mattered. They put in the state of the art plant.
I remember watching British Leyland truck commercials growing up in Kenya in the 1980s
40 years on from this program and Leyland is just history, if they had rust proofed their cars they might have also protected themselves.
WEll'l you cannot polish a turd they were JUNK.