The Mess That Was British Leyland | Dated Cars and Competing Against Yourself | History in the Dark
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ย. 2024
- British Leyland, a corporation born from the merger of Leyland Motors and British Motor Holdings, was at one time the largest automotive manufacturer in Britain and the fifth largest in the world. Also, they were a complete disaster almost always losing money to the point the UK's government had to bail them out and even that did not save them.
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#car #truestory #documentary #corporate #leyland #british
If you want to know just how nuts British Leyland was, when a fire broke out in the Longbridge tunnels in the 1970s, someone (obviously) used an office phone nearby to call for the city fire brigade. He then got reprimanded by management for unauthorised use of a company telephone.
I can hear a little man from Birmingham crying in the distance...
Some would say he COULD be a hamster...
He was never the same when his father brought home that Austin
Funnily enough, I heard a rather large bloke from Redditch screaming "everybody out!"....😅
Red Len?
@@EE12CSVT Red Robbo!
With apologies to Samuel L. Jackson: "Say 'Jag-wire" one more time!"
Jag-you-are in England.
@@The-Sea-Dragon-1977 jag wire make bicycle brake cables!
jag-war, team murika!
No,when it's originally a certain country's brand,it really should be pronounced like it is in the Mother country. Also,exonyms/xenonyms should be banned,endonyms/autonyms rule! 💪💪 I am English,but grew up in Pennsylvania,& I get just as annoyed when Brits say Maryland as 'Mary-Land' & Arkansas as 'Ar-kan'-zas'🤣🤣
@@markhealey9409 It can be said however in it's home country, but I'm not ruled by a foreign country, in murika we have the freedom of speech so I don't have to follow the witch the queen's rules :-) It's a shite brand anyways, not worth saying right, just like ASS-stain martin, brits don't make good cars, no one does today though so nothing personal and I actually own a land rover (it's a piece of crap too, 2nd one I've had, both were prone to breakdowns at random.
@@markhealey9409 Yeah if you live under imperalism from a foreign country, neah plenty of boys died so I can call it whatever the hey doo doo I want to. jag is a junk brand anyway, not worth saying right.
This story reminds me a lot of the death of Bethlehem Steel. According to a friend of mine who worked there for 50 years, the departments used to charge each other shipping between the buildings at their plants.
@@thundercreekcustoms What was going on here ? 🤣
A falling piano and a Morris Marina is my OTP
Enjoyed this, it's not often you get a video on this from outside of the UK
Just a small note, it's *Jag-U-Arr*
Thankyou, everyone in Britain
Well, it’s actually Jag-ware. Thank you, the people where the animal actually lives
@@michaelimbesi2314 yes, but not JagWIRE... Thank you, the people who still keep it to the point: that it's spoken wrong, no matter what.
@@TheChill001 Jag-wire is not the normal Americanized pronunciation either. Most Americans pronounce it as jag-warr.
Jag-wire
😭🤣🤣🤣😭😭🤣😭🤣😭
Only ever heard Jag-u-are in scamerica
I assume he calls the cat a jag-wire
😭🤣😭🤣🤣😭🤣😭🤣😭
I can hear Jessica playing in my head lol
Oh British Leyland. You made the 1970s American Motors and Chrysler look well run. 🤣🤣🤣
To give you an idea: when the USA introduced a new law that specified the minimum height of the headlight centers of any car sold here, British Leyland had a problem on the MG MGB. The headlights were two inches too low. Instead of restyling the hood slightly, a committee that investigated the problem determined that it was cheaper to raise the car's suspension by three inches, which completely wrecked the fantastic handling that the MGB was known for 😂
Nice to hear the tale of British Leyland's demise from an American point of view, it makes the General Motors fiasco seem well-managed. What's more remarkable is that you didn't explode in sheer disbelief.
Dont forget also that cars were only built on the odd day that theunionised workers could get round to it, and be bothered to put most of the parts in.
And leave used cigarette ends in the doors behind the door cards, and scrunched up newspapers they'd just finished reading.
Going on strike because it's a day that ends in Y takes a lot of planning.
My mother bought her last British Leyland car in the late sixties. It was terrible so she bought a Citroen, which was flawless, then two more. I have never owned a British car and now drive Hondas. We watched BL destroy itself in real time and this film is the sad truth.
British Leyland: if you thought British Rail was bad, we take it to a whole new dimension!
British Rail wasn't as bad as people make out. it was doing pretty well on the run up before privatisation.
There's a great book called loosing track which goes into the time before and after privatisation it's quite eye opening.
My favorite was the govt making them build a new factory up in Scotland, staffed by disgruntled coal miners, while keeping engine production down in England making production control a nightmare.
The idea of Triumph being a luxury brand 🤣 'Proud' owner of a Triumph Spitfire here. It's on bricks right now and when running always had the feel of being about to break down.
They were more luxurious than a Morris with leaf springs and lever arm shocks.
the spitfire wasn't exactly a show of luxury and was more of a slightly more upscale rival to the MG midget and AH sprite. If you compare those two or the TR4-6 with the MGB, you'd start to see the difference. Add to that their saloon offerings, and you've found yourself the british BMW :D
We used to have a Triumph Herald (one of probably only a handful in the US). It still had the plastic on the door panels. Never got it running, ended up selling it to one of the rare other Herald owners in the US.
Then there were the three Austin Americas we had (none ever got on the road either) Austin America was the US model name for the British Leyland 1100-series cars.
at 17:20, there is a Allegro and a Passat shown in a UK motor show....the Passat is still build....the Allegro is in the museum, for many good reasons!
Best way to shut up a British car fan who dunks on American cars...
Ask them about British Leyland 😂
Well, at least the American cars of the period were far better looking, if only marginally better built. I especially like the C3 Corvette, looks wise. Most of ours, on the other hand, looked more like things you'd see in communist states.
GM and Ford would have gone bankrupt in 2008 if it wasn't for government bailouts. Don't forget that.
Interesting factoid: Produced from 1962 till 1980, the MGB was the most popular sports car in the world until the Mazda MX5 Miata came along.
Leyland decided to kill MG and develop the Triumph TR-7 which was still outsold by the MGB when both cars were still in production. Working examples of TR-7’s are few and are plagued with problems.
Meanwhile, MGB‘s are plentiful and inexpensive as well as their parts. Most of the body panels and many of the other parts remained unchanged since 1962. Many consider the MGB the biggest bargain in the classic car market.
The Chinese now on the MG brand which is now on miserable little Econo boxes and cheap electric cars. MG sold more cars than Jaguar. Austin Martin, Healey and Triumph ever did.
MGB good, but would not swap my mark2 MX5 for one.
My ste[brother had a 1978 TR7 with a swapped 2 litre Granada engine. At least the engine was reliable.
The Chinese version of MG has made a sports car now
@@brianwillson9567 Are you aware of Moss Motors? They are the biggest supplier of British sports car parts in the world. They also sell parts for Miata’s. 😉
I expected to see the British Leyland logo to keep appearing like the BR one does on your Wrist Trains videos 😂😂
@@peddersmeister Yeah, and the GPO (later British Helecom, sorry, British Telecom) for the telephones
Interesting topic, but the grating voice KILLS IT!
I'm surprised the Top Gear episode centered around British Leyland didn't make an appearance.
Good episode. As a proud owner of two MGBs, I enjoyed this. My '64 was BMC and the '77 is a BL, but they're both out of Abingdon. Thanks for sharing.
Why, why do Americans insist on pronouncing Jaguar as "Jagwire"? It's exactly was spelled "Jag-u-ar"!
I cringed every time he said it.
If in doubt, just say "Jaaaag" like Jezza Clarkson
They usually seem to say it Jag-wah. I think he was trying to get it right... but failed miserably! 😄
because it draws the British jag ire.
I'm American and have never heard this pronunciation you're claiming. Always Jag-wahr.
My uncle was stationed in England in the 80s. He never had a good thing to say about British Leyland. Ever. The car he praised was a 1957 ford prefect.
With British leyland competing with itself it was even design divisions that were divided between absorbed companies, often the company would only produce one car for a target demographic but have all the divisions designing one, going as far as drivable cars & production level tooling, only to be told that they weren't going to be produced, Rover was typically in competition with Triumph, even though they were both already part of Standard Motors before being merged into British Leyland, Jaguar just wouldn't play with anyone else, Jaguar's team even claimed their XJ model was specifically designed so that the Rover V8 wouldn't fit, but several owners have proven this to be a lie.
An interesting and well researched article. I think the main problem, among many, was that the cars were just rushed to market without any of the problems ironed out. By the time many models had been on the market for two or three years ,they had, in the main, become ok. A 1978 Allegro was a more reliable and well made vehicle than a 1973 one, for example. Image was another problem. In the UK, Fords were the cool cars, think The Sweeney or The Professionals with their Granada and Capri, contrast that with Basil Fawlty and his Austin 1100 or more recently Alan Partridge and his Rover Sterling. I would say with British Leyland the intent was there but there were too many other factors to have made it successful. Fun fact, John Lennon drove an Austin Maxi, but crashed it while on holiday in Scotland. Would there be a review or retrospective of American Motor Corporation in the future? I always thought they were closest in spirit to BL.
It remains to be seen if Stellantis will turn out to be the modern global Britsh Leyland.
Jag-wire reminds me of the bad Lucas wiring the Jaguars cars have
Lucas - Prince of Darkness - wiring was bad in everything. We've so many memes about them it's hilarious.
LOL
@@caseyjones1999 Not only Jaguars : Also LandRovers are the victim of Lucas the Prince of Darkness.... I can sing a Song about IT!😁 In Germany WE call Britisch Leyland the Britisch Elend (mysery)....
@@caseyjones1999 Not only Jaguars : Also LandRovers are the victim of Lucas the Prince of Darkness.... I can sing a Song about IT!😁 In Germany WE call Britisch Leyland the Britisch Elend (mysery)....
years back, the first "decent" car I bought, came down to a choice between a Toyota Carina E, in dark green or a gold coloured rover of some sort.
one was £6,500, the other £5,000
my then partner couldn't see why I wanted the more expensive Toyota until I explained the Rover was British built
Must not forget Lucas electric components aka The Prince of Darkness. I had an MGC, I replaced the charging system with a GM and also the intake with a Rochester system, and that made it a very reliable car. The Stag would be a prime candidate for a worst of series. I’m surprised you didn’t mention Neufield that was also a major component of BL.
British Leyland was kind like the British version of the Malaise Era, ironic both happened around the same time.
Jagwire??? Wtf is a jag wire?
I’m a new subscriber. Got here because TH-cam recommended the toysrus video.
And man I gotta say you are funny and love the video format and narrations.
Keep the good work on this company collapse videos!!!!!
08:11 Ah, the Morris Marina, as featured in the brilliant Brittas Empire episode "Not a Good Day" (at least its engine block was).
Honestly hearing how so many cars were badge engineered reminfs me so much of GM from the 80s to the 2000s.
Ooh my eyes lit up when I saw you had done this. Good move. Great subject. Great video. Great channel.
l60 chieftain engine sums it it up in so many ways. Visited the museum recently, well worth it.
I think British Leyland failed for one simple reason. Merging car companies is like a marriage: two is enough.
Which film was a lot of the footage taken from? I recognised several actors who were famous in the 1970s.
A lot of the footage is from a BL quality film, called "The quality connection" and a Thames TV documentary report, from February 1980.
Most of them from comedy shows. Sort of appropriate in a way...
VW produce cars that compete among their many marques so that wasn't the problem.
There were good cars that sold well but management and unions caused problems that lead to BLs downfall.
The company that joined with Leyland was called BMC by the way.
I was just watching to tge Top Gear episode on these cars
@@rhogardelmirev3530
"It may well have been the best car that British Leyland ever made"
Jeremy Clarkson talking about the Triumph Staaag
You should feel bad for Leyland, as someone who lives there the entire town is a disaster.
That mention of one brand stealing sales from another brand is on of the problems that the Chrysler Corporation had in the 60's and 70's and probably beyond too. If Plymouth had a model that was selling well, the Dodge dealers wanted a version of it. Also GM in the 80's 90's. I always felt that each car model should have had an exclusive model, body design or type (coupe or convertible) that was not shared with another brand in the same company.
GM - Chevy - Saturn - Pontiac - Plymouth - Saab.... yeah nobody else did that intercorporate competition thing.
Badge Engineering also screwed General Motors - and, like UK govt, the US govt bailed them out. Ford also had Mercury and Chrysler had Dodge & Plymouth.
I was amazed that these duplicate brands lasted as long as they did
Some great cars did emerge...great engineers overshadowed by dismal management.The Rover SD1 was way ahead of its time and the Jaguar Xj6/12 could compete with the top luxury cars on a low budget.
Leyland as a brandname is now a part of PACCAR.
In the factory based in the place Leyland 40% of all DAF trucks are build.
The European DAF brand of PACCAR has 3 plants. Eindhoven Netherlands (origin of DAF) Leyland UK (origin of Leyland) and DAF/PACCAR Westerlo Belgium who is a hirstorical parts supplier for DAF and Leyland.
DAF and Leyland have a long history togehter. DAF did license build Leyland engines trucks and bus chassis for all their Trucks and busses. They became one of their biggest customers.
They even merged in the 1987 to Leyland DAF (LDV Leyland Daf vehicels).
in 1993 LDV went bankrupt and Leyland and DAF went their own way.
After PACCAR aquired DAF and Leyland both came for teh 3th time togheter.
The Leyland brand name is shelved and only a modern production site at Leyland remains.
And yes they are expanding and hiring these days.
The death of the British mini is the craziest part. The car had a great reputation, and they should have been able to increase the sell price to make it profitable. It's strange how the mini was once a simple, cheap, reliable car, and now it's an over-engineered, over-priced, unreliable junker.
Ensure our employees receive fair pay and a safe work environment?! Fuck that!!! We'd rather destroy ourselves!
01:53 Jaguar = JAG-wahr
03:24 _Volkswagon_ = FOHLKS-vah-g'n (in German; what's in the video is the standard USian pronunciation)
07:28 niche = NEE-shh or NIT-ch (USian)
If you speak actual English it's Jag You Are, but that's possibly wrong anyway since it's a Mesoamerican word.
@@milksheihk I've heard both in UK dialects, though primarily the two-syllable one. The UK's really diverse though when it comes to pronunciation.
@@alexhajnal107 The dropping of the third syllable might only be relatively recent, Always three syllable in Australia, New Zealand & South African English, English media we got here used three syllables in the 80s & 90s, & every British car show up until Clarkson was sacked from Top Gear for the third & final time used the three syllable pronunciation.
@@milksheihk Interesting. I'm not really a car person; if that's the standard pronunciation in the media then I stand corrected.
@@milksheihk Jag you err here in deepest Slough. I liked the 'Merican Jag waar.
Darkness forgot to mention that MG got swept up in this mess as well.
Pretty much all no niche british car brands did.
MG (electric cars) are a Chinese brand now.
@@obelic71 Funny how so many of the British marques ended up in the hands of former colonies (USA and India, and--to a degree--China) or their historical enemy (Germany). If we could figure a way to get the Irish, Australians and French in on this, then I think we'd have a clean sweep.
The sun has set on the British automotive empire...
12:00 - Don't worry, Ford actually did that. It was called the Lincoln Mark LT.
Well done! Thank you for making the nonsensical make sense.
I was thinking that maybe Volkswagen would go the same way...here in the UK they sell cars that compete which each other and essentially the same..VW Audi Skoda and Seat.In a recent satisfaction survey the Golf 8 had come stone dead last out of 75 cars, i suppose at least they haven't gone on strike
Innovative designs that could have been world- class automobiles if they weren't underdeveloped and released to the buying public before they were ready.
Disastrous reliability and durability and subpar workmanship turned off buyers both in the home market and their export markets.
Couple those problems with strikes a militant workforce and inept management and it's a recipe for disaster.
Once Britain entered the common market and higher quality more reliable Continental and Japanese vehicles became available they were doomed and they just remained on life support until they finally died.
Leyland Trucks actually sponsored the Williams F1 team in the early 80's and sir frank williams had very little nice to say about them behind closed doors.
Eventually he would trade leyland for Bin Laden Group (yes that bin laden) and TAG before securing a whole new raft of sponsors in 1985.
Well told tale, having lived through it and heard it told so often, you nailed it!
Really nice video! 👏
I would also add that, for sure currency fluctuation of the Pound might've helped not that much in certain periods, refraining BLMC/BL/Rover Group from certain possibly winning bets, but looking back in History and products, I also can't stop thinking that there was an absolute lack of vision, i.e., a narrow-minded thinking with focus on the idiosyncratic wishes of the UK domestic market and lack of real interest especially in the European export markets.
Also, the more we search about certain discarded prototypes, cancelled projects and others (and some of them could've been profitable or not being very expensive to conceive, being a mere reskin of existing ones, or heavily based in cars already into production), the more I believe that the successive management boards were really thinking small.
If only they’d stayed with Honda. I had a Rover Mini and Rover 400. Great cars!
Its Jaguar NOT Jagwar - its mainly the americans that can't or won't pronounce Jaguar and call it Jagwar but they can pronounce Utah and Umbrella ,
12:00 Ford did, it was called the Lincoln Blackwood. Truck buyers didn’t want the extra expense and luxury buyers didn’t want a truck. It only lasted one year so they’re rare and collectible now. I’ve only seen one, ironically on the street like any other truck.
Who's got a Delorean mates? I'd like to go back in time, and woo the beautiful woman putting on makeup at her desk.
funny, born in the late 60s....i watched in awe the news, talking about strikes all the time in the UK...
living close to the biggest car in factory in Europe,
i never heard about my uncles going on strike...all they did been on vacation to Spain!
Anybody else notice that Darkness DIDN'T whimper when he mentioned British Railways???
Volkswagen group did the same and are succesful. The problem was money. The pound was to expensive to export. Strikes and poor quality didn t help either. Because of all of this they got an bad image.
The pound had damm all to do with it. The cars were rubbish and outdated.
No one wants outdated tech and design topped off with poor reliability.
Great video about the shameful demise of basically the entire British car history......but I just can't unhear the Jag-wire and D-A-F...
That's why lanka ashok Leyland is better than British Leyland
12:05 Isn’t GM doing the same thing with GMC and Chevy? 🤔
If I could go back in time and redesign these cars, BL would have survived……..
There was nothing wrong with the design of the cars for the time, some of these were innovative and recieved high acclaim from critics. It was the laughable management decisions, negligible quality conrol and apalling worker relations that ultimately doomed them
I avoided any of those cars in the 1970s and 1980s by buying mainly Ford and Vauxhall. Later on I had a couple of Triumph Dolomites as classic cars in the late 1990s and they were basically very good small cars, but boy did they like to rust.
The guy using a carpenters Yankee screwdriver to assemble the door locks.
i like how you pronounce the word jaguar
Jaguwire 😮
@@dustin_4501I prefer the Texas pronunciation Jagwarrrrr. 😊
Made me think of something to do with electronics: JTAG-wire (some weird mix of JTAG and 1-wire?)
A lot of information was given in this video. Making and selling automobiles is very complex. The major problem was all of the major automobile manufacturers of Great Britain were brought together into one giant company. General Motors had a similar challenge. General Motors was the mother company of Cadillac, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, ... Automobiles across these brands were basically the same vehicle with different names. Often they look alike with similar add-on features. Chevy would make a middle-class cheaper model and Pontiac would make a slightly more expensive sporty model while Cadillac would make an upscale, luxury model that was very expensive. The problem was many customers saw through this and did not consider the different models offered as being different. However, I am not an expert so I cannot be this was the primary problem. There were other issues presented on this video that were quite interesting.
All I can say is that free-market capitalistic trading systems are more efficient in delivering what the market or the people wants. Whenever governments get involved you introduce a group of political elites who are good at politics, but who do not know how to make and sell cars. In Great Britain the government became the primary owner of all British auto-makers. Can the primary owner sit by and allow the managers of these auto-makers run their company without interference? Of course the British government interfered. In a democracy the political leaders have to appease the general population. In a free-market capitalist trading system it is supply and demand that determines how auto-makers operate their business. That is the fundamental conflict. The British government wanted to control its automobile manufacturers in order to save the JOBS of those who voted them into office. Not to create a competitive (domestically & internationally) automobile industry. In a free-market, competitive automobile market-place the auto-makers must make cars the market (or the people) want to buy. The British government wanted to save jobs for their automobile workers. British automobile managers were trying saving jobs in their factories. British automobile makers were not focused on making products that people wanted to buy, which would have saved British jobs. As a result, British auto-makers slowly but surely failed. The British government used British taxpayer money to help the British Auto Industry die a slow painful death while depleting the Treasury.
Just look at the former Soviet Union (Russia) and all the former Eastern Bloc Warsaw-Pact countries. Their industries were based on a Command Economy centrally planned by the benevolent socialist-communist governments. None of them can compete with the private companies of the modern democratic Republics with free-market capitalist trading systems. This is not a coincidence. The British Auto Industry failed because it did not make cars the markets (or the people) wanted to buy. I understand the narrator of this video claimed that British Auto-Makers won prizes for making the "best cars." I do not know what he meant by "best." The only way established auto-makers can fail is because not enough people wanted to buy their cars.
The people of the former Eastern Bloc and the remaining third-world, agrarian countries live in societies where the markets and indeed trade is controlled by a handful of elites. Individual property rights are not protected, because a handful of elites have all the power. Often the political elites ignore individual property rights for the greater good of all. I hope the people of the modern, industrialized Republics will understand this and continue to do the things that make them successful. It is the modern, industrialized Republics with free-market capitalist trading system and RULE of LAW who created the conveniences of the modern world.
So the British Government did not help? The bailed out BL in 1975. Without that the company would have folded then.
In the end it were two American companies which profited of the mismanagement of British Leyland, Ford and GM, which had taken over Vauxhall in 1925.
British Leyland cars from the 1970s and 80s had in general a bad name for reliability and longevity on the European export market, proven by the fact that you still can see German made cars from the 1980s on the roads now, but a Mini Metro or an Austin Maestro is rarer as seeing a Pagani Zonda on the road now.
As a British car enthusiast I know all about BL...
The biggest problem with BL wasn't the strikes or even the shitty cars. Management just sucked, full of infighting. Rover especially had many amazing designs, almost ready to go, before the merger. The Range Rover was the only survivor - argubly the first luxury SUV ever made and the ancestor to most cars sold today. BL was headed by an ex Jaguar boss who killed all of Rover's designs to make Jaguar look better in return. This happened constantly within BL. They needed to bite the bullet and scrap all the competing brands - Rover for luxury, Triumph for premium, Morris/Austin for mass market, MG for sports. Think how richer the car market would be with a strong BMW/Audi/Merc competitor (Rover), and a VW Group competitor with Triumph/Austin. Although MG would probably not have survived to 2024.
14:10 Finally revealed, the real reason for the downfall of BL: Everyone was eyeing this woman up so much they couldn't do their jobs properly! Tidy though...
This video starts after the crisis had occurred that resulted in the demise of British Leyland. Prior to all this Britain had been in negotiations with France and Germany about joining the European Economic Community (EEC), the forerunner of the European Union. The USA did not want that to happen. Britain was still in serious debt to the USA following WWII and had borrowed, with US approval, significant amounts to finance the rebuilding of Britain's demolished industries. Then the Conservative Party, also known as the Tories, lost power to the Labour Party, a socialist party and the USA went into panic that Britain would align with the Soviets so must not be allowed to join the EEC, which would, in their eyes, put a Soviet aligned Britain inside the European community which might encourage the USSR to expand across Europe.
France was no excited about Britain belatedly joining the EEC after declining to join when it was first formed. They threw up major obstacles, the greatest of which was the currency exchange rates between Germany, France and the UK. This was before the Euro was coined (pun intended) but the exchange rates had to be stable to balance open trade across the respective European states. Imagine how difficult it would be if every US state valued the dollar differently. The French wanted to keep the Pound Sterling value high so that British products would not be super competitive against French ones. The Labour government devalued the Pound meanwhile to increase UK sales to Europe and especially the USA to earn dollars from export sales.
The US government at the time wanted to weaken the 'socialist' UK and make it difficult, if not impossible, for Britain to achieve currency parity with German and French targets. So the US treasury began to buy Sterling, which drove the value up. Britain could not print more which would feed inflation so they became stuck between a rock, the USA, and a hard place, France and Germany.
Why does this matter? Because raising the value of the pound made Britain's exports more expensive, especially cars that had been successfully sold into the US to earn dollars to help pay down the IMF and World Bank loans. So Britain was forced into austerity, cutting services and wages, raising discontent that eventually enabled the Tories to regain power and keep Britain out of the EEC. Britain's motor industry had been struggling to invest any money into new models so sales declined even at home. Wages stagnated, union activity increased and the government had no money to invest so it forced mergers in the vain hope that the bigger companies could achieve economies of scale that might save them. And of course it didn't.
Not just Britain's car industry was destroyed. the same US intervention resulted in Britain's aircraft industry, ship building and steel industries going the same way.
After WWII the US government saw the opportunity to become the worlds most powerful nation. But they did not just need to contain the USSR and the spread of communism. Before the British Pound had been the worlds reserve currency. After the war, with Britain basically broke, the US moved to take of being the worlds banker which resulted in the Breton Woods agreement and the establishment of the US dollar as the worlds new reserve currency. They also needed to ensure that Britain remained economically depressed so it remained dependent of American largess to survive and support US hegemony as it started to throw it;s weight around in Asia, south America and the Middle East.
You could say that the USA caused the collapse of the British car industry, along with their steel, shipbuilding, aerospace and mining industries. I can, and I do.
BTW, you need to learn from this as right now China is in the process of creating a new world reserve currency, with the help of Saudi Arabia, India, Brazil and Russia. The US is in great danger of losing it's fiscal clout around the world and it may already be too late to stop it. Detroit's inability, or unpreparedness to quickly compete in the shift to EVs will look as bad as Britain's car industry collapse in about a decade at their present rate of decline. US steel is just about dead. So is it's aerospace industry. If it were not for Tesla and SpaceX the US would be in very bad shape by now.
You have been warned!
British leyland is now Ashok Leyland
Which manufactures trucks and buses in India
It didn't help that their cars could be longer on one side than the other!!
Yes.Workers need money,if they can live ...Not only Margaret Thatcher and The King
Unfortunately British lorries and motorbikes had the similar faith, Seddon and Atkinson merged and became Seddon Atkinson which was actually a re-badged Iveco, Then ERF brought by MAN and disappeared and the latest Fodens were re-badged DAF cf, Don't even know how Scammel and GUY disappeared. They were great lorries actually but didn't invest in development and failed catch up with the latest technology.
The Moris Minor looks like a British Bug.
I read Stellantis in this
@11:11 it's Arthur from On the Buses.
Also John Comer from Last of the Summer Wine also appears in several scenes
5:00 Sir David Suchet
You should do one one our Aussie made Leyland P 76 🤦♂️
the merger were between BMC (British Motor Company) and Layland not BMH and Layland
there also was another problem Lord Stokes himself he refused to modernise the company and failed to realize the impact of imports
BL cars expect the Mini have been and are still being rediculed for being pieces of trash
My early childhood memories of the 1970s are week after week, the BBC News programmes telling continuous bad news stories. It felt like the end was hours away for years. 😢❤😢
Same in America. In the automotive world it's called the malaise era, but that applied to the county overall.
The economy was craptastic, inflation was at a rate that prices became noticeably higher almost every time you went shopping, and an general feeling that everything was falling apart.
Had to stop after, Jag wire.
You should do one on the Studebaker-Packard Merger. Very similar story.
why do americans always say Jagwire rather than jaguar...like serious, when we're talking about the south american cat there's no issue in saying it right, but the moment it's about the brand it's 99% of the time JAGWIRE... despite it being a good video, this is becoming so annoying. It isn't hard, you already know how to pronounce the name (literally like the big cat) so why can't y'all do it?
I just got an idea why didn’t they just stop making the mini and make a mini 2 that was the same but some parts where different like the grill so it looked different and Make it more expensive
Jagwire? Not familiar with that brand!
The Morris Marina and Austin Alegro are two of the worst cars ever made and unfortunately they made the awful Morris Marina in Australia because they were built by Leyland Australia but we allcan be greatful that they no longer build cars and another nail in the coffin was that the Japanese cars were and are so much better than there British competition and all the Japanese car makeds are still around today and are couple of them are building the most reliable cars ever
At least your Aussie versions had V6 engines rather than anaemic K-series.
The last Car by rover was the 75 I owned one and was a nice car, Look it up.
@@bsasteve lots of 5 series bits....
Just in time for four other channels to have covered it this year!
Yeah I knew all of this from the 6 videos on BL that I watched last year! Still enjoyed it though
I feel like British Leyland is the BR of cars, both big companies composed of smaller companies that died in very short amounts of time and became government owned, making absolute garbage.
Most of the visuals in this video that are not from newsreel footage, are taken from _The Quality Connection,_ a 1977 training film commissioned by British Leyland that stressed the importance of, unsurprisingly, workers doing their job properly and not turning out shoddy work by, for instance, getting distracted ogling the typist from the planning office. In fact it starts out with police turning up at the scene of a fatal traffic accident where there is no apparent cause.
The film was directed by Bert Wilkins and featured a plethora of well-known British mainly television actors of the day such as Michael Robbins, Paul Barber, John Comer, Trevor Bannister, David Suchet, Maddy Smith (Wendy, the leggy bird with the hourglass figure), and George Cooper (the customer who tries out the white Morris Marina in the showroom.) The duration is 24 mins 36 secs and three examples have been uploaded to TH-cam.
A shame , really. They could've made so really great cars . ( came pretty close on the Stag IMO ) N.J. , USA
I have to disagree on the All-Aggro. I had one, it was very nice (for the time) but not one single fuck was given in the entire supply chain.
Also, how the hell were VW big? They were still flogging Weimar Germany 's finest people's car which had been rendered obsolete by the Moggy, in 1948.
ETA, if you want to know where Games Workshop got the administration of the Imperium from, this is it.