Was it Thatcher who killed the British motor industry?

Yesterday it was 28 years since Margaret Thatcher resigned as a prime minister in the UK and we thought that should make her our Friday Lady today.

It seemed she would have loved to stay a little longer then the 11 years she’d been on, but it was not to be. Her cabinet refused to back her in a second round of leadership elections, and it were disputed about the European Union that gave them headaches. Nothing’s changed.

But when Maggie Thatcher is mentioned in car-circles, the demise of the British motoring industry is never far away. Thatcher, the conservative, was a fan of the Rover P5, which was used in her own fleet. And when the P6 and later SD1 came to succeed them, she pleaded for retaining the classic model instead. She opted for Jaguar XJs then (below).

Under her strategy several Japanese motor manufacturers came up with branches in the UK and BL notoriously teamed up with them, too. A good idea? Fact is that it lead to what can hardly be described as a frivolous time in the industry. Oh, and then there was the buying of British Leyland by the government. And the strikes. Meanwhile, Maggie’s son Mark made it to start of the Paris-Dakar Rally, only to disappear in the Sahara desert! But that’s got hardly something to do with the suggested downfall of the British motor industry that Maggie was (and is) so often blamed for. If you want to read in in-depth article about this matter, we suggest you to click here.

Oh, no points for giving us the marque and model of the car seen here in front of Downing Street 10. But do you know..?

(words editor, pictures BBC)

Published:

Friday November 23rd, 2018

Duncan Grimmond

25 November 2018, 13:33

That woman was also responsible for the deliberate destruction of manufacturing industry which meant the end of apprenticeship training. Thus 15 years later we had to import skilled craftsmen/women to do the work for which we had not trained the younger generation of students.

Larry A. Lewis

23 November 2018, 16:52

Thatcher was also responsible for killing the railways with the idea that if the train service was bad, then people would buy cars thereby helping the economy. But, you could no longer buy an Alvis, Austin, Riley, Morris, Wolseley or whatever. But you could buy a Toyota.

The car is a 1938 Smedley Wombat, famed for their chassis made out of breadsticks. Their slogan was, "Made by monkeys, for monkeys" They went out of business 15 minutes after building this prototype.

B.J. van Spaendonck

23 November 2018, 15:53

The downfall of the British motor industry was a complex process, which took several decades. many factors contributed to this sorry tale, but the general feeling seems te be that industrial action by militant unions (including outright sabotage at the assenbly line) and mismanagement (e.g. allowing Triumph to develop its own (failed) V8 while BL already had the very good Buick derived 3.5 litre V8) were the main causes. BL itself was a case study in "big is not always beuatiful"). Fortunately the British motor industry is far from dead with makes like Aston-Martin, Jaguar, Morgan. Rover, Rolls-Royce and Bentley (albeit partly foreign owned), and just about every F1 car is buit by specialists in the UK.

Robbie Marenzi

23 November 2018, 14:24

It's a 1987 Naylor TF 1700

Was it Thatcher who killed the British motor industry?

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