The UK car industry is reversing back to the 1970s

When I wrote a fortnight ago, in the context of Nissan’s decision not to build its new X-Trail model at Sunderland, that ‘British carmaking as a whole is on course to shrink back to the 1970s’, I was expecting the next bulletin of doom from US-owned Ford, whose bosses — I’d heard from an insider — were ‘hair-on-fire apoplectic’ at the government’s failure to provide Brexit clarity. Subsequent indications that Ford may shift some production out of the UK were taken by industry watchers as a mild warning of serious cutbacks to come — but meanwhile, news of Honda’s factory closure at Swindon knocked everything else off the headlines.

Honda’s declared rationale was more about its global strategy for electric cars (another area in which our government has provided scant encouragement) and less about Brexit. But this is a hugely symbolic blow, because the great renaissance of the UK car industry began with Honda on Christmas Day 1979, when British Leyland boss Sir Michael Edwardes flew to Japan to sign a joint venture for the production of the Honda Acclaim in BL factories.