Britain builds more cars than France

[culzean]

http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/consumer-news/85174/uk-builds-more-cars-france-first-time-1966

seems people are finding out the truth about French cars - but what took them so long to discover they were a triumph of marketing 'style over substance' ?

[madasafish]

In truth Peugeots were renowned for reliability - as were Renault until the late 1990s. There were thousands of old Peugeots on teh roads in Africa, 20 years old or more with minimal servcing.

Citroen were always a poc.

But cost cutting and Renault's  range of diesel engines which ate turbos for breakfast, lunch and tea.. and abysmal electronics on all French cars since 2000 - following Citroen's lead with the abysmal Mark 1 XM - meant that you could not rely on them to run fault free. Renault's UK market share fell from x 7% to 2% in under 7 years.

And if in a flood, the French tend to place air intakes low down behind the front bumper so water ingestion and engine wrecking is common.

Some of the electronics layout are appallingly bad.

[culzean]

In truth Peugeot were renowned for reliability - as were Renault until the late 1990s.

Peugeot were always popular in Africa, and made good engines and good suspension for appalling roads.

Nissan had a name for bulletproof reliability until the fatal day they tied themselves to Renault,  and just look at them now.

[peteo48]

I saw a "best of" Top Gear special last week. It included the scene where they got every manufacturer of vehicles in the UK to send one of each to a parade on the Mall.

It emerged that the Nissan factory in Sunderland makes more cars than the entire Italian car industry.

We are still a force in manufacturing despite it having been talked down by politicians and the media in recent years.

[RichardA]

This has more to do with the French car manufacturers not keeping up with changing buying patterns of consumers. Premium badges and crossover SUVs, including Jaguar Land Rover, MINI and the Nssan Qashqai are taking over from the traditional French manufacturers' domain of people carriers, Focus/Mondeo-sized family cars, and cheap superminis. That and Jaguar Land Rover and MINI have access to the US market of which the French don't, at least not directly.

I read recently that Renault had SEVEN per cent of the UK market in 2005, now it's just over TWO per cent - that's less than Hyundai and Kia (separately, not combined).

[lexi]

  XM'S are not for the faint hearted    A well sorted V6 XM is a delight to drive. The 2.1 td is as good a diesel engine ever made.  Xantia V6 with Hydractive are superbly balanced.  Xantia Activa is a one off car in a class of it's own.  Even C5 HDI can give amazing use.  Guy with taxi fleet of four uses them to 350k miles then gets new ones. They need spannering and diagnostic tool.
  Early XM was rushed with new technology.  Oh no! this car has computers? Now every car on the road has at least 3 and some have 20. 

  The list of great French cars goes on. 504 2cv Renault 4.  The modern stuff?  Challenging!  New Laguna is a lovely estate. The latest of the turbo diesels (170bhp) are trouble free mostly........more mpg than a Jazz? Lots of French to stay away from. Yet some people have had good use even from those cars.



    Lots of trouble with mk 2 scenic and well documented.  That being said, what a practical and  fun car if you get a good one OR a cheap one and fix up.  Clio 1.5 dci. Not a bad car at all. I know guys who have put 200k on them. C4 vtr.........goes and handles well.

  French are piled high and sold cheap. There are gems in there. 407 v6 coupe.......gorgeous Pinfarina styling.

 Lots of jealousy on the French. Not by us Scots but mostly an English thing.  Their car industry is still home owned mainly.  They rode out a change and a demise that British couldn't.

  How come Land Rover had massive following for years and kept selling?  Not because of reliabilty. Or build quality. There are more things to a marque than that. People buy into many things. We are complex creatures..........well you can't deny that women are.
 

[guest1521]

It emerged that the Nissan factory in Sunderland makes more cars than the entire Italian car industry.

We are still a force in manufacturing despite...

It's a crying shame that - for short-term economic reasons - our brands/marques were sold to overseas owners. Such iconic brands... money-pumping assets worth many, many billions over many years in the right hands.

Though we are fortunate that so many cars continue to be built in the UK providing many valuable jobs, imagine if the profits and dividends remained in the UK rather than flowing to those overseas owners abroad!

Iconic marques/brands take decades to build. Lost to us in the UK forever...

[RichardA]

There are gems in there. 407 v6 coupe.......gorgeous Pinfarina styling.

+1.

[culzean]

It's a crying shame that - for short-term economic reasons - our brands/marques were sold to overseas owners. Such iconic brands... money-pumping assets worth many, many billions over many years in the right hands.

Though we are fortunate that so many cars continue to be built in the UK providing many valuable jobs, imagine if the profits and dividends remained in the UK rather than flowing to those overseas owners abroad!

We are not short of talented engineers and stylists in the UK - far from it - what we are short of is political leaders who are businessmen and nationalists, what we have is a parliamentary  system composed almost entirely of lawyers. Although Britain had become great on the back of manufacturing it suddenly became a dirty word - we committed 'unilateral economic suicide' by trying to meet outrageous carbon reduction targets.  No doubt Maggie Thatcher would blame the unions for Britains manufacturing decline, but in my book companies got the unions they deserved - if you were a bad employer you got a strong and militant union to balance things up.  I was involved in installing modern manufacturing equipment (robots ) in Rover at Longbridge in early 80's and it was strange to see that when the fields outside started to fill up with unsold cars the management would 'engineer' a strike by doing something, and the unions fell for it every time, the truth is that if the factory had laid off the workers they would have had to pay them, but if it was a strike, the union had to pay them - simples !!!  when the fields of cars started emptying there would be a meeting and an apology from a manager to the offended employee and production would start again.  Then again the workers at Longbridge were paid far too much for the work they were doing, backed up by bottomless taxpayers pockets. British workers are great, British management is sh*t - far too political for their own good.

It has taken overseas businesses like Tata to realise what a goldmine British companies like jaguar - Land rover are and invest the necessary money,  and Japanese car makers have long done well out of the talented British workforce.  I have no doubt that French companies have long been subsidised by taxpayer money from successive socialist governments in France ( illegal under EU rules, but since when did French obey the rules ?)  but France is having to join the real world now, their healthcare and benefits system is unsustainable, if the French economy fails their is not enough money in the Eurozone to bail them out - Europe will go down the gurgler !