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