There’s no point in trying to sugarcoat the hard-to-swallow fact that car production numbers in Britain are tumbling at an alarming rate. Before I explain how I reckon the unsustainable decline can be seriously slowed, halted or even reversed, it’s important to look closely at and understand our productivity, past and present.
In 1955, Blighty’s brave, bruised and battered workers, still recovering and rebuilding after the trauma of World War II, produced 897,560 cars – mightily impressive given that their factories were primitive, conditions lousy and automation was either low priority or non-existent.
Come the seventies, a very different tribe of workers was revolting, as they repeatedly downed tools at plants that were low-tech by today’s standards. Still, annual car production in that tumultuous decade never fell below a million, and, in 1972, reached a record high of 1.9 million.
By the mid-2010s, more refined and reliable, better-trained workers at mostly safe, modern, often highly automated plants, were almost as productive, with annual output around 1.7m.
Yet for three of the last four years, this same generation of employees has been building fewer than 800,000 annually. The figure for 2025 is just 717,371, and that’s unacceptably low.
Put another way, a decade ago we built more than twice as many cars as now. Around half a century back, we made over 1 million more per annum than today. And, astonishingly, almost three-quarters of a century ago (1955) in a post-WW2 Britain, car production was around 180,000 up on the just released and disastrous figure for 2025. Progress, eh?!
