why dont the irish have a proper motor industry

TheCandystripes

curious

Bandara

The irish?

TheCandystripes

yes the irish nation has no motor industry

ART6

Too small a country to have either the home market or the money for the massive investment needed. If the USA have trouble doing it, and a number of other major brands have had to merge to compete, I'd say we have no chance at all (at all):D

Dades

The fact that we drive on the left can't help.

topper75

I saw huge snaking lines of rail carriages in France full of French cars, presumably sending produce to both the home and Euro markets.

I imagine the guys in the U.S. do the same.

How would we move produce off the island (presuming we overcome the raw mats importation issue) at such a rate?

No use getting involved in any sector unless we as a nation can offer a competitive advantage. With our high minimum wage, lack of autobuild experience, high insurance and other service cost, lack of raw mats etc. we would be foolish to think about such an industry on this island.

GiftGrub100

While we don't actually make any cars in Ireland there are quite a few component suppliers based in Ireland, Alps and Autolaunch to name two and there are many many more employing quite a lot of people supplying the parts to the build the cars that we drive today.

Viejo Zorro

Shipping components is indeed much easier...

What was the last car manufactured on the Island?
Fords? De Loreans?

v300

Lack of copious amounts of coal, steel, and engineers.

The industrial revolution of the 19th century mainly bypassed Ireland
apart from the H&W dockyard in Belfast.

BlackWizard

v300 wrote: »

Lack of copious amounts of coal, steel, and engineers.

The industrial revolution of the 19th century mainly bypassed Ireland
apart from the H&W dockyard in Belfast.

We had bigger issues than thinking about a car industry at the time.

Although I don't see why we couldn't manufacture cars here in Ireland. We are slowly getting competitive wage wise and the Irish are always up for re-skilling and educating themselves. Especially the ones with no jobs! The big issue is getting a car manufacturer to move here because an indigenous car industry would take a minor miracle to get right.

Owen

Kostal in Mallow used to make a lot of BMW & Mercedes components, switches, stalks, iDrive controllers and screen controllers.

There'd be little or no point in whole car construction here, a lot of parts would need to be shipped in, and then the car shipped back out again. Costs wouldn't be feasible either.

Sandwich

For most of the life of the motor industry we were, or still are : a poor and backward country, with little or no industry, with little or no technical or innovative skill, and with a population too small to sustain such indiginous large scale manufacturing.

AugustusMaximus

There is no reason at all why Ireland couldn't support a low volume high price car company.

A company makes cars like Caterham could easily setup in Ireland. In fact, there was a car company in Wexford called TMC Costin who produced a light weight sports car for 4 years back in the 80s.

SEPT 23 1989

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ca/Shamrock-car.jpg

Tipsy Mac

Dades wrote: »

The fact that we drive on the left can't help.

That doesn't seem to hamper the Japanese

civis_liberalis

AugustusMaximus wrote: »

In fact, there was a car company in Wexford called TMC Costin who produced a light weight sports car for 4 years back in the 80s.

They produced less than 40 cars and managed bankruptcy in under 4 years.

L1011

Expensive workforce
No iron
(mostly) Fossil fuel electricity.

Also, if you didn't have some history of one by the 1950s, you were never going to really get one going. Even having history doesn't really protect it - how many volume car makers are left in the UK compared to the past?

Darragh29

AugustusMaximus wrote: »

There is no reason at all why Ireland couldn't support a low volume high price car company.

A company makes cars like Caterham could easily setup in Ireland. In fact, there was a car company in Wexford called TMC Costin who produced a light weight sports car for 4 years back in the 80s.

Here is the problem, the thinking is basically produce some high end motor that some clowns will spend a couple of hundred thousand on and rinse, lather, repeat... People don't want high price cars anymore they want low price cars. Bringing any product to market and then remaining competitive requires hard work, innovation and a determination, characteristics that we don't see in much abundance in this country...