BBC 2 NOW (9pm) - Das Auto

_Kaiser_

Show just starting on BBC 2 now about the German car industry for anyone interested...

AugustusMinimus

Have to laugh.

Huge jingoistic piece at the end of Top Gear promoting British engineering (mainly in the motor industry)

And then BBC 2 put on a show shredding the British motor industry by pointing out its huge mistakes in comparison to the Germans.

Clarkson has tweeted that he didn't realise this was on after Top Gear and couldn't believe they did this

_Kaiser_

He even just made a brief appearance in the M1

KTRIC

Switched it off half way through, its predominately about the British car industry. :rolleyes:

HandsomeDan

"We try our hardest to show British manufacturing and engineering is still astonishing. And then along comes BBC2.."

Reality can be so inconvenient...

gallag

HandsomeDan wrote: »

"We try our hardest to show British manufacturing and engineering is still astonishing. And then along comes BBC2.."

Reality can be so inconvenient...

What is the reality though, I think top gear might have surprised a few people with just how much motor manufacturing still happens in the UK.

colm_mcm

gallag wrote: »

What is the reality though, I think top gear might have surprised a few people with just how much motor manufacturing still happens in the UK.

As an example, there were 10,000 people working in Ford in Cork at one point, when the population of Cork was 80,000

While there is a lot of assembly in the UK, there isn't nearly as much manufacturing.

gallag

colm_mcm wrote: »

As an example, there were 10,000 people working in Ford in Cork at one point, when the population of Cork was 80,000

While there is a lot of assembly in the UK, there isn't nearly as much manufacturing.

What does cork have to do with it? According to that top gear piece the U.K still do a lot, far more than I thought!

mike65

The Top Gear feature and the Das Auto programme were not contradictory.

The point is that Britain still designs and makes cars but they are owned by foreign companies who ultimately gain the lions share of the money. Still good for jobs, subcontracts and BoP of course. 30 years of utterly ****e strategic and man management failed the UK.

Yamanoto

gallag wrote: »

What is the reality though, I think top gear might have surprised a few people with just how much motor manufacturing still happens in the UK.

They referred more than once to the new London bus being manufactured in Britain, as opposed to Northern Ireland.

Can of worms etc :pac:

HandsomeDan

gallag wrote: »

What is the reality though, I think top gear might have surprised a few people with just how much motor manufacturing still happens in the UK.

The reality is British manufacturing is non existent.

As has been said, working in a foreign owned/ designed plant assembling foreign designed cars is not quite the same thing.

AugustusMinimus

That Top Gear piece was highly deceptive though.

I have no idea what F1 teams or lord above, the new World Land Speed record car have to do with British manufacture.

There is also the point that every single vehicle plant in the UK is foreign owned. Colm's point about Ford is not lost on me.

Ford isn't in Cork anymore. Hell, Ford aren't assembling cars in Dagenham anymore. Where economics dictate, the likes of Nissan or Honda could easily pull vehicle manufacture out of the UK.

The same will almost certainly not happen in Germany with German manufacturers.

colm_mcm

gallag wrote: »

What does cork have to do with it? According to that top gear piece the U.K still do a lot, far more than I thought!

The point is that motor manufacture used to be massive. Even though its not a fraction of what went before, I agree that there's still a lot going on in the UK, but there's a lot going on in most other countries too.

AugustusMinimus

colm_mcm wrote: »

The point is that motor manufacture used to be massive. Even though its not a fraction of what went before, I agree that there's still a lot going on in the UK, but there's a lot going on in most other countries too.

IIRC, the UK motor industry is now producing more cars than at anytime in history.

But this really isn't the point.

1. Its completely foreign owned.
2. The piece only focused on motor manufacture. Completely ignores other heavy industry.
3. The Germany car industry still dwarfs the UK car industry. This in a country which was in bits after 1945.

unkel

Didn't see either program, but read an article on the BBC site a few days ago called "How German cars beat British motors - and kept going"

I guess that's what tonights BBC2 program was all about?

delthedriver

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

Show just starting on BBC 2 now about the German car industry for anyone interested...

Interesting programme.
They overlooked the fact that Jaguar Landrover are in Britain ,producing designing and assembling cars for the UK market and beyond.
To be fair it was well covered on Top Gear:D

colm_mcm

More cars don't mean more employment though. If you're in a factory where robots are assembling cars with components from around the world supplied by the lowest bidder with people doing the work that the robots can't, its not the numbers of cars produced that counts.

To go off on another tangent, the VAZ production line for what became the Lada was over 90 miles long, and most components were made on site. This is manufacturing. That's what makes jobs.


I couldn't help notice the likeness between all the British cars on the Mall with the flags etc. and the patriotic Metro ad

delthedriver

Yamanoto wrote: »

They referred more than once to the new London bus being manufactured in Britain, as opposed to Northern Ireland.

Can of worms etc :pac:

Last time I checked my Imperial Maps, Northern Ireland was part of Britain:pac:

ba_barabus

delthedriver wrote: »

Last time I checked my Imperial Maps, Northern Ireland was part of Britain:pac:

But its now referred to as "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" officially.

gallag

ba_barabus wrote: »

But its now referred to as "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" officially.

Only the terminally pedantic will care.

colm_mcm

As an aside, didn't ere my or James say the company making the boris bus was Indian? Isn't it wrightbus making them?

Also the London cab didnt get a mention at all did it?

Sam Russell

colm_mcm wrote: »

Also the London cab didnt get a mention at all did it?

That is because it is made in China.

HandsomeDan

delthedriver wrote: »

Last time I checked my Imperial Maps, Northern Ireland was part of Britain:pac:

Nope. The UK, but not Britain.

ba_barabus

gallag wrote: »

Only the terminally pedantic will care.

And only the idiotic will accept a wrong answer as being correct

colm_mcm

Sam Russell wrote: »

That is because it is made in China.

In the same way that the mg6 is. They're back producing CKD taxis again

ba_barabus

colm_mcm wrote: »

In the same way that the mg6 is. They're back producing CKD taxis again

And they've managed to iron out some of the flaws in the process

colm_mcm

ba_barabus wrote: »

And they've managed to iron out some of the flaws in the process

Oh the steering works now? That's handy

ba_barabus

colm_mcm wrote: »

Oh the steering works now? That's handy

Always useful.

Funnily enough NAC also had a recall on the TF due to low quality parts causing "loss of directional control".

It must be a Chinese thing!

AugustusMinimus

They also mentioned JCB in the piece.

While JCB's are assembled in the UK, the vast majority of parts are originally manufactured in either South Korea or China.

Leonard Hofstadter

ba_barabus wrote: »

But its now referred to as "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" officially.

Yes but if you were from Norn Iron and were a unionist, you would consider yourself to be British, in the same way Nationalists consider themselves to be Irish.

And what was interesting about Top Gear programme in particular is how many things the British still make.

With regards to the cars, sure many of the British built cars have components from other countries, but equally many cars that are made outside of Britain still contain a lot of components that were made in Britain, the four cylinder petrol engines in many BMWs for instance, most four cylinder petrol engines for Ford's factories worldwide are also made in Bridgend in Wales and so on. Sure even in Ireland we have a lot of companies that manufacture car components, everything from the interior rear view mirror, to certain electrical components in some modern cars are done in Ireland.

Yamanoto

captainspeed wrote: »

Yes but if you were from Norn Iron and were a unionist, you would consider yourself to be British, in the same way Nationalists consider themselves to be Irish.

Mea culpa for bringing this up tbh.

Many Northern Unionists would consider themselves culturally British yes, but they're not from Britain. Whereas Nationalists are from the island of Ireland, so there's a difference there.

My initial point had no political undertones btw & accusations of pedantry are probably well deserved.

Karl Stein

As regards Top Gear it was all England lads. England. The only other part of the UK mentioned was Wales.

gallag

Cathal Cloch wrote: »

As regards Top Gear it was all England lads. England. The only other part of the UK mentioned was Wales.

Except for the whole bit about the bus built in N.Ireland, nothing from Scotland though the lazy feckers.

cabb8ge

colm_mcm wrote: »

---

This is manufacturing. That's what makes jobs.
,,,,,

In the technological time we live in automation go hand in hand with manufacturing. Automated production line no less a manufacturing line than a manual assembly production line. Automation is manufacturing, might not suit low skilled assembly worker but manual assembly replaced by automation for many reason, cost main one.

colm_mcm

cabb8ge wrote: »

In the technological time we live in automation go hand in hand with manufacturing. Automated production line no less a manufacturing line than a manual assembly production line. Automation is manufacturing, might not suit low skilled assembly worker but manual assembly replaced by automation for many reason, cost main one.

Anyone mourning the death of the British car industry usually has employment in mind. Would anyone in he UK want to work for the money that the Chinese work for? Probably not. But its very easy to moan about johnny foreigner.

Karl Stein

gallag wrote: »

Except for the whole bit about the bus built in N.Ireland, nothing from Scotland though the lazy feckers.

Did they mention norniron? I didn't hear it.

cabb8ge

No doubt true.
Same for clothes trade etc etc

cannot keep in competition unless technology embraced and invested in, reality.

wendell borton

There was a survey mentioned at the start that had VW as the car most people aspire to own, .

dgt

wendell borton wrote: »

There was a survey mentioned at the start that had VW as the car most people aspire to own, .

Never in this household

gallag

wendell borton wrote: »

There was a survey mentioned at the start that had VW as the car most people aspire to own, .

A VW veyron.

ba_barabus

captainspeed wrote: »

Yes but if you were from Norn Iron and were a unionist, you would consider yourself to be British, in the same way Nationalists consider themselves to be

As I have the "official" title it doesn't really matter what people say or call themselves.

But just to add a small bit to what you've said, I've found nationalists will generally tell you they are Irish and from the North of Ireland while Unionists will tell you they are British and from Northern Ireland.

Either way the title I gave it is still the official one, hence during the Olympics the team was officially called Team GB and NI.

As regards the Scots being lazy I know around Aberdeen there are huge engineering works, many local, making products for the oil industry. They also used to produced a lot of cars but that ended in the 70's.

fryup

the usual whorshipping at the german auto alter

watching that programme you'd think german cars are trouble free...over-rated imo had a golf before and it gave me nothing but trouble (mechanically and electrically)

and my local mechanic says he gets in BMWs more than any other make

ba_barabus

When is it being repeated?

mike65

Tonight on BBC2 at 7 pm

Cuddlesworth

fryup wrote: »

and my local mechanic says he gets in BMWs more than any other make

In my old job I repaired laptops, we had 3 manufactures on the go. It was remarked to me time and time again that one of the manufacturers had horrible reliability. And it was obvious from the numbers coming in that was the case.

I had to point out that 60% of our laptops were from that manufacturer, with a 20% split on the other two. The actual failure rate was pretty much on a par with the two other makes, we just had more of them to break.

keithclancy

IMO you can't say Publicly traded companies are owned by any country in Particular anymore.

I.E. Shareholders of Volkswagen A.G. could be anyone ,Chinese, English, Indian, Irish.

pippip

For anyone that missed it the das auto show is repeated again tonight at 23:20 on bbc2

Dord

For anyone that missed it, don't bother watching the repeat.

Victor Meldrew

KTRIC wrote: »

Switched it off half way through, its predominately about the British car industry. :rolleyes:

That was a real shame. It was actually about the inept governance, management and decline of the UK car industry.

A programme on how German cars rehabilitated Germany's image post war would have been far more interesting than this 'little englander' whinging rubbish.

And we all here would love to see a programme on German innovation and engineering.

who the fug

Victor Meldrew wrote: »

That was a real shame. It was actually about the inept governance, management and decline of the UK car industry.

A programme on how German cars rehabilitated Germany's image post war would have been far more interesting than this 'little englander' whinging rubbish.

And we all here would love to see a programme on German innovation and engineering.

Watch a German broadcaster then, BBC program was always going to have that slant.

Paddies giving out about the BBC that they do not pay for is get boring

who the fug

colm_mcm wrote: »

As an example, there were 10,000 people working in Ford in Cork at one point, when the population of Cork was 80,000

.

any idea what what Dunlop employed, they where the factory alongside?