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For this month's second Britainology, we're delving into the history of British cars and their dismal fate at the hands of Thatcherism. We could have had even more Rovers and Austins and Vanden Plases, but instead we wound up with most British cars being rebadged German vehicles. But we did at least get an Atomic Kitten Rover-MG ZS, and a SmartCar with a v8 dropped inside it. 

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Felicity Hall

Shepard me through this last hour of my email job you noble podcasters I salute you

etienne

This is my episode. This is the episode for me

etienne

Going into this with the assumption that the british car industry was actually total garbage (in part due to chronic underinvestment dating to the immediate postware year) and thus it was natural that it was effortlessly swept aside by foreign competition the second that some trade barriers came down but I'm open to have this view challenged

THEonlyMAILMAN

If this doesn't feature a segue about TVR, the most Gaz 'n Baz british car firm there's ever been, I will be dissapoint

brodie

Alice is really neglecting to tell us that the reliant scimitar looks fucking dope as hell. I want one and I want to suffer in it

aceplym

Your dismissal of Vauxhalls as a hoonmobile skips over the era of the SR Nova

etienne

I dunno britain got a head start on industrialization but was actually really late on chain manufacturing. The constant factor with all of the terrible brands mentioned is that they used essentially craft methods while the rest of the world was perfecting computer-aided and chain assembly methodologies

etienne

oh! fascinating I didn't realize that British Leyland was Conrail but for british cars

Olafo Waffle

A V8 engine in a dressed up smart car... Like where are they placing that? A Smart frame can barely hold on Honda four-stroke lawn mower engine.

drone lover

My father-in-law had a Morgan in the 80s. Somehow he drove it to Sweden where it was promptly written off by having its guts ripped out on a speed bump, a proud British car done in by woke euro traffic calming.

Tristan Davey

Mini Mokes became a very popular hire car on several remote Australian holiday islands in the 1980s. Up until the pandemic there was a hire car operator on Magnetic Island operating a fleet of 40 of them. They were death traps filled with rust that would fill up with water in the rain and kill you if you lost control, but people loved them.

Oliver Cant

The more that Thatcher's name comes up, the more you realise just how much she butchered the country and left a ghost behind that still haunts everything around us to this day. Just when you think you heard it all, you hear yet another thing she managed to ruin that we're now paying the price for in the modern day.

Rory Fagan

Great ep, but Morgans are made in Malvern not Scotland :(

Jousterly Rock

"sometimes they accidentally made a good car" and "sometimes they made a ridiculously powerful car for the lols" crossed over in the vauxhall lotus carlton. a cheap and easy to steal 3.6L twin turbocharged car with a top speed of 180mph that caused the police no end of problems in smash and grab robberies and joyriding. the daily mail and association of chief police officers even ran a campaign to get it banned.

Man, I Got Nothing

Me who grew up with a Renault Alliance in the US: but did the seats burn your ass in the Summer because someone thought vinyl was a good seat material?

Carlfish

The bit at the end reminds me of my uncle Walter Hayes. He’d decided to semi-retire from Ford so they gave him “run Aston Martin for a few years” as a going away present.

Brian Azevedo

I own a 1959 Nash Metropolitan which is an license-built Austin in the first such arrangement of its kind in the world. It combines big American 1950’s styling with cute tiny Austin 1500cc motor and shit Smith’s electrics. Kind of a horror show of a car, but whenever I manage to get it running everyone loves it.

AceTomatoCompany

I knew someone (an American) working for Jaguar-Rover at the time of the Tata takeover. He was present when some of their engineering staff showed up on the manufacturing floor at Jaguar. Imagine, a crew of extremely brilliant Indian engineers (some of them dressed comfortably in jeans and t-shirts,) showing up to inspect the assembly line. Some of the workers re-shaping panels on the line with wooden hammers. He summarized their visit and subsequent takeover of the company, especially after the 1999 humiliation of Ratan Tata by Bill Ford (when does some generation of the Ford family not piss on another manufacturer only to have it come back on them later,) this way: "Reverse colonization is such a bitch."

PearlDrinkingMan

My favourite old british car is the ELC Even 90

Jim

Of all the national cheap cars, I’d postulate the BMC Mini is actually the best/least-worst eurotrash of its time? Made it forever @ a loss, but what are you gonna do? It’s the UK copying the American model / badge engineered ‘the latest crappy car brought to you by the accountants and shirkers.’ & GMs stupid 12 brands where they really went wrong… VW bug? F-off; miserable little 1930s Nazi staff car they cheaped out on and stole the design from the Czechs? Fiat 500? Air cooled, stupid sport service intervals, even more horribly rustproofed & temperamental?? Citroen 2CV? Air cooled, no power, 3 wheel nuts (lose one and lose a wheel?!?), sheetmetal sides from your barn? 1961-2000 for the Mini, good interior space, FWD layout, water cooled. Not real safe, but they did ok for the time / all those smal cheap cars were terrible, tho fiat 500 and bug wind up in a wheelchair in a 10mph wreck? But nationally subsidized & they made it forever? Sweden never really had a ‘cheap’ car they made in-house/ country ( that wasnt rebadgef and made elsewhere like Volvo 360, 480 & DAF /Volvo 66 that were all UK, French & Dutch firm / manufacture partnerships, respectively?) and what I specialize in? To this day, they’re best raw materials (Sweden/norwY had the metals and nuclear and hydropower to process them). Not real innovators, but good appropriators? Idk, have a private euro car junkyard in America and refuse all German cars, but repair most other euro Marques (even if they’re last ones standing as corporations as bean counters, the underlying assumption is you drive on smooth autobahn w/recycled plastic that you replace every 6-8 years). My tastes are French / Citroen DS & SM, but execution I drive 1968-1993 Volvo 140/240 estate or Saab 99/900? Make a couple cars reasonably well even if you’re not exactly innovators on low margin automobiles (tho Sweden did have the words 3rd largest air force in 70s malaise / pretty industrious bunch for a country w/only the population of Oregon / 1/10th of UK?) well that are American market compatible for 1968 NHTSA, CARB & DOT compatible and even much ahead of everyone else / pretty well prepared for ‘74+ DOT safety? The Japanese did tour Sweden ? Still drive the 145? That said, Saab/ Scania light cars are no more (tho the toppla camper for Saab 99/classic 900 is cool?) / GM corporate raided what they could and Sweden exited low Margins light cars in a world where the Japanese started to out-compete them by the early 90s / exchange rate unfavorable. Volvo has been under ford and Geely china since ‘01. Arguably, to this day the ‘least worst’ eurotrash car to this day offered in the USA market, buuut low margins, tho they still make some of them in Sweden? Idk, had a Land Rover disco base model / minimal electrics? Wasn’t too bad? But it was a car from 1974 / based on the OG Range Rover. As for English ford for GM / Vauxhall, idk? I really feel for the British people whacking cars together miserably in leaky long bridge / similar tunnels & shed outta recycled spitfire aircraft / whatever else? Bad labor relations, founders hating eachother, rover / Buick 215 v8 built under license, 12 competing brands emulating wasteful American fashionable consumption…so tragic! UK coulda done the Sweden / Norway thing w/cars and energy / oil. You had the coal, nuclear power, some North Sea oil and precious metals. So tragic, whether or not they woulda delayed the inevitable &/or been seriously competitive w/the Japanese idk or just low margins and usa and Chinese pressure, but the British public would have been much the better for it if they’d done something a bit more Sweden like? Tho the Swedes were buying fords and weren’t even going to make cars, but the fords cost too much to run / fell apart and were death traps… Sweden also avoided both wars (well, defacto one side of the nazis for materials?) , made it thru the 70s oil crisis / malaise / crisis of capital pretty well, so there’s that to be considered, but the Brit’s had the materials and knowledge?