Ah yes, the urban legend of unreliable British cars.
I was talking about the engines rather than the cars. The trouble with British cars started in the 70s when we had a Labour (socialist) government and the unions got out of control. Most British car manufacturers had been absorbed into the state run British Leyland, which is never a good way to run any business as the bureaucrats and politicians overrule the engineers and designers and the work force tend to go out on strikes and do a terrible job when they're rarely in work. You also get the good parts of the company (LR) propping up the lame ducks, so any profits that could have gone into product development or increasing quality are diverted to companies which should have been closed down. That's why the worst years for LRs were the 70s and early 80s - as Jeremy Clarkson put it: one of the finest cars built by minkies with a quality control standard of "that'll do". Even now, Solihull is plagued by the ghost of the unions and militant workers - it's like a persistent weed that is hard to eradicate. It wasn't until Thatcher's government played such a hard line that things got back under control and the Uk went back to work, becoming a leading rather than failing economy again. See the parallels with the current UK situation, bankrupt after another Labour government and the public sector workers (teachers, nurses and bureaucrats going out on strike again - the Civil Service and teachers are so crap I doubt we'll even notice the difference)? So much for Blair's and Brown's comments that history is irrelevant and that we should be looking
forward; if you don't study your history, you can't see your path.
Even since then, the bean counters have had too strong an influence on vehicle production (and every other aspect of all UK industries) forsaking quality for cost of production, which is why the electrical and electronic components on so many UK vehicles are of such poor quality. Look at the Nissans and Toyotas made in the UK and not only can they churn out extraordinary volumes but also produce exceptional quality. It just goes to show what is possible when you have good management - a rarity in the UK.
For all that, it's still more than slightly hypocritical for the film to claim that UK cars are unreliable by comparison to US vehicles - from what I've seen, read and heard, they're pretty much on a par with each other. Now, had they suggested Italian vehicles were unreliable... :coffeedrink:
Anyway, all of that is probably a little over-analytical for a simple joke in a kids' film - I'm looking forward to seeing it; the first was good, even if it still can't quite reach the heights of Toy Story and The Incredibles.
