The Great British Leyland Disaster - Destroyed By The Japanese? Controversial Theory Explored 

That among other things

Correct. I remember those days too.

i grew up also in the 70s and i saw barley and UK cars, beside my math teachers Spitfire... but i saw plenty of Fords, Opel, BMW, Fiat, Renault, Peugeot, Citroen, Volvo, DAF, Porsche and VW´s... my family owned 1 Opel and 2 VW Passat, my first car also been a Santana(Passat).. i got taught to drive a car in a Golf 2... i also owned Mercedes, BMW, Renault, Peugeot and driving now a Hyundai! i never thought about to get a car made in the UK..... my bicycle is made in the UK, by a German based firm....before BrexShit... and since BrexShit, i avoid any UK products anyway...inclusive traveling to silly island!

I grew up in Australia and returned to Britain in 1979 at 17. Already been driving in Australia where the Japanese had taken a huge share of the market there. And Leyland Australia was on its way out. So I was pleasantly surprised to see the amount of Leyland cars including the Marina still being made here. Don't recall seeing too many Datsuns although I did from the 80s on. I had a 71 Mini 850 then a 71 Vauxhall Viva. They were reliable started fine in winter with the choke. Japanese cars at that time were well equipped and ultra reliable but had a built in obsolscense. In the 70s and 80s they were worse even than Fords and Vauxhall's for rusting. In Japan at the time they were not built to last more than about five years as they wanted people to keep buying new. Though many did. They changed the longevity to compete with the European market. It was really from the 90s onwards they matched the euro brands for lasting quality. It was really then the end was in sight for Rover despite the partnership..The Honda Civic engine was better than the Rover.

I was going to say the same - I remember well the sound of British cars churning over, trying to start on a cold day. The fact that Japanese cars just worked, and kept working turned many away from BL, Rootes/Chrysler and Vauxhall for good. The Japanese cars still rusted away though, as did everything else back then. Better customer care, build quality and extended warranties also turned British motorists to Japanese, and eventually Korean cars.

Just like Boeing today!

@@Brommear If you study the workers at Boeing you find that they hired knee grows by required quotas. All required by the always usual suspects; the men with small hats!

@@Brommear f you study the workers at Boeing you find that they hired people by required quotas.

@@trondsimonsen4025 And run by accountants, not engineers.

​@@BrommearI can't answer you without being shadowbanned. But that is an answer too, of you understand me .....

And how many 120y's are still around today compared with say ...a Morris Marina ?

@@gpo746 Poor analysis. You should use a 10-year comparable of, say, 1978 to 1988 on how many were registered and remained. Neither model would have prominent numbers today.

I wish I could buy a new one.

It reminds me of the training film circa 1975 used at British Leyland that was an attempt to instill in corporate employees the importance of their jobs, and how quality mattered. It showed owner frustration in faults, service department issues, etc. It simply was a shocking mess that the company knew it was so bad, yet this was the response.

Interesting, Ford I believe moved Fiesta production or at least had some running in Europe

@@tomdrives The Fiesta parts were made in the UK at Dagenham and shipped to Spain, so I believe

My mum had a MK1 Ford Fiesta 1100 Ghia back in the day. It was built in Germany (as a lot of Ghia models were I believe)

@@john1v6My mum had a Mk2 Fiesta 1.1 Ghia in Gold / Grey… 4 speed box….. absolutely brilliant capable little car, still missed ! Replaced with a low mileage Rover Metro GTa, then a new Rover 200 ‘bubble’ 1.4 8v 5 door….

Lucas was the only part which left us stranded in my dad's Volvo. The 145 had an electronic ignition conversion. It reverted to Bosch breaker points and never broke down/failed to start before or since in its 10+ year, 100000+ mile life. Later on, when my mum needed her own car for work, she found BL products still fell short in that respect and trailing the French and Italian cars she had. It is a shame most of the British cars were horrid rubbish as there were a few celebrated gems also.

Good point- Here in Ireland Lucas had the market completely to itself and was decimated almost overnight when Bosch arrived.Quality and reliability trump everything else.Lucas regulators in particular were the spawn of the devil if memory serves!

@@FairladyS130 same in OZ, people changed the Lucas distributor for Bosh for reliability in the Holdens (GM Australian car). PS Datsun Fairlady great car.

The British cars were absolutely rubbish!(fact).

It was also the 19th century management practices and a mindset based on the captive markets of imperial days which bedevilled all UK manufacturing

The Rover SD1 was hardly out of date

@@tomdrives they were hardly a great car either.

@@hackney7106 Not so, British cars were not "rubbish" . I have owned many British cars and have racked up many trouble free miles . I have had Morris Minors , Austin Metro's all the way Up to the Vanden Plas range and Rover P6 . Never had serious breakdowns , infact the only breakdown I can recall was on my last morris minor where the fuel pump had stopped working . I tapped it and it started working again . People called them rubbish and it was mainly bad maintainence or total lack of it that gave them the bad rep. That Last Morris I had was from a dealer, a conman. It was overheating , bad fuel pump , bad suspension , blown head gasket and a blocked radiator .....All down to lack of maintainence . I set to and got the work done in a weekend. That car lasted me for 10 years before I sold it as I needed a big van and it was still going very well as I maintained it . I didn't drive it like a grandad either , It was used hard as my daily as was my Rover P6 that I had before that. The Rover was luxurious and an absolute joy to drive . Again, never had a breakdown . My friend bought a TC version 2 weeks after I got mine as he was so impressed with mine. He failed to maintain his despite repeated warnings and ...he broke down and things started to go wrong. He started to maintain it and it was no bother after that. Someone else I know has an "INFINITY" which I believe is a Nissan product. He has just recently had to pay £750 for a control module for a front eyebrow LED sidelight . £500 for the unit and £250 for its software to be programmed to match the car . THAT is rubbish ...

Ok boomer.

George Turnbull was very good at his job. Unfortunately he was surrounded by people who were not that bright in the Leyland management team.

Cars do that to people, currently angry with my Cortina!

@@tomdrives it will pay dividends dont lose hope Tom

We had a Marina when my age was in single digits. Most of my memories of it involve it being up on ramps while my dad was messing with the steering or replacing front suspension components.

My sister bought a used marina van back in the 80s. The day after she bought it, the gear stick came off in her hand!

We had two Mini vans and a marina van . Bloody rust buckets and the Marina was scrap after 5 years. I then bought a Datsun 720 pickup in 1984 and had that for 14 years with no problems so I bought another one Nissan D21 then they were called.

And better made!

I think Leyland had a 3 or 6 month new car warranty back then. The Japanese 9 or 12 months 🤔. It wasn't very generous back then!

and much more reliable

You mean like the German derived ohc Toyota motors?

It was poor management choices from above and horrible ideas from below, that of sabotage and bad workmanship.

A workforce can only and SHOULD only work under fair expectation of rights . If you're looking for a candidate blame the greedy management .

There is an internal training film "British Leyland Quality Control" on RU-vid about BL trying to introduce "Quality Circles" into the manufacturing in the early 1980's (or late 1970's). It all seems a bit "day late and dollar short" though! The BL approach doesn't fully seem to embrace the Japanese approach of "anyone can stop the line if there is a quality issue", and it also seems to highlight BL's use of outdated and worn out equipment, as opposed to Japanese manufacturers who replaced tooling regularly well *before* it wears out to ensure parts remain tightly to spec.

They could provide a car .that started first time every single time.

The transverse engine always put the alternator right on the front. All it needed was a plastic splash guard but apparently too complicated to develop.

​@@Yandex-y1pa rubber floor mat and two zip ties (well would of been fencing wire) worked fine

Rubber glove over the distributor cap. Distributor was splashed with water as it was behind the grill with no protection from the weather.

Correct. Another winner for Britain.

The British were offered Volkswagen as war reparation, they didn't see any future in the Beetle, they were Blinkered Philistine pig ignorant.

So perhaps Britain would be better off, if it had lost in WW2?

I think it did, certainly financially.

Ivan Hirst kept the Wolfsberg plant alive, but most of the sucess of VW was down to the fact that Germans didn't buy foreign cars, no matter how outdated the Beetle was by 1960.

Thanks

You're not wrong. I had numerous British cars 'back in the day' and I can recall they broke down regularly. My first totally reliable car was a Honda Accord. Fast-forward to 2024 and I currently drive a Subaru Forester that I have owned for 6 years and covered 90,000 miles in. I have only had to change glow plugs.

I also had numerous Brit junkers back in the 90s and 2000s. Life changed for the better when I bought a 9 year old Mazda...it was infinitely more reliable than my other junk cars! In 8 years of ownership it never let me down once, and I clocked up nearly 190k miles. Replaced it with a Ford (bad move), but quickly replaced that with a Corolla for another 5 years of problem free motoring. Now got a civic and clocking up 180k so far...

Mom?

@@QuoPaperPlane "Mother"!!

@@DM-it2ch Not Mum, then?

My 1200 was rated at 76 bhp. A stunning number at the time. My brother spent a lot of money trying to get that from his hot rod beetles which usually blew up pretty quickly.

It was a similar situation in the US. I remember my cousin buying a brand new yellow 1978 Mazda 323 (called "GLC" or "Great Little Car" in marketing, ugh), and it was my first introduction to Japanese cars. He is an engineer for Dupont, and always had Japanese cars including a Miata now. But I give credit to the people who bought those cars because I finally was a believer by the 1990s when I bought a Honda. Still the best car I ever owned in terms of quality / reliability / durability. It lasted much longer than I needed it, unlike other cars that I have owned. The solid (rather than tinny rattle) closing of the door and tight seals when it was about 15 years old was like new and simply incredible. But that level of quality and durability put manufacturers in the US and Britain on notice. Regardless of where a car is built, people are not going to tolerate shoddy workmanship, failure of accessories, cheap hardware that breaks, etc. Most of us work hard for our money and use a car for daily living needs. To spend money on repairs on a depreciating asset is madness that would test the patience of almost any car buyer.

i hope you remember who came up with the slogan Made in Germany! its the Brits who have the lack of foresight..... in cars and the EU!

Hondas of the 1980s were PERFECT vehicles, and the Triumph BL input added a touch of "home". I still would prefer a 1980s Honda over a modern car....the added safety adds weight and electronics are irritatingly distracting taking away driver skill.

Yes, the acclaim was a nice motor . Just sold mine last year . Reliable , started in extreme cold weather albeit having to sit there with it on choke for 10 mins . Sad that BL only production run was 2 years then they replaced the Triumph with that god awful Maestro /Montego range . Apparently BL KNEW what they were going to do and were just using the Acclaim as a "stop gap" car until the Maestro / Montego range was finalised ... Such a pity !

I couldn't drive an Acclaim, no headroom.

A few decades later, when American automakers found that the Japanese were eating their lunch, some of them began working with Dr. Deming. In particular, Dr. Deming was hired as an adviser for the plant that built the Pontiac Fiero.

Exactly that, definitely multiple factors at play

Renault where invested in by the French government and look at them now.Thatcher didn't care about British manufacturing, money men can make money abroad etc. It was a political choice to let British manufacturing wither and die.

Great vid btw

no comment

Open mind is the best thing, it is only one of the factors and they weren’t stolen.

​@@tomdrivesMy perception that Britain (as was the USA) was vulnerable at the time to strong competition, and Japan was in the right place at the right time as it gradually perfected its motor industry during the 1960s, particularly with fuel-efficient cars. There was also a willingness to learn / they weren't bound by strong traditions in these companies with little to no experience in building cars. Old habits are difficult to break, and companies like Toyota had an eagerness to learn and aspire to high standards. As someone who grew up primarily on American cars and some British cars I certainly admired, my first car turned out to be a Honda. The quality was exceptional. Though it was about the last car I ever imagined would be my first, I loved it. The build quality was stunning, and it led me to reevaluate products from other companies. Certainly, I felt cars from other countries looked more beautiful, as someone who likes to keep things rather than trade in for the newest, it was the only car I've had that I sold long before anything went wrong; cars from other manufacturers have died before I felt it was their time. Investment in product simply wasn't available at BL. A lack of funds and too many car lines just spread resources too thin. Having to meet US safety and emissions regulations placed additional challenges on the company. I think Ford UK is a good comparison even if the parent company is American. Ford was very successful in the UK and best I know, was turning a profit. But part of that success involved centralizing engineering of new cars at Cologne headquarters. Ford was not Japanese, but I believe had acceptable if not excellent quality. Without an acceptable level of quality, cars like Escort and Cortina were perennial sales leaders. By that time, Ford of Europe was pretty much German with engineering in the UK and Belgium, plus factories in all three, as well as Spain. Once Jaguar was turned around by Sir John Egan, and then spun off into Jaguar Cars Ltd., he knew that the company could not survive on its own without the capital of another company to invest in product development. His original choice to buy Jaguar was Toyota(!), but they were not interested....Toyota is generally an organic company developing products itself and seldom joining in ventures with other companies except when necessary. Besides, whether Sir John knew this at the time or not (I'd think he would), Toyota was about to unleash Lexus on the world. There was a bidding war between Ford and General Motors for purchase of Jaguar. At the time, GM was acquiring other companies, which turned out to be an awkward hodgepodge Frankenstein not unlike the mergers / acquisitions that led to BL. Ford put in the highest bid, and probably soon regretted it. The Jaguar plant at Browns Lane was shockingly ancient, though why the Ford executives didn't investigate this first is beyond me. Though the XJ40 was generally more reliable than the predecessor XJ6, Ford streamlining made the XJ40 cars built under its ownership more reliable by reducing exterior and interior color options, changing parts suppliers, etc. Unfortunately Ford in the USA had visions of Cricket and The Avengers in mind when they directed car design, and the models relied on past design rather than looking towards the future. Ford never made money on Jaguar, and ironically, the design improved immensely under Ian Callum with cars like the XF that were released just as the company was sold to TATA!!! Tata seems to take a hands off approach, and bankrolls Jaguar / Land Rover and not interfere unnecessarily in the design process. Overall, when BL was formed, it was in a weak position after all the mergers, made worse by a very changing world at the start of the 1970s. The talent was unquestionably there, but the class warfare of managers and workers, economics, higher costs of doing business due to regulations and currency fluctuations while also trying to evolve the juggernaut corporation into a "lean, mean, fighting machine" was too much a task to ask of leadership. Bigger is NOT better. I see some parallels with General Motors of the 1980s. The Chairman Roger Smith was all into acquisitions of other companies rather than focusing on their core mission of building cars sold under five divisions. Companies unrelated to cars like Hughes Aerospace and EDS, a computer company, as well as other car manufacturers like SAAB and Lotus (and almost Jaguar) just made it a great big mess. Indeed, Roger Smith is viewed as one of the worst CEOs in American history. Decisions made under his leadership cut market share greatly, and gradually led to GM declaring bankruptcy in 2009. This had been the largest car manufacturer in the world, and such a force that there was talk of the Justice Department breaking it up as a monopoly when its market share was nearly 50% in the US. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Japan and the Germans in reasonable competition were able to take advantage of the competitors' mistakes, and become dominant players here. Indeed, Chevrolet will no longer build cars except Corvette as of 2025. GM has generally ceded the passenger car market to Asian and German car manufacturers to focus almost exclusively on very profitable SUVs and pickups. Furthermore, Toyota captured the title of largest volume car maker in the world a few years ago. It was a hard won achievement, and I attribute it to an obsessive perseverance. Forty years ago, I would have a hard time accepting this due to national pride, but the reality is that they "won" fairly, and the customers are better for it with better product.

My Cars ALWAYS started even in thick ice and sub zero temps . Why? because I maintained them. Always had a good battery and well maintained ignition system . Never had a problem ... Probably find its lazy ass owners who wont part with money for servicing and driving the cars into the ground was a good portion of the problem .

@@gpo746 well done you, give yourself a big pat on your back. Most normal people just want to drive their car, and did back then. Learning about plugs and points is for very very boring people unless you are a mechanic

I certainly don’t 🤷‍♂️

Hmm, production engineering is also engineering though. It's still an engineer's job to make sure the production line is well setup in such a way that it's not possible to make mistakes. (Be it preset wrenches that automatically torque things to spec, paint marks for bolts that are torqued, checks and balances etc.) Not just to draw up a nice car or engine and then wash their hands of it!

They don't walk, they're too obese nowadays.