Why do so many people knock British-made cars? Why do so few people buy them?
Answers:
the majority of british cars have major problems arise after a few years. back when they first started making cars they were horrible. and besides i have absolutley no respect for the british engineering. the only thing good to come out of there is some of the hottest women on the planet
I don't knock them. I dont knock any brand of car. I just go by how nice the car looks! ;P
None of the cars you've mentioned are English anymore! Sad to say, but Reliant are the only English manufacturer left!!
I didn't even know Britain made any cars.
British says Sissy, and nobody likes their car to be associated with the concept of sissiness.
Their reputation for poor quality.
People fail to realize that the British man enjoys tinkering with his car on the weekend and British car manufacturers have taken that into account in their designs.
I am French and have an English car. that's globalisation!
i like acura ,but if mg wouldn't have gone out of business i would be driving a mgb midget right now
I didn't know people bought French cars here in the U.S. either. I've never ever seen a Renault on the road here. I do however see tons of Audis, BMWs and Mini-Coopers rolling around. However, because of the huge aftermarket for Japanese compact and sub-compact cars (ricers/street racers) they are very popular. I'd say the real reason we don't buy as many Brit cars as maybe we should is price. Japanese cars are cheaper, even low end VWs are cheapish. A Mercedes is what it is and is incredibly beautiful. The same with Porsche.
As the situation stands financially in most households in the United States, the income is currently not meeting the bills. In other words, people are already spending more than they are earning on a montly basis. They are doing this with loans and credit cards and its a downward spiral which will eventually come crashing down.
The fore mention cars your listed; Rover(very fine auto), Jaguar, and Mini are out of most people's price range. It's probably a matter of economics as there are more people who buy the best car they can afford which is often not in Britain.
I'd love to buy a Noble if I had the money.
I think generally people go for the most reliable or the best looking.
You didnt make any mention of Ford, the Focus is an excellent car and what I will be getting next.
I would NEVER have another Vauxhall if somebody paid me, I had a Vectra and had nothing but trouble with it, complete shyte!
Most people do buy british cars - they just dont realise it - look at the clio - british design / french company - they have just made an ad campaign about that.
however it depends on what you mean by british cars - manufactured? owned? designed? backed?
and the reason the companies are moving to the continent is bacause labour and cost of living is cheaper and they are not associated with the anti-world feeling in the UK and US at the moment - hence making the product more appealing to the east. (look at coca-cola and pepsi in the east)
Dunno. When I think of cheap then us Brits just don't have the cheapest car. Fastest? Well we do that ok, but not best. Like the Jag is something I want to have, but it doesn't out class the others in it's feild for the cash. Brit cars just aren't cost effective; there we go. Like, that answers the litteral queston; though I feel that there's a metaphorical point being made, and I agree [if this is the question] that our cars deserve more attention.
Well I dont think people do knock them anymore.
All the British makes are either foreign made or foreign owned.
The best you can do is buy a car made in Britain. But indirectly the money is still going to a foreign maker.
What happend to Rover was a scandle.When it is relaunched people will no doubt buy Chinese made Rovers.
but rover was owned by bmw at the time, Jaguars are fords, Mini is now german, as is rolls royce, tvr is now owned by a russian- and what a balls he's made of it, and morgans are hardly your everyday kinda wheels.
it is a crying shame that the only mass produced cars we build are for foreign companies with the exception of Vauxhall, but even thats owned by the americans and germans and soon to be joined by the french and japanese!!
Way back in the dim dark ages (OK - mid 20th Century) British cars were plagued with problems like oil leaks (probably made most famous by Rolls Royce who claimed that the continual replacement of lubricating oil ensured that no contaminants remained between moving parts), and the fact that you needed three different spanners to perform the most simple tasks. Obviously you have never tried to do a tune-up or replace the cone suspension on an original Mini ;)
Compare this to a Japanese car or a German car where there is probably only three or four sizes of spanner required to remove the whole engine.
There are some very BRITISH cars around that people would buy if they could get one .. TVR, Morgan, Chaterham and of course Ascari. British can mean 'made in Britain' in which case Ford has plenty as do Vauxhall, not forgetting Bentley, Rolls Royce, Aston Martin. Toyota and Nissan both export from Britain probably more than they sell in the UK. Take a look at the race tracks most (not all) F1 cars are British designed and made and many Rally teams are British even if the car badge is Japanese. Toyota, Mazda, BMW, Volvo and many others have design roots in Britain. People buy badges not cars . real car enthusiasts buy cars not badges but then the UK culture is now a 'must have better than I can afford to beat the neighbours' . silly but oh so very true .. Go look at the motor show and go to some weekend car meets and see some real cars . Jowett Javelins which where so reliable the company went bust .Jensen the British car with a Chrysler heart (the CV8) . dont knock the Britsh car, knock the British for not buying them.
There was a time in the not so distant past when British cars were the absolute pits quality wise. MG was known for it's electrical problems. Triumph's TR7 practically fell apart. DeLorian..well, that's a story in and of itself! Getting parts for a British car, at least in the USA was difficult at best. The good ones, Rolls and Bentley, were waaaaaaaaay out of the price range for the average American consumer. During this period of time, Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, Nissan and others were selling and marketing some of the very best automobiles, to the detriment of the British, American , French and Italian automobile industries.
Fast forward to today, and despite the fact that people have a splendid choice of many different high quality automobiles from a variety of locations, they have long memories, and tend to stick with that which is familiar and successful. Brand loyalty is hard nut to crack.
And for what it's worth, very few Americans buy French cars, and the Mini is really catching on over here. I saw my first new Morgan just the other day.it's a good looking vehicle!! Jaguar is considered a bit ostentatious in some circles, and the Land Rover is in direct competition with the Hummer, and the image contrast alone is enough to keep Rover down.
British Cars do have historic value, we can say it as a heritage value, but the modern car market has been going with the updated technology, where as in British cars, technological updation is slow because UK people are enlighted conservatists, which has great value in it and working based on that. For long term objectives money is immaterial the value is the actual. If take in to account of the history of UK, German and France, the relationship is diplomatic.
Britain is best at niche, low-volume manufacturing of motor vehicles, so we don't sell too many around the world. Our record of industrial strife, and subsequent atrocious build quality, during the 1970s certainly didn't help.
However, when it comes to F1 cars, we're top of the tree. Most of the F1 teams, even ones that sound wholly foreign such as Renault, are based in the UK.
Bad workmanship.
Foreign cars assembled in the UK are so much
inferior compared with those imported.
British "knowhow" is great on the drawingboard
but in the assembly room is bad.
Who to blame ? Unions ?
British cars DONT last, poorly built, unreliable! the last heat wave we had apx 2 yrs ago, we were held up in traffic for hours m40, the hard shoulder was littered with rovers overheating!!
TVR now i like them, but unreliable troublesome!!
i'm a ford man but may go to vw this year?
Well, yes, you;re missing the entire point, frankly - Rover is now defunct totally, mainly because their cars were rubbish so you can't now buy a Rover even if you wanted to. Jaguar is owned by Ford (American). Vauxhall is owned by GM (American), Mini is owned by BMW, as is Rolls Royce. Last I looked, TVR was owned by a Russian and Lotus by Proton of Malaysia. And as you rightly say, most cars built in the UK are Peugeots, Nissans etc. So where, exactly, do you think all the profits from the sale of these cars goes? Yes! To the owning company who then shell out corporate taxes into their home country's governmental budgets. So even British made cars (with, I think the exception probably of Morgan, and frankly a Morgan's hardly practical and affordable is it?) support foreign economies.
Which British car were you thinking of? Jaguar belongs to Ford (USA), while Mini and Rolls Royce are both built by German companies now. (BMW and VW)
It's just like it is in the USA. It's a world market out there, and even the most traditional American (or British) brand of automobile can be mostly made of imported parts, or by foreign owned companies.
not many people buy from them because of their bad Reputation.like rover and mg. they tend to buy german,french and Japenese cars instead.
and its not about supporting britain because most people go after what is cheaper to run and the want a car that doest not break down every month or so. however french cars are not very good either but they are better then british!
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