The goals behind Brexit–the successful referendum to remove Britain from the consortium of governments known as the European Union–were always a little intentionally vague, but the main idea was that the United Kingdom wasn’t going to let anyone else tell them what to do. This can be summed up in the Leave campaign’s slogan “Take back control.” It’s been clear for a while that almost exactly the opposite has happened, and perhaps nowhere is that clearer than in the car industry.
That the entire Brexit experiment was actually a political Grenfell Tower in the making–a terrible and avoidable self-immolation confounded by a confused government that would inevitably destroy the lives of the people with the biggest stake and least control–seemed obvious at the time to many, many people. Just not enough people.
I don’t want to dunk on the people who voted “leave” in the referendum because it’s not my country. It wasn’t my choice. If anything, America will benefit from the outflow of production and dollars from the UK. It sucks. But it’s also a good reminder that politics has consequences. It impacts the cars you love and the cars you get. It impacts the people who make the cars. It impacts everyone.
Car Companies Beg The EU To Not Make The UK Suffer The Consequences Of Their Own Actions
If you don’t want to read this article, this tweet does a pretty good job of summing up what’s happening now with the UK’s car industry. For the car industry, at least, Brexit has been an own-goal of epic proportions. Own-goal probably understates it. Rather than accidentally kicking the ball into their own net, it’s like they punched the goalie in the throat, headered the ball into the back of the goal, and then attempted to give one of the linesmen a noogie.
Being a part of the European Union allowed for easy trade between the various countries in Europe and the other regions aligned with the European Union via treaties. With a kind of misguided optimism that rivals Underpants Gnomes (see above video), Britain was going to come out of Brexit with the ability to negotiate even better and even stronger trade agreements.
Charitably, that hasn’t happened yet, and the United Kingdom relies heavily on the rest of Europe for trade. A Europe that, for good reason, saw Brexit as a kind of big middle finger, and negotiated a tough trade deal on the way out — one that contains all sorts of ticking time bombs.
One of those bombs is about to explode. The European auto industry is shifting rapidly towards electrification and rules set to go into effect next year will require 45% of the value of an EV sold in the European Union to come from either Britain or the EU. That’s fine for gasoline cars, but as David learned with his i3, the value of an EV is largely its battery and the Brits ain’t exactly rolling in lithium and battery factories.
Ford is begging the EU for an extension. Stellantis did the same, saying it would have to start closing plants and laying people off if the rules go into effect. Here’s a bit from from the BBC via Reuters that goes far to explain how bad this can get:
Andy Palmer, former Nissan chief operating officer, told BBC radio that urgent action was required.
“The cost of failure is very clear. It’s 800,000 jobs in the UK, which is basically those jobs associated with the car industry,” said Palmer, who is also chairman of European battery manufacturer InoBat.
“If you don’t have a battery capability in the UK, then those car manufacturers will move to mainland Europe.”
Utter madness.
The Germans To The Rescue
While you were sleeping, the Verband der Automobilindustrie (VDA), aka the German Association of the Automotive Industry, decided it, too, didn’t want to see Britain sink into the ocean.
The VDA, the German car industry lobby group, said “it is now urgent to adjust” the deal because tariffs would represent “a significant competitive disadvantage for the European car industry in relation to its Asian competitors in the so important UK market”. Tariffs would slow down the shift to electric cars, it argued.
The VDA’s members include some of the world’s most powerful carmakers such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Volkswagen. The UK represents an important and profitable market for Germany’s carmakers – albeit a small part of their global sales.
There are probably a few reasons behind this that are not purely selfless on the part of the VDA. As mentioned, the UK is still a decent-sized market for German automakers and an even worse economic condition in the country isn’t good for business. Second, the rush to make cars electric hasn’t been easy for German automakers, either, and it behooves the VDA to get Brussels to keep pushing back these requirements (though they asked for an extension to 2026 instead of 2027).
And, finally, the Germans may be mad at the Brits, but there’s a war not that far away from Germany’s border and we all need friends.While the Russians can barely build Ladas, it’s much better to keep the British strong than it is to let the Chinese take over everything.
China’s Geely Continues To Take Over British Automakers
Geely has been slowly and consistently buying up European and, in particular, British automakers. In addition to Volvo, Geely owns the Lotus Group and part of Aston Martin. As of this week, Geely now owns a lot more of Aston.
There’s a full writeup in the Financial Times about the deal, but here’s the meat of it:
Geely has doubled its stake in Aston Martin to 17 per cent and will supply technology and components to the luxury-car maker under a new “long-term partnership”, growing the Chinese group’s influence over a company that it has long desired to own.
The Chinese carmaker spent £234mn increasing its holding, becoming the third-largest shareholder after the consortium of investors led by Aston Martin chair Lawrence Stroll, and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and placing it ahead of Mercedes-Benz.
Geely bought 42mn shares from Stroll’s consortium, and was issued with 28mn new shares at 335p each, a substantial premium over Wednesday’s closing share price of 231p. The deal raises £95mn for Aston Martin.
It’s worth pointing out that Geely also probably owns a little more of Aston Martin because Geely also owns a good chunk of Mercedes Benz. The company had successfully tried to take over all of Aston, but lost out to Stroll.
Again, if the idea of Brexit was to make Britain more British, selling one of your best brands to a mix of Canadian, Saudi, and Chinese companies is a curious way of going about it. To be fair, many of Britain’s car companies were already sold off before Brexit, but it’s getting worse not better since.
While there’s a burgeoning Cold War Part Two brewing with China, I don’t necessarily see it as an awful outcome that the Chinese are investing in Western Automakers. I still have the probably naive belief that automobiles, which are an intersection of commerce and art and sport, are a superior way of uniting people than pure consumption alone (those McDonalds in Russia didn’t seem to stop the missiles).
Chrysler Airflow: Dead
Stellantis attempted to get people to care about Chrysler with a vision it called the “Aiflow” the company showed at CES in 2020. The name came from a 1930s Chrysler and it was, uh, ok. It was big and kind of round and sort of looked like a squished Pacifica. But it was something!
According to MotorTrend, both the name and the design are dead.
The change comes at the direction of Chrysler Brand CEO Chris Feuell who came into the job with a new eye and rulebook she wants to play by. “Chris came at it with her perspective which we really enjoyed,” Gilles says. “She wanted a statement that had literally zero to do with anything that you have seen today, even the Airflow concept car. It is evolving in a new direction.”
“Airflow was a great exercise to signal again the type of vehicle Chrysler might want to do,” Gilles says. As a compelling crossover it was a great starting point. But under Feuell’s new direction, the team aimed to beat their own design.
Ralph Gilles rules so, yeah, pitter patter my friends. Make something as fun as the Dodge Charger Daytona SRT EV please.
The Big Question
Ok folks, is Britain just temporarily boned or is this is a full-on, generational boning?
In 1990, I wrote a paper in law school on the economic and legal implications of a strong EU for England. The economic benefit to EU membership is patently obvious. The legal implications included removing the House of Lords as the highest court in the land since it’s rulings were then subject to EU court rulings, for items in trade, and other items akin to the Commerce Clause in the US Constitution, which are broad and many. So I can see this was a reactionary response to short term problems with the EU (hence blaming it on geezers) but now I get to say, I told you so! Even though I didn’t tell anyone other than my professor when I handed in the paper which concluded this might happen (England was backdooring international treaties at the time already.) Well, so, at least one Autopian was not blind sided by this kerfuffle.
I voted remain not because I had any great love of the EU, which let’s not forget has quite a number of fundamental issues of its own, but because I could not see how any UK Government was going to come up with a successful plan to implement it. Pretty much every issue I could see has come to pass.
Also worth pointing out a major tenet of the Leave campaign was immigration something the US grapples with as well.
Tbere was a time when the sun never set on the English Empire. In fact England is the only European Country ever to be a 1st world country and were a decent 2nd world country. Thinking many incompetent poorly run countries could develop a quality equal arrangement is crazy. The Democrats keep promising to give everybody everything by taxing Musk, Bezos, Gates, Elkison, Buffet, and Zuckerberg. Cant happen but i bet England saw being used as a cash cow by stinkholes with more votes.
They’re still coming, Dave. Two of them. Every street corner.
If by “give everybody everything” you mean enact common sense policies like Healthcare and education reforms that literally every other advanced country has successfully done by having common sense tax rates on billionaires then you’d be correct
yeah, there’s some serious either trolling or delusional bullshit going on there.
Darn.
I was hoping, waiting, praying for the full return of British Leyland
Ah yes, that’s what Britain needs to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Poorly made cars mashed together with hammers by workers that are either half drunk or on strike. Full disclosure, I own a British Leyland car and love it with all my heart and will never get rid of it.
I have two TR8s and a Rover 220 TomCat in my garage. I love them. British Leyland may have been awful, but it was best awful there ever was.
“it was the best awful there ever was” is outstanding.
The first car I ever bought was a TR8 and no car I’ve bought since has made me any happier.
You and me both!
“The British Are About To Utterly Destroy Their Own Car Industry”
Heya 1982 just called looking for its news headline!
Lets be honest: Brexit was a sham pulled by a bunch of people to stay in charge longer than they should have been.
In the long run it’s going to destroy what’s left of UK industry, because it lost the open and easy flow of goods that came with EU.
UK people are seeing it hurting them, by the roaming fees from telecom operators ( there’s no such thing in the EU ), the hour longs lines at Dover and the Chunnel entrances everytime there’s vacation in UK, Delayed freight and more.
Banks have been moving assets from the City to Paris and Frankfurt as soon as they learned the Brexit won, carmakers can’t react that swiftly, but strangely there’s 4 car battery factories due to open soon in Northern France in the corridor between Dunkirk and Lille.
It’s clear that car makers are moving away from UK ( even if it’s not that obvious yet ) as they can’t afford the PITA of the border crossing for parts and finished cars.
Seen from my side : If BoJo & ilk ever though they could be in the EU while being out, they dreamed of flying unicorns creating rainbows. It was clear that if UK left, they were going to have to start from scratch and try to build something like what Norway or Switzerland have built over 30+ years. ( so it was not going to happen in a matter of days ).
Am I missing something? What was left of the British car industry? Wasn’t destroyed in the Thatcher era?
What was left was the 800,000 people who design, engineer and build cars for JLR, Aston, Rolls, Bentley, Lotus, MINI, Ford, Vauxhall, Toyota, Nissan and all the ones I forgot. Plus all the tier 1 suppliers of widgets and doodads.
There are 36.2 million people with jobs in the UK, this is over 2% of all the jobs in the entire country.
We are fucked. We are totally fucked.
Of course, the easy fix is for Britain to unilaterally declare the reinstatement of the British Empire so that anything manufactured in its former colonies could be claimed as domestic production.
But but but…
Jeremy Clarkson said that the British car industry was not dead. There, I just saw it move. Told you so…
Uh well Ok Alright. I guess maybe now since it’s on life support with the nurse about to pull the plug since there’s a Do Not Resuscitate order.
There has been a Mortal Kombat-style “Finish Him” hanging over the British car industry for some time, Brexit or no.
EVs are great!… Rolls eyes like Jeremy Clarkson. Good luck guys! LoL
For Britain think it’s a generational one, seems like they still had the ‘sun never sets on the empire’ mentality, when they’re pretty much a small island nation now like Japan, only they wish they made cars as good as Japan.
Geely buying all the car companies sounds fairly ominous, but I guess if they’re investing that hopefully means they won’t be destroying it later.
I’m British. No one I’ve met here ever thinks we’re still an Empire.
Even the ones that like having a king accept we’re more impotent than important.
As an American, I remember when the Brexit vote was happening and Trump was going about how they would call him Mr. Brexit. I also recall interviews after it passed with people on the street who voted for Brexit as a protest vote because they never thought it would pass and were shocked and dismayed when it did.
I’ve seen similar comments in US elections when people make a protest vote for a third party candidate and are then disappointed when the lesser of two evils (D or R) loses.
Going to have to disagree with the fundamental premise that Brexit will destroy the British car industry. The British car industry was already Royally Fucked before Brexit, and market trends since have shown there was no saving it regardless of how the vote went.
You say this 45% rule is the timebomb that will destroy the British car makers, but if manufacturers can’t clear even that low bar it’s not really British manufacturing then, is it? Slapping a Land Rover badge on a Gheely or Tata is not really a big value-add to the UK economy in the way that economists care about, it’s just a branding exercise.
Like you say, most of the british car industry was foreign owned before brexit, the fact that more of it has been bought out since is not surprising, it’s just a continuation of trends long on-going.
There is “fucked” and then there is Brexit. Yes, prior to Brexit those 800,000 auto industry jobs were largely held under foreign-owned companies; but after Brexit those 800,000 jobs will cease to exist.
The UK automotive industry has already dropped 50% of it’s total share of the work force since the 70’s, and divested most of it’s domestically owned assets prior to Brexit, when the UK was in the EU. If you look at the 800k jobs figure cited, only 150k are actually directly in manufacturing, which is something like half of a percent of the workforce compared to the 5% it was at its peak. So if we take your argument at face value and assign all blame to brexit then it is at the very most responsible for the last ~10% of decline. If I were a UK minister, I think a much more productive question would be what the hell happened for the previous 90%?
The UK, and EU, car industry used to ship parts backwards and forwards across the channel for machining, or plating, or assembly. Sometimes multiple times for a single part. It only takes a few hours. Or did before Brexit forced border delays that are sometimes weeks. It’s utter fucked the supply chain.
This isn’t about how no one buys Rovers any more. This is about 2% of all the jobs in an entire country being destroyed by a political game of Russian Roulette which has had zero consequences on the people who played it.
Britain has always tried to destroy its motor industry. The industry was always rife with poor quality, bad management, continuous strikes but occasionally would make great cars. I love a British car and TBH my MGB has been pretty reliable. It seems that there is some inherent need in Britain to shoot car manufacturing in the foot whenever possible.
This is a respectful request to not reference Tweets in your articles. It could be considered offensive for the majority of people who do not use the service and choose to not associate themselves with a racist, narcistic, homo phobic, anti-Semite. Further, there is basically zero reliability in anything Twitter and is not a source of news.
Is the Meta/Alphabet (google) social media ok? I’m confused anymore about which one to dislike. If you are using the internet, you might as well get used to the fact that none of these companies is better than the other. If you think Twitter is the “bad guy” compared to the others..whoowhee.
Sucky people exist all over the internet including all social media. However some channels try to weed them out, some just ignore them, while others actively incite them. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which is which.
Lol- because somehow other forms of media are full of pure, morally infallable, and perfectly reliable arbiters of truth.
First we had Trump Derangement Syndrome, now we have Musk Derangement Syndrome. There are plenty of perfectly calm, rational, and well-reasoned arguments to make about the man and his conduct. If you instead resort to a knee-jerk vomiting of invective at the slightest mention, I am disinclined to take anything you say at all seriously, and perhaps suggest you seek professional help, or at least log off for a breather.
Trump and musk are both objectively terrible people. Making up a diagnosis so you can ignore people who are pointing out these facts says more about you than it does about them. One might even call such an action a “knee-jerk vomiting of invective.”
It seems pretty benign to say “hey, this dude kinda sucks. Let’s maybe refrain from using his Internet website or staying at his hotels”
“Trump and musk are both objectively terrible people… pointing out these facts.”
Uh-oh, loss of logical reasoning faculties is a key symptom of MDS/TDS, you should consult a professional right away! If caught early enough, a prescription for Logic 101 can stem or even reverse symptoms!
The Autopian is the only social media I use these days.
If only I could like this another ten times.
I no longer use Twitter for the reasons you stated, and part of that is achieved by not clicking on Twitter links when they are offered. But I am not “offended” by the mere existence of those offered links. (And any embedded Tweets are already blocked by my browser.)
VDA- don’t do it, you’re only encouraging them.
C’mon! The Germans have always had Britain’s best interests at heart.
Hah!
As many have said: the EV market is full of a lot of same-y designs, and my theory is the Airflow looked too much like the lauded EV6 to come out years later and hope to compete
Also on an outdated platform…
Brexit was a response to losing value of the British Pound on the backs of the five euro countries that defaulted on their debt during the 09 financial crisis. Basically the Brits felt they were being asked to cover countries they did not necessarily want to cover. Their neighbor Ireland being one of them.
But in politics sometimes one side cannot see see the wood for the trees, and then when the Larger problem shows it’s ugly face it is too late.
I cannot say the US is much better, but since we started with a federal government a very long time ago, it is much harder for the different political flavors in the various states to actually take hold and Cede from the union very easily.
Brexit was a cretinous embarrassment that allowed Tory grifters to continue to steal from the public purse based on a spurious mandate delivered by misinformed bigots and racist pensioners. It had sweet fuck all to do with us ‘paying for other countries’. The harms were clearly laid out, and cheerfully ignored. Those vicious, mendacious bastards have screwed us for generations.
Anyway, cars? Yes, cars.
COTD
It’s a common perception that the Brexit movement grew during the debt crisis, and campaigns have described the EU as a “sinking ship.”
The UK referendum sent shock waves through the economy. Investors fled to safety, pushing several government yields to a negative value, and the British pound was at its lowest against the dollar since 1985.
I am definitely not from your country Gilbert, so I am looking at it from the outside in, but I do recall news reports about Greece and how the prior governments had been misreporting national financial information, and then the government revealed a far-worse-than-expected budget deficit—more than double previous estimates. Greece’s borrowing costs soared as credit rating agencies downgraded the country’s government debt to junk status. This status was but one thing tied to Britain via the Euro Union that in turn hurt the British economy at the time. Maybe it was just false news, I don’t know?
*Stubs toe*
“****ing Tories”
That’s pretty much how the whole country feels right now. We’ve still got at least another year before we can get rid of them. Le sigh.
Brexit was asinine from the get go and literally everyone except the people who voted for it knew it would have devastating consequences for regular ass people. I more or less see it as England’s Trump moment…an incredibly dumb and misguided eruption of conservative hyper-nationalism. The issue is that voters in both countries don’t realize how hard they’re shooting themselves in the dick by falling for this LET’S SELF FELLATE nationalistic rhetoric.
At the end of the day it’s just a Trojan horse full of the same Reagan/Thatcher trickle down bullshit that has literally never worked and never will work. Funneling money to the 1% is the root cause of so many of the social ills we’re fighting today and yet if you wrap it up in nationalism and foaming at the mouth THE OTHERS HAVE WRONGED YOU incendiary rhetoric it will win elections in perpetuity. It sucks and it’s frustrating. It’s also inexcusable that the left wing (er center-right alternative here in the US) in both countries is so bad at just hitting pitches that the right is throwing over home plate.
All of this is dumb and now I’m grumpy. Anyway I think England is quite boned economically, and like mber is suggesting British exceptionalism is really all they have to sell right now. Don’t get me wrong-I love the UK. England is a great place, pretty much 90% of all the Brits I’ve met have been lovely people (granted I’m in a bit of a bubble that’s kept me from crossing paths with the true Brexit geezer types), the country has given us some of the most important and iconic music of the last 60 years, etc.
But exceptionalism and resting on your laurels can only last so long. Ask me, an American, how I know…
Fuckin’A
“Self-fellate” really works here. They’re boned. Generationally boned.
I feel awful for all the good folks who saw it coming, too. There’s a lot of cool folks in Britain who do not deserve to deal with the Brexit fallout.
Brilliant.
To me, Brexit always seemed like an Appeal to Emotion fallacy. How the British couldn’t see it boggled my mind. Then I remember what and who the USA was choosing at the same time and immediately fall off my high horse. At least we were able to take some corrective action sooner than the Brits will.
Let’s hope the corrective action lasts because 2024 is going to be hell on earth
It’s not gonna be “hell on earth”, lol. It’s only gonna be that way if you convince yourself it is.
Like it or not (I’m in the “not” camp, but still), DeSantis is gonna be the President. The script has already been written. Deal with that as you must.
If you truly believe this with that much conviction, RDS is +500 to win at most of the offshore books.
I don’t know how you could look at the guy or listen to him speak and come to that conclusion, but if you do, there’s plenty of money to be made.
I don’t think he will. He has absolutely no charisma and while his absolutely draconian policy ideas get Floridians all hot and bothered a lot of it is actually quite unpopular at the national level. The dude is going to get eaten alive in the debates and he’s currently getting his ass handed to him by fucking DISNEY of all entities.
I think the fascist nonsense is inherently limited in its appeal and by all accounts DeSantis is trying to run to the right of Trump…and while Trump’s fan club is as delusional as any they’re a finite resource and eventually his legal issues will catch up with him. Honestly if Republicans could find a moderate candidate or one who simply isn’t an absolute far right freak show/living parody they’d probably win…but they got a taste of that sweet sweet fascist juice and they don’t want to put it down.
That being said no one is better at shooting themselves directly in the dick than the Democratic Party. Biden was an incredibly weak candidate in 2020 and he’s even weaker now. The sooner they let go of the Clinton third way/relics from a bygone era bullshit they’ll clean house. But they never will. Because they’re fucking stupid and exist in a goddamn echo chamber of privilege and interests of the wealthy just like Republicans do.
Frankly I don’t think our political system is going to function again for a while and that one of our priorities should be to stop having a government that’s essentially run entirely by white men who qualified for social security many years ago. I don’t say that with the intent to be ageist, but more so to make the point that many of the ideas that get floated around in Congress are ridiculously out of touch with the actual reality that normal Americans face every day.
Agree, agree, agree.
Its not often I hear the opinion I have had for so long we need age limits for politicians, so many 70+ acting like children screwing us ALL over. I respect my elders, but I know of no person 70+ I would want in a political position of power. No idea who will be president but Biden nor Trump can win. Hopefully it’s someone not out of touch with reality.
Age limits and/or term limits. Eventually you need new ideas. Both parties have been rehashing the same ineffective bullshit for the last 40+ years in slightly different outfits and everyone except the 1% is losing.
At this point just a randomly selected person age 35-55 would likely be better than either.
I am pretty sure that was the plan with putting Kamala as VP. Maybe not so randomly selected based upon ethnicity and gender, but I think the powers that be are possibly disappointed. She might have a tough time covering that long bet currently.
I live and work with many people in their 70s, 80s, and even 90s that I would be very happy to have as President. Stop with the ageism. P.S. I’m the youngster at 68.
If the blue team would just embrace responsible gun ownership and encourage firearm education, and stop putting people on a public stage that think “semi automatic” is a scary word, they would sweep elections.
If the red team would run on their current policies but include universal healthcare, they would sweep elections.
But they won’t, because both sides are controlled by corporate interests that do their best to prevent any progress for the working class.
Very much this. Nobody is going to take someone talking about “gun control” seriously if they can’t even tell you what a gun is.
Sure, and I won’t take anyone seriously on taxes if they don’t have a PhD in Economics. *eyeroll*
This just demonstrates that gun nuts are the farcical equivalent to the comic store guy on The Simpsons. Nobody cares about the minutiae because it doesn’t actually matter. If you want to play that game, then you should all be using muzzle-loading smooth-bore muskets, since that was what the framers were picturing when they wrote the 2nd Amendment.
Disagree man. When you see someone say “semi automatic” like it’s a scary word, and associate any semi auto with nutjob preppers, it just shows how ignorant they are. Pretty much 99.9% of the firearms around are semi-automatic, excluding some bolt action rifles and ….’technically’ revolvers, which… still operate like a semi auto after the first shot.
Then you have people wanting to ‘ban assault rifles’, but keep hunting rifles, not realizing they’re functionally/mechanically identical, one just looks ‘scarier’ to some people. That is a whole can of worms; banning things based on appearance not any actual metric; at that point there would need to be a committee to decide what looks scary and what doesn’t, and idk how you’d regulate that since people can modify things to look however they want.
basically this:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FsU8hsFWIBAyZbU.jpg
I think if people on the left side maybe had a bit of education/experience in firearms they would not say such ridiculous nonsense and probably be a lot more successful in communicating their messages, but when they say something so obviously false/wrong/incorrect/stupid, it’s hard to take whatever else they have to say seriously.
Not a gun nut btw, just live in a rural area around hunters and stuff
I mean I know about all of that stuff just because I had an academic interest in firearms when I was younger; yet the misnomers don’t bother me because I still think it’s a pointless distraction from the greater issues around our general permissiveness with guns as a society.
To look at it from another angle, one could even surmise that the scary language about “assault rifles” is an intentionally alarmist tactic right out of the GOP playbook — except this time it’s being wielded by the opposition. What’s good for the goose, etc….
I mean banning things because they looked scary to someone worked for a few hundred years against black people
As an older left-winger with a mess of firearms, I say the Dems have always embraced responsible gun ownership. Firearms education is not the government’s job. The NRA sure dropped the ball on education when they became an arm of the GOP, and got even worse when they became a Kremlin pass-through.
“Red team policies”? The GOP hasn’t had a real platform for years, and when you describe actual GOP proposals to voters they usually go, “no way, you’re lying.”
I don’t know about “both sides” and “corporate interests” but I see one party that’s been doing its best to protect Americans from corporate greed and make lots of good-earning stable jobs, and another party that’s consistently grown the budget deficit while trying to make things easier for rich folks and harder for everyone else.
Idk man. So I’m politically homeless but I see people on the blue team parroting INSANE shit like, we should ban ALL semi-automatic weapons…. or like… we’re going to come and take all your AR15s! But if it fires the same bullets and is mechanically identical but has a wood stock instead of a black plastic one, you’re fine and can keep it. ?!
Not saying both are the same… am saying the blue team sure chooses some idiots to parrot anti-gun insanity which gets the red team all riled up, and makes them think anyone left of center is a moron.
Don’t get me wrong, we’re all morons somehow. I personally can’t wait to vote for AI. 😀
I’ll deal with it on the streets, block by block and door to door, defending my country from fascist GOP scum. All of them, buttercup.
Nah. Ignorance and pretending to be more badass than a lethal virus while being an obese boomer did wonders to their voting population. Red team is going to start suckin it hard until they change things up, as gen Z enters the voting age.
This is morbid but not incorrect and you gave me a chuckle, so have a smiley face
in May of 2016, i was on spur of the moment trip to the UK (my first) to sail, and over one dinner with my three boat mates, we quizzed each other over Hillary, Trump, Boris, and Brexit. They correctly called the impending election for their country, i did for mine, and of the four of us, i think only one was happy with our predictions. Her only justification: “getting the brown people out”.
Yiiiiiiiiiikes
I describe those people as screaming that “I’m angry, and I don’t know why!”.
Give them a target of your anger and you can lead them anywhere.
We know exactly what we are angry about, and you would be well advised from jointing those “targets.”
To quote Bender: Yup, they’re Boned.
The Brits have always has too much hubris for their own good. They built the world’s largest empire based on sea power and mercantile organization, but they failed to future-proof their economy beyond Beatles and Downton Abbey.
They thought that British “specialness” was enough to make the world come to heel like it did two centuries ago. It’s not, and now Britain is just Sicily without the good weather. They have nothing to offer the twenty-first century world.
Well they have a Bumbling King now….. Isn’t that worth something?
As a Brit, you’d expect me to get defensive over this kind of statement but… nope, that’s pretty much how it feels from the inside too.
To be fair it’s less the population than it is our political structure I think, as there’s this kind of unshakeable belief among those currently in charge that the way to bring the country to glory is to basically revert to the ways of the empire. Which is obviously insane, but good shorthand for why politicians are making some of the decisions they are while overlooking reality.
(As an aside, I also think certain, though not all British carmakers are infused with a bit of this too – big carmakers unable to understand that having a good product is more important than having a good heritage.)
There are some things, and for the relevance of this discussion specifically, some automotive things, that Britain does as well or better than anywhere else in the world (think motorsport technology). But it’s no good having that string to the bow when it’s completely undermined by the absolute clusterflip that decades of lousy political decisions and misplaced patriotism have created.
The Brits also have the richest culture of exterior automotive design. I said it and I mean it, don’t @ me. They’ve produced many of the most timeless and elegant vehicles of all time, particularly Jaguar and Aston Martin. The Bri’ish also gave us BRG, the greatest car color ever, as well as the small, lightweight, manual, not power focused roadster formula that’s so universally loved that it’s existed in one form or another for nearly a century and by all accounts is going to continue to exist even with electrification.
You’ll never hear me argue against Britain’s place in automotive Valhalla. I just wish English manufacturers kept innovating and weren’t in the sad place they’re in today…it would be a shame to see them go the way of the Dodo or continue exist as anonymous electric crossovers.
The larger question, I think, is do we really want the British auto industry building electric cars? Their history with automotive electricity makes me think that someone starting an electric car in London will cause someone’s lights to go out in Devonshire, and a brown-out in Wales.
Lucas Electrics actually had an EV concept once upon a time. Contrary to popular belief, they were actually a very competent electronics company, but British Leyland made the foolish decision to compete by reducing quality and lowering prices rather than increasing quality for a higher price, and as a result they demanded that Lucas Electrics make everything cheaper. It wasn’t Lucas Electric’s fault they became known for crappy electronics, that was what they were told to make.
You mean all those famous, iconic Astons designed by the Italians?
ProTip: when your entire brand is built around it’s legacy – see also Pacifica (first introduced as a luxury trim level in 1988) and the 300 (a specific callback to 1955 for fuck’s sake) – then going in a completely new direction that has literally zero to do with your heritage? When going back to your heritage is what saved your ass three times? (300M, PT Cruiser, 300 on obsolete M-B platform.)
Not a good idea.
I’ll take my $5M paycheck now, thank you.
Oh, and hint: people liked the Airflow because it called back to heritage while being something new and unique. Not because there’s a secret cabal of fanatics for pre-war cars which were commercial failures.
To steal from a friend: the British economy is not Chernobyl, it is the Windscale pile.
Except instead they have a bunch of pyromaniacs in charge.
Actually, to expand on prior thought:
Hey dumbasses. Even if the jackasses at Cerberus deleted or threw away all the prints, you still own all the IP rights to the PT Cruiser.
How can you be so incomprehensibly stupid as to not see that a BEV modernized PT Cruiser would print money?
The ET Cruiser?
I should work in marketing.
ET (Cruiser) phone home!!
I definitely don’t hate it.
And let’s be honest. They’d sell out the first three model years at 15% above sticker.
Oh, heck yeah. Make it as delightfully Y2K silly as possible.
And make it look like the actual Airflow from the 30s, with AWD to attract the crossover market but low enough ride height to actually be a wagon, and based on the same platform as the EV Charger so it’s basically a hot rod-shaped Charger wagon. With properly round LED headlights as well since those are a thing and would look proper.
the sad part is the Airflows of the time were technically superiors to what was sold elsewhere, but the style was too different for the masses to accept them.
I liked the idea of an airflow name re-up, but I understand how that history could be conceived as an ill advised one to dredge back up.
Bring back the K-car!
I know this is a joke but like, the K-cars were intended from the get go to just be small inexpensive cars that Americans wanted. And it worked… and it would work again if they made compact inexpensive EVs that look like SUVs and luxury/muscle cars while actually being sedans and hatchbacks. If only someone could drill the concept of “inexpensive” into the major automakers’ heads…
Based on my anecdotal experiences with ladies named Brittany, I’d say that those policies are flexible and subject to change.
It’s a full on multi generational boning.
Kinky
Britain has been boned since at least 1945.
I like to think Brexit was Britain acting like a protective parent to the US. Drawing the nearly universal scorn of the entire globe away from our decision to elect Trump, and onto their decision to decimate their own economy. Thanks, Dad.
It never ceases to amaze me how hard xenophobes will punch themselves in the dick if they’re told it’ll hurt brown people more.
The British Are About To Utterly Destroy Their Own Car Industry, AGAIN!
What little of it isn’t Chinese-owned, anyway.
As the saying goes, if you want to drink all day, you have to start early in the morning. The British car industry going down the pan today really started in, I dunno, the 1970s.
Yeah, very confused about how the author can argue Brexit is somehow the demise of British car makers. The rot goes back to (rough guess on Matt’s age here) before he was born. It may own the distinction of being the final nail in the coffin, but there were like 249 other nails before it.
Brexit is a big ass nail, though.