The Press Thursday, September 18, 1930. British Motor Industry.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20036, 18 September 1930, Page 10

The Press Thursday, September 18, 1930. British Motor Industry.

Messages during the last day or two about the huge motor show which opens in London next month draw attention to the British manufacturers' effort to develop a larger export trade. It is of course not a quite new effort, though it is only in recent years that British manufacturers have begun to study Dominion and Colonial requirements as carefully as their friends there have wished. They have assiduously and successfully cultivated the home market, and were perhaps right in concentrating almost exclusively on the field easiest to work. They were also handicapped to some extent in overseas competition by the horse-power tax, which drove them to put their best designing skill into cars of low power. One reward of this limitation was the extraordinary success of British "baby" cars, in the production of which Great Britain easily stands first, and it is possible that a further advance is recorded in the news that the cheapest car at Olympia will be a British "baby" costing £125. What is of greater interest, however, is the promise of "all-round price reduc"tions for the better cars." If the British manufacturers can at one and the same time turn out models better suited than before to Dominion and Colonial requirements and bring down their costs, they will not have much difficulty in expanding their oversea trade. The British manufacturer's eye definitely turned oversea a year ago, when the industry attempted at once to convert the home public to a higherpowered car of the light six-cylinder type and to make ti one that would catch the Dominion market. It does not appear that much success was won on the home market, though the Dominions were more interested; but the explanation of a rather disappointing start is not that the new plan was wrong, but probably that the hugo expense of changing over to new models handicapped the manufacturers in fixing prices. If prices are now to come down, the wisdom of the new policy will have a better chance to prove itself. The reasons why prices should come down are very clear; and one way to bring them down has often been pointed out. The Ford works at Dagenham in England are being equipped to produce about as many cars every year as the whole British industry, and if, inside the McKenna hedge, they are able to produce at the American cost level, the British industry must reduce or lose heavily in the 12-14 horse-power class market. The competitive reason in the Dominion and Colonial market is similar. As for the way to bring costs down, it is to organise the industry for mass production. It produces now about 180,000 cars a year, of which 55 per cent, are turned out by the two firms with the largest output and 88 per cent. by eight of them. If the Ford Company is excluded from these eight, the remaining seven, according to an Economist contributor, produce 42 different models, of which eight are cars of 16 horse-power. The American industry, proditcing 4,000,000 cars a year, is much more economically organised. Eight firms produced over 92 per cent, of the output, and, of these, the seven largest build only 32 models. When the British industry produces more cars, of fewer designs, as x it has begun to do, it will be in a much stronger competitive position.