QUALITY ENGINEERING

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 79, 16 March 1935, Page 13

QUALITY ENGINEERING

A Chance lor Scotland Will motor car manufacture be restartted in Scotland? Since the Scottish Motor Show there have been many rumours in this connection. Cold logic is brought to bear on this question by Mr D. D. McLachlan in an article published in the “Glasgow Herald.’’ The only type of car that could be made in Scotland on a paying basis is a quality car selling at between £lOOO and £1500! Mr McLachlan’s argument is this: —Scotland consumes only 8 pbr cent, of the car output of British makers —some 15,000 per annum. Even allowing for patriotic appeal and so forth, no Scottish manufacturer could hope to sell more than 10 per cent, of this in the first year, so that at most he would dispose of no more than 1500 cars. Only a super car of distinctive type, differing radically in design from the stereotpye products of the Englisn mass-producing factories, could, on this basis, hope to “live” as a profitable medium. Mr McLachlan believes that, in spite of the difficulties, working on these lines, a Scottish car manufacturer could do satisfactory business. He points out that superlative quality is indigenous to the field of Scottish engineering effort, and that, although purchasers would come in the first place from Scottish people of means living either in Scotland, England, or the Dominions, the market would in time be extendel to the British public as a whole.