MOTOR-CAR INDUSTRY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 92, 20 April 1939, Page 3

MOTOR-CAR INDUSTRY

EFFECT OF IMPORT CONTROL VISIT BY MANAGER OF BRITISH FIRM. ’ Per Press Association.] WELLINGTON, April 18. Comment on the fact that under the import control scheme so far the preference shown to other British industries had. not been extended to the motor industry, was made in an interview to-day by the manager of Rootes, Ltd., London, Mr. L. C. Cun-1 ningham. Rootes, Ltd., are exporters of Humber, Hillman, Sunbeam and Talbot cars, and Comer and Karrier commercial vehicles. Mr. Cunningham, who arrived at Wellington by the Awatea yesterday, intends to spend about three weeks in the Dominion. British business people, said Mr. I Cunningham, were sympathetic with j the objective of the Government realising the necessity of some action to conserve New Zealand’s London funds. He believed, however, that the objective might have been furthered during the first six months of this year by curtailing imports of foreign and second-hand cars. Second-hand cars had been brought into New Zealand in increasing quantities in the past few years, but the business was of no real use to the manufacturing industry in Britain or to the established trade in New Zealand. For several years, said Mr. Cunningham, the New Zealand Government had urged British motor manufacturers to establish assembly plants in the Dominion. Rootes, Ltd., had assisted their distributors, Todd Motors, Ltd., to comply with that request, and had been the first to establish a local plant for the assembly of British cars. Mr. Cunningham referred to the suggestion that the Government intended to restrict imports of motor-cars drastically during the second six months of this year. If that were done, he said, the motor trade would be faced with a number of problems, chiefly in regard to staff, showrooms and**plant. All these had been based on the volume of trade average presumably over the past two years or so. If forty per

cent, of their sales possibility were to be taken away from them, motor firms, in spite of their desire to look after their employees, might find it very difficult to do so.