UK car production on the up

According to the SMMT, UK vehicle production was up 2.1% at the end of September on a year-to-date basis, at 1.29 million.

This means full year production is likely to be not far off the highs achieved in the early Seventies and then again in the first few years of this decade. Thats a remarkable achievement considering that the last few years have seen the closure of Peugeot's plant at Ryton, Vauxhall's Luton works, and the final car assembly end of Ford's Dagenham operation - not to mention the demise of MG Rover.

It is a little remarked upon fact that Britain has lost almost an entire car industry in the last twenty or so years but gained almost an entire new one as well. The old 'Big Four' volume manufacturers - Leyland, Ford, Chrysler/Rootes and Vauxhall, have with the exception of Vauxhall largely disappeared in terms of UK production. What we have in their place are new Japanese plants run by Honda, Toyota and Nissan, as well as revived, previously niche-bound but now massively expanded prestige operations such as Bentley, Aston, Rolls, Land Rover and MINI - only Jaguar isn't really living up to its potential, and even that may change once the new XF hits the market.

One by-product of this shift is that not only is the industry almost as big as it's ever been, but the average value of the cars being made is probably a lot higher. Notwithstanding the possible rationalisation of Land Rover's and Jaguar's production facilities after Ford has sold these off, I think we will now hold on to most of what is left of the British industry.

Pinzgauer maker heading back to UK ownership

More on the Pinzgauer - news in the last few days that BAE Systems has agreed to take over the US company Armor Holdings, the ultimate owners of Pinzgauer, the UK-based manufacturer of the highly agile off-road vehicles of the same name.

The Pinzgauer was originally designed and then developed over several decades by the Austrian off-road specialists Steyr-Daimler-Puch. Production was transferred to a small British company, Automotive Technik, a few years back, after the British Ministry of Defence became the biggest Pinzgauer customer, and Steyr-Daimler-Puch was taken over by Magna and concentrated on contract manufacture of mainstream cars for other manufacturers (for example, diesel and RHD Chryslers and Jeeps).

Automotive Technik was taken over by the US military vehicle specialist Stewart and Stevenson, which was itself then taken over by Armor Holdings, although production remained in the UK throughout. Now Armor is being acquired by BAE.

I've never actually driven a Pinzgauer but on a visit to the Defence School of Transport in Yorkshire a few years ago, I had the chance to travel in one as the passenger of an instructor from the Royal Marines, who showed me what it could do over some of the DST's hairer off-road obstacles. It really is staggeringly good - the nearest thing there is to a mountain goat on wheels.