I am the first to admit that I am far from patriotic but a nostalgic flea in my bum makes me wonder: having witnessed the loss of Rolls Royce and Bentley to German companies and TVR to Russia, and Lotus (at least in the engine department) to Toyota - are there ANY cars left that are 100% British built?
So far, I've assumed that McLaren are the only ones.
Yeah, it's quite sad that British workers are capable of building cars, but British businessmen aren't capable of running car firms. Hence all the British-built cars with foreign badges, and all the British-built and badged cars made in foreign-owned British factories.
I've had a Viva, a couple of Chevettes and lots of Astras, all fantastic cars and all built in Britain. With promotion came a Vectra, built on the continent. Nowt but myther. Will be glad to see the back of it.
There are lots of British cars, Toyota, Nissan etc build thousands here with British workers, is ownership of the companies reelavant? I can remember in the 70's many "foriegn cars" where pretty well adopted by the British. Ford Cortina/Escort/Sierra Vauxhauls a plenty. We never considred them American did we?
Most British car manufacture and indeed manufacturing generally was killed off by union power and dogma, coupled with weak Labour and Tory governments lacking the bottle to sort the problem.
///Caterham Cars is a manufacturer of specialist lightweight Sports Cars based in Caterham, Surrey, UK. Their current model, the Caterham 7, is a direct evolution of the Series 3 Lotus Seven designed by Colin Chapman and originally launched in 1973.///
It is an Opel Kadett on the continent Vauxhall Astra in GB. I think the Astra is built in Speke Merseyside. Don't know where the engines are built though.