Das Auto: The Germans, Their Cars and Us Page #5

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DISCO MUSIC:

STEPHEN BAYLEY:
We lack the

commitment, we lack the discipline,

and we lack the interest in

being industrially competitive.

My honest feelings is

it's not in the English soul

to mass-produce motor cars.

Whereas the mass-produced

motor car is, I think,

the most complete expression

of the German psyche.

And while cars like the Mercedes 600

were testament to

Germany's new ambitions,

British cars were notorious for slow

delivery and shoddy workmanship.

Who can forget this wedge-shaped

beauty? The Austin Princess.

MUSIC:
"Take The Long Way Home"

by Supertramp

That wedge shape that it has

was very much in vogue in the '70s.

It was THE car to have.

God, you're beautiful.

Oh, what finish, what style.

# Cos you're the joke

of the neighbourhood... #

What undermined it was,

I think there a strike

almost straight away

and then there were a couple of...

significant quality issues

that came about

because it hadn't been

sufficiently well engineered.

One was - and it

sounds rather dramatic,

and in a way it was -

the rear suspension...

would collapse.

New car, George? Certainly is.

Much room inside? Mustn't

grumble, you know - average.

Goes well, does it? Well... average.

'When British Leyland

launched the Princess in 1975,

'the slogan ran -

"not the car for Mr Average. "

'That was a shame. Because

the key to the Golf's appeal

'was that Mr Average

rather liked it. '

SONG:
"The Floral Dance"

Desperate to save the company,

the government brought in a new

man to run British Leyland -

a ruthless South African

called Michael Edwardes.

INTERVIEWER:
Did you hesitate

for some time about taking the job?

One of the decisions

I had to make was

whether the job was doable at all.

And I came to the conclusion

that somebody could do it.

And that maybe I could do it.

So, could Michael Edwardes

really turn British Leyland around?

These are newly-declassified

documents from the first months

of Margaret Thatcher's

new administration in 1979

and they give you a real sense

of the despondency at the top

about British Leyland's prospects.

Now, BL were asking for an extra 130

million from the taxpayer in 1980/81

just to keep going,

and this is a memo

from Thatcher's Cabinet Secretary,

Sir Robert Armstrong,

in which he says, "Every year

things get worse, instead of better.

"The productivity is atrocious.

"Their market share

has slumped from 33% in 1974

"to just 16% in the last two months.

"It begins to look as if

the illness is terminal. "

Now, if you think that's bad,

this one is from her Chief

Policy Advisor, Sir John Hoskins.

And he says British Leyland's

prospects are,

"nearly zero", but they have to give

British Leyland the money, he says,

because the public demands

support for Edwardes.

It's an intriguing sign of the

sheer importance of the car industry

in the public mind in the 1980s

that even Margaret Thatcher,

the arch privatiser,

shrank from cutting it

or closing it down,

because the car industry was seen an

indication of our national virility.

If the car industry went, we would

be impotent on the industrial stage.

1980s POP MUSIC

But British Leyland

had one card left.

A car they'd been working

on for almost a decade -

modern, competitive, young, sexy...

and heavily subsidised

by the taxpayer.

The Mini Metro.

Launched in 1980-

"A British car to beat the world. "

Some of you may have noticed

that for the past few years

Britain has been invaded

by the Italians, the Germans,

the Japanese and the French.

Now we have the means to fight back.

SONG:
"Rule Britannia"

The new Austin Metro.

A British car to beat the world.

MUSIC:
"The Look Of Love"

by ABC

The Metro cost 3,000

and BL sold more than a million.

It became almost fashionable.

Even Prince Charles's fiancee,

Lady Diana Spencer, drove one.

But although the Metro was one of

the best-selling cars of the 1980s,

it was never going to be enough

to fend off the German competition.

My parents had a Mini Metro,

a lot of people did.

It was, on the surface,

it looks like quite

a successful car, but was it?

The sales figures predicted for it

were wildly optimistic.

They really did think they were

going to sell 300,000-400,000 a year

and it never came

anywhere near that.

I think they sold,

in the first year, 174,000.

The Metro was up against

the Volkswagen Polo

and it was up against

the Ford Fiesta,

so the Metro was, in a way,

an afterthought -

it was something

that came very late.

Now, Alan, you're going to have to

trade down your Rover 800

for a smaller car. Go on.

I picked up these brochures

for the new Metro.

It's... It's a lovely car.

Lynn... And if you do...

Lynn, I'm not driving a Mini Metro.

But you do have to make

substantial savings.

Lynn, I'm not driving a Mini Metro.

But if you do,

you can keep Pear Tree Productions

with a skeleton staff of two.

There's no point finishing the sentence,

because I'm not driving a Mini Metro.

MUSIC:
"Don't You Want Me"

by The Human League

The truth is that the Mini Metro

never really stood a chance.

British Leyland had fallen into

the trap of fighting the last war,

not the current one.

Their adverts harked

back to the past,

when they should have

been looking forward.

And crucially, they never really

understood the importance

of an up-to-date brand.

It was in the 1980s that

we really began to define ourselves

by what we bought...

and what we drove.

This was the decade of Levis,

the Walkman, Nike and Armani.

The decade when ad men

sold us designer sunglasses

and a motor to match.

In Germany, one car-marker

more than any other,

realised that for people

making money in the 1980s,

and there were lots of them,

the priority was to look good.

And to look good, you needed

the right badge on your motor.

Now, you wanted your car

to have sex appeal

but you also wanted it

to be reliable.

It is, after all,

quite hard to look good

when you're standing

by the side of the road

waiting for the German

equivalent of the AA.

This is the Munich headquarters

of the Bavarian Motor Works - BMW.

It's their equivalent

of Volkswagen's Autostadt.

They call it "Die Welt" - the world.

An appropriate hub for

a company with global ambitions.

This is where young Bavarian

families come to worship

at the altar of the automobile.

And that's the point.

This is where BMW suck you in.

This is where they get you.

A gigantic tribute to

the allure of the brand.

All the German manufacturers,

they've built these cathedrals,

these temples to themselves.

It's somewhere between

a department store and a museum.

And a cathedral.

You go there to visit...

and to desire,

or you can go there to purchase.

It's again, it's another...

It's again, more emphasis

on seriousness.

I mean, buying a car in Germany

is not just a grubby transaction

which involves transferring money

from one account to another.

It's engaging in

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