Das Auto: The Germans, Their Cars and Us Page #7

---

it's still possible in your country

to make beautiful cars

and sell them for a profit.

And the Crewe factory is an example

of how to fire up

your workers for a car.

I often go to Crewe,

where we make a beautiful car,

and the people there

have a real passion for cars.

They are very productive

and they make great cars,

with great quality leather,

really nicely designed.

And that's a good lesson

for Great Britain

in how to save

British industrial jobs.

You could hardly want

a more dispiriting symbol

of how things have changed,

than a German chief executive

patting Britain's car workers

on the head.

We've all come a long way

since the days of Ivan Hirst.

ELECTRONIC MUSIC

What Crewe and Cowley

and the other surviving

British car plants prove

is that there was never anything

inherently wrong with our workers.

We always had the skills.

What we didn't have, though, was the

right management, the right unions,

the right branding,

or the right instincts.

And in the end, we paid the price.

Of course, there is a bright side.

We do still make one and a half

million cars a year,

most of them for export.

And thanks not least to the Germans,

thousands of people

do still have jobs

in Britain's remaining

car factories.

But there's no escaping the fact

that we are making cars

for our old rivals -

the profits lining the pockets

of Germany's economic titans.

What an irony.

Once our car industry was one

of the Germans' chief competitors,

now, it's one of

their biggest assets,

an essential prop of

Germany's new economic empire.

But, you know,

I rather admire them for it.

They were down on the knees

and they worked their way back.

For more than 50 years,

they got things right and we didn't.

And now, from their car showrooms

to their national finances,

the Germans are

the envy of the world.

And that is why, like so many

of the cars on Britain's roads,

Europe's 21st century may well

end up being made in Germany.

Still, at least one driver's

back in a British-made car.

We're changing vehicles.

MUSIC:
"James Bond Theme"

by Monty Newman and John Barry

And if you can't quite run to a

vintage Aston Martin, don't worry,

there's always the Golf.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes