British Cars and Brexit

Britain’s car manufacturing industry churned out more cars in 2015 than in any year since 2005, delivering some 1,595,697 units, with almost four in five of those heading overseas and more than half ending up in EU countries.

We build more than 50 different models are produced in the UK from the sensible Vauxhall Astra in Ellesmere Port to the luxurious Bentley Continental in Crewe, via Jaguar’s frantic F-Type [pictured below], and we’re very good at it.

However, big question marks have descended over the nation’s car manufacturing industry since Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

Although the cars are assembled in the UK, the parts are shipped in from around the world. As it stands, the single unit cost of building a car in the UK is believed to have remained largely unchanged, but production costs could bloat when Brexit is executed, with many anticipating plant closures – and job losses – if production in the UK becomes too costly.

Shutting down UK production would be a mammoth call from any car maker but we’ve picked out five of the most important cars built in Britain and what Brexit could mean for them.

Jaguar XF and Land Rover Discovery Sport

Every car in the Jaguar and Land Rover ranges are built in Solihull and Halewood. From the Evoque to the XE, F-Type and F-Pace to the Discovery Sport, they all roll out of these Merseyside and West Midland facilities.

So it’s perhaps unsurprising that Jaguar Land Rover has been the perfect picture of cool, post-Brexit. One of the honchos high up in JLR has insisted that no jobs will be shed at the group, adding that any EU-imposed tariffs would be “cutting off European noses to spite their faces”. Keep calm, indeed.

Bentley Bentayga

It’s a similar story for Bentley, which has upgraded its Crewe headquarters in recent years to the tune of £840 million to facilitate the development of its first ever SUV – the Bentayga – which launched earlier this year. Even with Bentley’s super rich reputation, we can’t envisage them squandering this scale of investment.

Mini Hatch

Few car brands signify Britishness than Mini, despite its German ownership as part of the BMW Group. More than 200,000 cars were produced at Mini’s Oxford plant in 2015, most of them being the cool and affordable Mini Hatch [pictured].

There hasn’t been any comment from Mini as such, however BMW – which employs 8,000 Brits and counts the UK as its fourth biggest market – did say in the lead-up to the referendum that Britain leaving the EU “won’t make life any easier” and threatened that Brexit “could impact on future investment plans”.

Nissan Qashqai

With half a million new cars rolling off its production line every year, Nissan’s car manufacturing plant in Sunderland is Britain’s largest, and “one of the most efficient and productive in the Nissan/Renault global family”, according to the Unite union.

It employs almost 7,000 people, and produces some of Nissan’s most important models such as the all-electric Leaf, the Juke, and this: the mega-selling Qashqai.

Nissan has been one of the more vocal car makers over Brexit saying that future investments in its UK operations would depend on a “number of factors, including the UK’s trade and tariff negotiations with the European Union”.

Production of the current second generation Qashqai should remain unaffected by the Brexit vote, but it seems unlikely that trading arrangements will be signed off by the time the Sunderland plant stakes its claim to buil d the next gen model in 2018.

With so much uncertainty, the Renault-Nissan Alliance could shift production to a less unpredictable environment like one of its nine plants in France. As the Qashqai accounts for 60 per cent of Sunderland’s output, that would be a hammer blow for the north-east.

Honda Civic

Honda’s Swindon plant currently produces the Jazz, CR-V and this: the Civic, although we’ve pictured the 306bhp Type-R model here because horsepower reasons.

With new Jazz and CR-V models launching in 2015, we’d imagine that Swindon would retain production for some years yet, however with a new Civic expected over the next 12-18 months, there’d be reason to think that production of the hatchback on UK soil would be uncertain.

Thankfully, Honda has already expressed its ongoing UK commitment so there’s a good chance that Civic production could continue in the UK.