When a car factory closes, everyone feels it!

[Vimeous]

I'm with Saracen. Cars are only critical in a car-centric society. Rail and public transport are far more efficient means for hauling ass.

Also, as car production shrinks, the car maintenance industry should find itself in a renaissance. So, people can retrain from being part fitters to mechanics.

Radio was supposed to kill newspapers, video was supposed to kill radios and the VHS was supposed to kill the cinema. At the end of the day, people just overreact on the downside and act like things are going normally on the upside.

In other words, when you have shrinking economies, everyone is talking like it's a sign of the apocalypse, and when you have equivalent growth, it's just normal and "steady". House prices, which are supposed to have crashed, are actually around 2003 levels, when we all knew they were overpriced. A prediction of a 3% shrink in the economy is merely a downward adjustment after annual growth of at least 2.5% for at least a decade.

You can't holler for stability today when upward instability brought you so much in the past, this was to be expected.

We are a car-centric society and with the current recession there's no way our public infrastructure will improve by the order of magnitude required to change that. Mind you the governments suicidal taxation on personal mobility may change that, or we may all work from home. I say suicidal because even an over-abundance of public transport resources and mad taxation is likely to be off-set by the desire to go where we want to go, when we want to by a method of our own choosing.
Anything that forces us otherwise will undoubtably cause a backlash - I just don't know how big.

I don't agree there will be a renaissance in car maintenance however. Longer warranties and more durable cars means peeps will keep cars longer without needing repair. Combined with significantly more complex diagnosis and repair this will, if-anything, depress auto repairs. It will also promote shorter terms of ownership.
The only saviour to that may be taxation. As the tax rises on emissions more and more people will be holding on to preMarch 2001 vehicles which will need maintenance.
Of course if cars over a certain age are suddenly outlawed as has happened elsewhere, then that bins that immediately.

As for the significance of the auto-industry?
Huge IMHO.
While we increasingly become service-industry focussed (a mistake in my view) there are still massive industries that support huge networks of inter-dependant businesses. The auto-industry remains one of those cornerstones of UK employment. It's very visible.
The shear size and widespread impact of reductions in volume affects the psychology of the country just like it would (and has) when similar interconnected networks of employment suddenly contract.

As for the long-term impact.
It may perversely help the auto-industry in the UK if we can recover faster than other nations. Despite Japanese auto-giants setting up shop here it was (still is) inevitable they will leave the UK due to labour costs. If that can be delayed then hopefully GM's decision to build the European version of the Volt at Elsemere Port will have time to influence their competitors to stay longer.

In the end the auto-industry can only help itself. It must out-perform Governments punititive tax measures and if it succeeds personal transport will continue to dominate over public transport.

[schmunk]

You can't holler for stability today when upward instability brought you so much in the past, this was to be expected.

That, sir, is a lovely little phrasing of the situation.



(generally, not just relating to car manufacturers)