(Text/Observer Network Zhang Guangkai Li Kelong)
"Oxford will always be MINI's home."
When Brits hear BMW's words, they may recall the afternoon when their first love said, "You'll always be a good person."
The BMW Group has decided to transfer the MINI brand electric production line from the Oxford Cowley plant to Zhangjiagang, China, and will invest an additional 10 billion yuan to establish a power battery plant in Shenyang.
Former British Prime Ministers Theresa May and Johnson see electric vehicles as an excellent opportunity to revive the British car industry. As one of the UK's most iconic brands, MINI is clearly expected to be high. But the hope that MINI left for the British was as short as the terms of several prime ministers.
Stephanie Vorster, president of the MINI brand, explained this very bluntly: "The Oxford factory is not ready for electric cars".
BMW's "backstabbing" made the British fall into an ice cave. Oxford City Council President Susan Brown said the council shared Oxford residents' unease about the relocation plan and the future of the Oxford plant.
The Guardian commented that BMW's departure only confirmed the decline of the British auto industry.
Note that the point here is not "decline", but "again".
The decline of the British car industry has long been a cliché. Even the birth of the Mini a few decades ago can be seen as a manifestation of decline.
Where did the Industrial Revolution come to this?
In fact, BMW's abandonment of Britain into China, China's new energy vehicles as a mirror, just reflect the biggest mistake of the British. In an era where productivity is king, you laugh at others for being cheap, and others are asking for your life.
From the lotus to the Mini, it is the last glory of the British Empire
"On one side of me sat a huge Russian bear, on the other side a huge North American bison, and in the middle sat a poor little English donkey."
In 1945, at the Yalta Conference, which laid the world pattern after World War II, although Churchill was ranked as the "Big Three" alongside Roosevelt and Stalin, he was already soberly aware that Britain could no longer be compared with the United States and the Soviet Union.
However, when later generations quote Churchill's famous quote, they often deliberately hide the real point of the second half of his sentence: "But only the English know the way home." ”
Britain in 1945, which has accumulated prestige for hundreds of years, can still put a foot on the brakes on the two major war machines of the United States and the Soviet Union. Industrially, Britain is also the least war-damaged place in Europe, and has not completely lost its former glory.
We can even say that after World War II, the British automobile industry ushered in its highest reputation.
In 2013, Musk bought a 1976 Lotus Esprit sports car for $1 million, which was the car of Bond in the movie "007".
Musk said the car shocked him when he was a child. In the Cybertruck launched by Tesla later, we can also clearly see the shadow of Esprit.
Lotus Esprit and Tesla Cybertruck in comparison
Lotus was the jewel of the post-war British car industry, revolutionizing motorsport by bringing aerodynamics on fighter jets to F1. Lotus, Aston Martin, Bentley and other performance sports car brands make the British car not only industrial, but also an art.
However, when the beast sees all your home, the little donkey will really come to a poor day.
In 1956, the Second Middle East War (Suez Crisis) broke out. The Egyptian people, fed up with imperialist privileges, did not hesitate to fight a war to nationalize the Suez Canal. The British, who suppressed tens of thousands of rebel troops in East Africa with 6 machine guns, were forced to withdraw their troops in less than 48 hours after sending troops to Egypt. The resulting economic consequences were a complete declaration that British hegemony was gone.
One of the most important consequences was Iran's nationalization of British-controlled oil industry.
Oil was in short supply, the economy was in recession, the British were living a tight life, and the production of small-displacement cars became a social trend at that time. The birth of the Mini is just another sign of Britain's decline.
According to the idea of the father of Mini, this small car should be like an English bulldog, short and concise, and at the same time simple in structure. In 1959, the first Mini was born at the Oxford factory.
The British royal family took the lead and catered to frugality. Queen Elizabeth test-drove in public, making the Mini a household name – only the image was no longer high-end, but a "housewife's shopping cart".
Fortunately, the cultural accumulation of the old empire is still there. Mary Quant, a famous British designer, borrowed the design concept of Mini to design a mini skirt that is popular with young girls, and also indirectly brought goods for Mini.
Mary Quant stood on the street in a mini group in 1961
Advertisement for Mini
Mini, which flaunts individuality and represents fashion, opens up the British women's market and goes international. In 1969, Alec Issigonis was promoted to director of automotive design and knighthood, and the Mini's development seemed to be smooth.
Unfortunately, this is the last solace of the British car industry, which was rich for its ancestors. Mini had an incredibly successful start, and then they made a series of fatal mistakes.
In the civilian era, production capacity was king, and the British were left behind
If you look at the history of the automobile industry in the past hundred years, it is not difficult to find that what determines the life and death of an automobile company is often not how advanced the technology you have, but whether you have crushed the production capacity of your opponents.
As the birthplace of the first industrial revolution and an important participant in the second industrial revolution, the start of the British automobile industry is actually slightly behind its European neighbors. It is said that the first car produced in Britain at the end of the 19th century used a German-made engine and a French-designed body.
But this does not hinder the rapid development of the British car industry. As a highly complex industrial product, the automobile tests the industrial support level and worker skills of the entire country, and as the world's oldest industrial country, the UK still has an advantage in production capacity.
According to some estimates, in 1936, Britain's annual automobile production capacity was about 385,000 units, ranking second in the world, surpassing Germany's 300,000 units, France's 175,000 units, and Italy's 50,000 units.
The United States, which ranks first in the world, fully explains the saying that production capacity is king.
In 1913, the Ford Model T was introduced into the production line, known as "inventing the automobile again", which is probably the most important moment in automobile history. The production mode of the assembly line has greatly improved production efficiency, and the maximum production capacity of Ford Model T vehicles has reached 2 million units, with a total production of more than 15 million vehicles throughout the life cycle.
The increase in production has caused the price of cars that were originally exclusive to the aristocracy to fall from nearly $3,000 to $400. Since then, the United States has established itself as the number one automobile power.
However, for a long time, British automakers have scoffed at this, calling the Ford Model T a "peasant's car" and an assembly line that goes against the characteristics of the "British aristocracy" of the automobile industry.
Ford Model T
In the rapid development of the automobile industry, the handmade construction that British car manufacturers are proud of has become a shackle to the development of the British automobile industry. Until now, Rolls-Royce has insisted on drawing the gold wires of the body by hand, and even skilled technicians can complete the drawing of a vehicle in about 2 days. There is a slight deviation, the whole car is repainted and painted again. To achieve the same results, machine painting takes only a few minutes.
After World War II, the global economy ushered in a golden period of development, automobiles were further popularized, and demand doubled. British brands that put too much emphasis on aristocratic attributes, but did not introduce production lines, still remained handmade, unable to eat the new market.
Even the mass-market Mini, from its birth to the 90s of the 20th century, has been using a purely manual production mode, which is not only costly, but also inefficient.
On the contrary, the defeated countries Germany and Japan introduced American automotive technology under the leadership of the government, secondary innovation, from the domestic market to the global market.
In order to maintain high profits, British manufacturers have bucked the times, not hesitating to raise prices and abandon full-load production. For example, in 1961, the British car factory had a production capacity of 3 million vehicles, but only 1 million vehicles were actually produced.
The steps of the old British aristocracy are increasingly faltering.
Bad parents, ruined the hope of British cars turning over
After the end of World War II, Churchill's wartime cabinet was dissolved and elections were re-elected. With the immense prestige he had built up during the war, Churchill thought his re-election was a foregone conclusion, but he lost the election to the Labour Party.
Quoting the ancient Greek writer Plutarch, Churchill vented his anger: "Ingratitude to their great men is the mark of a great nation." ”
In fact, Churchill's view of the people at the bottom as ignorant can only show how detached he is from reality. Labour's surprise victory reflected Britain's increasingly torn labour relations. Although Britain won World War II, the economic situation of British workers did not allow them to feel the joy of victory.
In the decades that followed, from Churchill to Thatcher, industrial relations remained Britain's most intractable issue, with top elites blaming workers but not helping a declining economy.
When it comes to the decline of the British car industry, there is also a common voice to accuse the British unions of being too powerful, as if the responsibility for the high cost of British cars, insisting on building and refusing to lay off employees lies with the unions.
The real problem, however, is not the workers.
If you compare it with Germany, the accusation that Britain has high labor costs is obviously untenable. Germany, also known for its high labor costs and strong trade unions, swept the world with its automobile industry after World War II.
According to the Association of British Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), if the average hourly wage of the automotive industry in various countries is calculated annually, in 2015, the average annual salary in Germany was about 55,600 pounds, France was 61,800 pounds, and the United Kingdom was only 39,800 pounds.
The technical abilities of British auto industry workers have never really declined. Today, 19 of the world's 20 most powerful auto parts suppliers have factories in the UK. In Formula 1, more than half of the team's development is always based in the UK.
When people talk about the decline of the British car industry, they are more about the decline of the whole car brand, and Churchill's increasingly detached economic management ability from the times may bear greater responsibility for this.
On Quora, a British automotive engineer with four decades of experience pointed out that the union is always the boy who is whipped, and all the mistakes made by the top are scapegoated by the workers.
In the engineer's view, the top management of British car companies has never innovated, not eliminated, and the biggest responsible person is not the union, but the senior managers: "In Britain, the high-ranking people are the products of the so-called 'public school', they are completely out of touch with production, and they are a group of idiots who do not understand mathematics and engineering." ”
The British government's performance on the car industry policy is chaotic.
In 1952, the United Kingdom implemented the installment payment credit policy, which was intended to lower the consumption threshold and stimulate market demand. However, the British parties disagreed on the instalment standard, and in the twenty-one years from 1952 to 1973, the instalment bill was amended 18 times, resulting in frequent fluctuations in market demand, and car manufacturers could not accurately assess market demand.
As a result, car manufacturers dare not invest in large-scale production increases, which also makes British brands unable to expand overseas. When American, German, Japanese and French car companies seize the global market, British brands are "lying flat" and maintaining the "one acre and three points of land" in the local market.
Seeing that its own car companies are lagging behind and may even lose their home market, the British government has picked up trade protectionism and raised tariffs. British brands that lack external competition are slacking off, creating a vicious circle.
Along with the stagnation of production capacity, there is also the innovation ability of the management of British car companies. Taking Mini as an example, in the 35 years from its birth in 1959 to 1994, this model has only undergone 4 minor facelifts, which has long been far behind the times and once reached the end of the product's life.
Alec Issigonis and Mini
In 1994, the Mini was forced to sell to BMW, which desperately needed a new car to revive the Mini. However, the two sides disagreed on the design direction of the next car, and Mini executives insisted on following the spirit of Sir Alec Issigonis and building another "economy car", while BMW believed that the Mini should build a "sport car" in the new century.
As it turned out, BMW was right, and the Mini's affordable car solution was not accepted by the market. British car design emphasizes continuity and ignores objective circumstances. If the Alec Issigonis affordable car design concept is followed, the Mini is likely to become a thing of the past.
Unlike the British, the Germans completely revamped the Mini while continuing the brand's identity, even changing the name to a capital "MINI". BMW did not move the Mini's factory out of the UK, but invested 360 million euros to rebuild the production line, introduce modern production and abandon manual manufacturing. Redesign of logos and marketing plans. After BMW took over, the MINI finally started making money.
It was not his hometown of Oxford that saved the Mini, but Munich, Germany.
The outdated management thinking has also made other established car companies in the UK miss the best opportunity to save themselves.
In 1968, in order to unite the national car companies to fight foreign enemies, the British government took the lead in promoting MG, Rover, Jaguar, Triumph, Mini, Land Rover and other companies to form the British Leyland Automobile Alliance.
The merger and reorganization of automobile companies has been a successful road in the United States, Germany and other countries. In 1998, Daimler-Benz of Germany and Chrysler Motor Company of the United States announced the merger to establish DaimlerChrysler Automobile Company, with a market value of nearly 100 billion. However, these successes have a price, weak brands are eliminated, hidden, and merged into new brands that adapt to the development of the times, and many "emotional brands" have disappeared into history. Just like Chrysler after the merger with Mercedes-Benz, because it did not meet the positioning of Mercedes-Benz's luxury brand, it eventually went bankrupt.
However, the British refused to be eliminated.
The huge automobile group has serious internal consumption, and various brands believe that they are the bosses of the market segment and refuse to give up the old product lines. At the same time, there are many bloated organizational structures and factions, and production and research and development are inefficient.
The company never lacked money until its collapse, and the British government allocated more than a billion pounds, plus more than 400 million pounds from bank loans, and Leyland did not close factories or lay off employees in the early days.
With the rise of the Conservative Thatcher, the Leyland Company, which had been reaching out for money, challenged the bottom line of Thatcher's liberal economy. A pile of rotten debts made Thatcher completely impatient and began to sell his brand. Leyland cars, which suffered serious losses, eventually went to the fate of selling themselves, and Land Rover, MG, and Mini were successively "picked up" by foreign capital.
At this point, British car brands that have been developing for a hundred years have remarried one after another. Interestingly, many British brands that were originally on the verge of bankruptcy were reborn after being acquired, and the story of the British aristocracy may only be told well by non-British brands.
Taking the UK as a guide, Chinese car companies should think more about their own road choices.
Throughout the century-old history of British automobiles, blindly pursuing high-end and pursuing high profits and high premiums may allow a few car companies such as Rolls-Royce to continue to enjoy global fame, but for a country's industry, it is an out-and-out disaster. In the era of fuel vehicles, the technological progress that really brings dominance to car companies is often not the top performance, but the explosion of production capacity.
And in the new energy era, why not? From Tesla to BYD, the center of gravity of power in the global auto industry is quietly shifting. Like the Ford Model T a hundred years ago, when some mock them for being cheap, they are opening up a new world in which mockers may have nowhere to go.
In fact, cheapness itself is not a mistake, and if technological progress does not benefit most people, what is the point of technology? Under the premise of ensuring the welfare of workers, it is the noblest character of human beings to constantly make expensive technologies parity.