Did British Sports Cars Ever Really Rule the Road?

The contemporary wisdom of classic car history would have it that once upon a time, British sports cars ruled the highway. Then a combination of tragic events, (eg strikes, American law changes) in league with sneaky foreign importers undermined our once great sports car industry and it collapsed like a pack of cards.

Do they truly deserve the accolade's they receive?

There may be no sign of it now but the British market was once dominated by British manufactures. So does the current situation, bear witness to the decline of the British car industry, or is it merely a true reflection of our importance among the world's manufacturers?

Pre-War

First thing you're all going to do now is point me towards all those wonderful pre-war cars, waffle on about Brooklands and all that - yea yea very good....... Aston Martin Ulsters, Blower Bentleys etc etc etc.

Well okay I'm willing to admit a little admiration for cars that have survived over half a century but really at this point in time it was the pioneering days and all the industrialised nations had a thriving cottage industry of  low volume car makers. There is not that much at this point to show British cars as being inherently better (or even different) from the rest of Europe. Most Brit freaks are now going to point me towards the gloryies of Bentley, multiple Le-Mans wins and all that boys own stuff, king of sports car makers, I think not. This was endurance racing; lets look at who were the real powers on the technological edge that is Grand Prix racing, repeat the names, Alfa Romeo,  Lancia , Bugatti , Auto Union ,Mercedes. Just take a glance at Bentley - their entire heritage is based on winning at Le-Mans in the 1920s. Even the most laid back of companies would find seventy years a little too long to rest on one's laurels.

It was at this time that the government did what they usually do - TAX.... and came out with a perverse car purchase taxation law which had deep-seated effects on the British motor industry over 40 years later. when long stroke motors found themselves left gasping for breath by modern short stroke European and Japanese units.

Purchase Tax - a  method of taxation based upon some strange and ancient theoretical calculation of power based on the unit's dimensions. The calculation was heavily weighted against the BORE??? of an engine, giving rise to decades of undersquare long stroke motors.

Many British companies, even in the thirties were already on the road which would lead to their inevitable failure, despecifying cars to make themselves more profitable. When the MG TA was launched in the thirties, MG Fans even then were disappointed to see the MG Overhead Cam Engines had been replaced by a (cheaper) Push Rod Motor. From the thirties onwards, very little, if anything of an advanced nature would ever come out of the Abingdon home of the British sports car again.

Despite enthusiasts telling you of a golden age, this was an age of mergers and sell-outs, many manufactures being unable to produce cars at realistic enough prices to actually sell enough cars to stay in business. (Bentley being one of many.)

British firms did have one trump card over many Europeans at this juncture in time - Empire! this gave manufacturers access to captive markets. Untroubled by such things as foreign competition, British car makers could act in that friendly uncompetitive way which meant they didn't actually have to go to the trouble of developing new cars.

Something was about to put a stop to all that though.

Post War

After the war, the industrial production capacity of mainland Europe was in tatters. Much of Britain's pre-war capacity was still functional and the first thing manufactures did was to take up just where they had left off.  

6 years of war took us from the biplane to the jet fighter and the dawn of the Space-age; a further few years and British car makers brought us the.... Morris Minor. Yep that's it, the most technically advanced British car of it's era was the Moggy Minor - what was worse was that some manufactures, (Triumph?) didn't manage to catch up till the seventies. Take a look at the Minor carefully - it may have been not only the epitome of the British Industry in the 50s, but also supplies some of the nails that were later driven into it coffin in the 70's. The whole thing would metormorphosise into the Morris Marina and then into the Ital. Check out the not very advanced Push Rod Motor that found its way under the bonnet, descendants of which would attempt to power the last chance Metro decades later.

In the post-war years, British makers faced a new marketing challenge. With the captive home market now bankrupt and supplies strictly rationed to exporters, they were forced to turn their eyes toward the USA.

And it's here where the most overstated claims of glory lie.

We sold lots of Hairy Chested Sports cars to the Yanks. Oww that was hard wasn't it ???

The Yanks have only ever had a limited number of true sports cars. Cunningham,Corvette and then my ideas run out. The American car corporations had much bigger fish to fry than the niche markets that British sold into. The Brits came to two areas of the market: sports cars and luxury cars. All the firms that went there (bar Rolls) would eventually return, with tails between their legs and reputation damaged beyond repair. But for a while it was another captive market we could sell into - the only ones we seem to be able to sell to without miserable failure.

Legend would have it that we sold legions of sports cars to the Americans

MG TB, TC ,TD,TE,TF, A, B

Healey 100, 3000s

E-types

TR2 ,3, 4, 5, 6, 7

But in reality, the first reliable sportster to come along would kill the entire market and sell more cars alone than all the British sports cars put together. That car was the Datsun 240Z. A Japanese car with no historical background , and no pre-built marque loyalty, destroyed the entire British Sports car market virtually overnight.

And it's easy to see why. Just look at what we had been fobbing the Yanks off with for years - the TR6 still had a pre-war chassis despite desperate attempts to modernise with such new fangled gadgets as a re-styled body  and erm... erm a
re-styled body. The Big Healey was even more ancient, and MG continued its tradition of taking two steps forwards and one backwards, before standing still for the next 20 years.

For the perfect example of how we Brits would develop a sports car look no further than our beloved frog-eyed sprite. Donald Healeys design brief was simple - all the parts should be from other existing Austin saloon models! At one stage they even planned to use the same wings front and rear??? eeek stylish or what!? We did it then, we do it now, make do and mend, minimal development, no forwarding of the species, just re-hashing the same old rubbish.

For Jaguar though the 50's and 60's were its heyday, the E-type was arguably the master piece of the 60s, and possibly the pinnacle of  Jaguars prowess, fast (for the time) and  remarkably cheap,  but things went down hill from there on in, even the E-type becoming a fat bloated parody of itself. It may have started out well but jaguar played it to death - another example of the British car industry not knowing when something is well past is sell by date. ( see MGB, MG Midget, TR, Spitfire, Morgan, Aston Martin V8) 

Its famous predecessor the D-type sits in the British classic car hierarchy, esteemed for its racing prowess. Yep, Jaguar did win 5 Le-Mans in the 50s,  two C-type victories , and three D-type victories . But there have been over 50 races since the war and Jaguars achievements pale into insignificance when put against Porsche's 19 wins.

For all that the E-type and  D-type are highly respected they must still be judged against their peers and in post-war racing, Ferrari is now the name synomonous with sports cars.and Formula1, having spent the 50s battling with Maserati the 60's with Ford and the 70's with Porsche, they are the ever present of motor sports history.

EEC Common Market become No Market

In the home market, the writing was on the wall early in the sixties. Only the protectionist policies of the governments of the day kept foreigners at bay. Perhaps, in hindsight this was the problem, not having to compete with the more technologically adventurous Europeans left us in our own little time bubble, not having to compete with the then fledgling Euro superpowers to stay in business. Once we joined the EEC though, the full weight of the booming European car makers arrived on our doorstep and our backward car industry imploded on itself. There was no sneaky underhanded plan to dump cars on us, and kill off our industry, it's just that as prices began to equalise, people were given a wider choice and the Brits just couldn't compete.

Not sure about this ?????

Check out the specifications of  typical classic sports cars from the early sixties. Compare and contrast the TR4 with the Alfa Duetto Spider

Where all the money that these firms raked in during the 50s and 60s went to is anybody's guess. With 20 years unparalleled access to the world's biggest market and a completely captive home market, British car makers should have been uncatchable. How they managed to squander such a potentially strong position will remain forever a mystery.

When large car manufacturers assemble their machines (sports cars and otherwise) side by side, one would expect them, by economies of scale, to be able to be competitive - i.e. to come up with products that perform like those of their rivals at a lower price. Seemingly, the entire British car industry was completely lost on this concept.

Perhaps we got what we deserve, we British kicked up a great caterwauling fuss over the inevitable closure of the Abingdon fossil-works. We scream about the loss of Rolls Royce and Bentley, makes that 99.999% percent of us will never be able to own (even if we actually wanted one). We lament the sale of Jaguar and Aston Martin to Ford. We bemoan our loss of heritage. But we never make a squeak whilst the most historically significant British sports car maker is sold, firstly to the Americans, then to the Italians and now has found its way into the hands of the Koreans. The most prolifically successful British Racing and formula one squad , second only in the all time rankings to Ferrari, and criminally ignored by the British public. Perhaps Lotus was just too technically gifted to be thought of as a British firm????

	Jaguar - arrived from nowhere... (which just about shows how much development went into a pre-war car)
	...to earn fame and fortune....
	...before completely losing the plot.

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