"MUSIC: "Spooky" by Dusty Springfield" "# In the cool of the evening" "# When everything is getting kind of groovy... #" "The Mini - supreme symbol of British style, design and ingenuity." "In 2012, more than 300,000 were sold around the world." "# I've got some plans for tonight" "# And then I stop... #" "CAR SKIDS" "And the great thing about it is that more than 50 years after the first Mini rolled off the assembly lines, they're still made here in Oxford at the Cowley plant - the place the Mini was born." "It's a global phenomenon, and one still proudly made in Britain." "But you know the irony?" "You know who actually owns this great British icon, built in a plant 100 years old?" "The Germans." "MUSIC: "Fade To Grey" by Visage" "We are living in an age of German empire." "Amid extraordinary turmoil in the capitals of Europe," "Germany commands more raw power than at any time since the Second World War." "This is an empire of German engineering, German expertise, and German exports - built not on the Panzer, but on the Polo and the Passat." "A new order, symbolised by the speed, power and beauty of the automobile." "Buying a car in Germany is not just a grubby transaction, it's engaging in an immensely serious, culturally-rich, and occasionally rather beautiful and moving event." "This isn't just a story about cars, it's about economic power and political clout, because in today's Europe, it's Germany that calls the shots." "And as we confront the new challenges of the 21st century - an age of cut-throat competition on a dizzyingly global scale - what can we learn form our failures and their successes?" "What did we get wrong and what did the Germans get so right?" "# We fade to grey... #" "DING!" "MUSIC: "Mr Blue Sky" by ELO" "# Sun is shining in the sky... #" "When I was growing up in the '70s and '80s, my dad had a Rover - the quintessential British car." "So did his father." "# It's a beautiful new day... #" "But although I think of myself as pretty patriotic," "I don't drive a British car today..." "I drive a German one." "# Mr Blue Sky is living here today... #" "And I'm not alone." "A few months ago, a poll asked people what brand of car they'd most like to drive." "Now, number one was Volkswagen - they're German." "Number two was Audi - they're German." "Number three was Mercedes - they're German." "Are you beginning to spot the trend?" "MUSIC: "Cars" by Gary Numan" "I haven't driven another...type of car - it's been Volkswagens, Audis or Mercedes," "The fit and finish of the car - in a German car - for the comparable car is a lot better." "Well, I went off to buy a new Rover and they told me I had to wait about six months for delivery - this was 30 years ago." "And this was in the garage opposite." "Well, not this one, but the new BMW was in the garage opposite, so I bought the BM and I've bought them ever since." "Germany exports more cars to Britain than to any other country in the world." "So why don't we buy British?" "Well, how could we?" "What is a British car?" "Bentley, for instance, is owned by the Germans." "Rolls-Royce?" "German." "Jaguar?" "Indian." "Land Rover?" "Indian." "MG Rover belongs to the Chinese." "And even James Bond's favourite car - the Aston Martin - is owned by the Kuwaitis and Italians." "Only a handful of tiny, specialist car-makers remain." "Does this matter, though?" "Isn't a car just a means of getting from A to B?" "In many ways, the motor car has usurped the role of the work of art in our modern age." "In that it represents collective yearnings, it represents, you know, desire." "It represents an idea of progress, of faith in technology, and there's no-one who's got that more correct and more powerful and made it more articulate than the German motor industry." "ELECTRONIC MUSIC" "The first car I ever bought didn't come from an iconic British factory like Cowley or Longbridge, but from the German heartland of Lower Saxony." "Welcome to Wolfsburg, the home of Volkswagen - a factory the size of Gibraltar." "VW has come an awfully long way since it was set up in 1937 under the Nazis, to build "people's cars" - Volkswagen for Germany's masses." "Here in Wolfsburg, they've even set up this "Autostadt" - a theme park dedicated to the car, visited by more than two million people every year." "It's a temple not just to the automobile but to the technological glamour of German modernity and to the success of Germany's economic model." "With its gleaming, futuristic towers, this "Car City" is German capitalism incarnate." "And as VW's steely commander-in-chief puts it, they want to leave their stamp on every country on earth." "TRANSLATION:" "We have a clear strategy called "Strategy 2018"." "In the year 2018, we want to become the world's number one." "The number one in volume, with more than ten million cars, the number one in customer satisfaction, the number one in employee satisfaction even the number one in making money." "Under the generalship of Herr Winterkorn," "VW are inching ever closer to their goal." "Last year they made a record profit - a cool £9.7 billion." "But the irony is that just as the Mini has now become a German story - so Volkswagen's post-war success began as a British story and its hero was the most unlikely person imaginable." "His name was Ivan Hirst and he was a major in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers." "And in August 1945, a few weeks after the fall of the Third Reich," "Major Hirst arrived here in Wolfsburg with orders to secure this factory on behalf of the victorious Allies." "MODERN CLASSICAL MUSIC" "Much of Germany's industrial base - once the most impressive infrastructure in Europe - had been destroyed." "In the ruins, millions of starving survivors scavenged for food." "And with the country divided into four occupied zones," "Germany's revival - let alone its rise to mastery in Europe - seemed a very remote prospect indeed." "When Ivan Hirst arrived in Wolfsburg, things were worse than he had ever imagined." "In the factory itself, the conditions were very grim." "In the press shops, for instance, the roof was off." "And we had to sling tarpaulins over each press... on wooden poles, to keep the snow off." "And yet it was at this moment - at Germany's lowest ebb - that Ivan Hirst laid the foundations for the triumph of the German automobile." "Many of Hirst's superiors thought there was no point saving the factory." ""You think you're opening a car plant here?"" "said the British car magnate Sir William Rootes." ""Then you're a bloody fool."" "But Ivan Hirst could see the potential here." "And he thought that the Germans should be given a chance to reshape their future as a prosperous, peaceful nation." "His priority was to restart production of a car originally designed in the 1930s by the Nazis." "This car, he thought, would be the key to getting Germany back on its feet." "And today, we call it the Beetle." "MUSIC: "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" by Bing Crosby with The Andrews Sisters" "There was nothing very radical or exciting about the little Beetle - it was round and it was cute." "But by March 1946, the factory, at the limits of its capacity, was producing 1,000 Beetles a month for the occupying forces and for Germany's public services." "VW were on the road to recovery." "# Accentuate the positive... #" "My chief, Colonel Charles Radclyffe, said, "I think we've got a world-beater here," ""it's another Model T"." "And he spotted that as early as 1948." "And yet the early Beetles were far from perfect." "We always think of German cars as ultra reliable." "But the interesting thing about the original Beetle... is that it wasn't." "As one of VW's top executives put it, it had "More faults than a dog has fleas" but they fixed it, and they went on fixing it." "And it was that obsessive attention to detail, that determination to put the customer first, that lifted Germany's car-makers well ahead of their British rivals." "RAGTIME MUSIC" "People asked us, did we not think we were damaging British interests by developing Volkswagen, but our job was to help get the German economy back onto its feet - for political reasons, of course - and that was what we were doing." "By the time Hirst left VW, the company already had global ambitions." "And its first conquest would be - of all places" " America." "Have you ever wondered how the man who drives a snowplough drives to the snowplough?" "This one drives a Volkswagen." "So you can stop wondering." "Thanks to a canny marketing campaign, thousands of American drivers - tired of their massive, macho cars - began to fall in love with the Beetle." "They were persuaded that small was beautiful." "And by 1968, when this cheeky film, The Love Bug, hit the screens, the Americans had taken the Beetle to their hearts." "Jim, that's water!" "MUSIC: "Wenn" by Peter Kraus" "Meanwhile, Germany itself, or at least the western half, now cut off from the Communist east, was booming." "Unemployment was down, production was up." "Ordinary Germans were now richer and more comfortable than ever." "They called it the "Wirtschaftswunder" - the Economic Miracle." "The traumas of the past were forgotten." "Technicolor consumerism would sew up the wounds of wartime." "The priority was to look forward, to buy new homes, new appliances and, of course, new cars." "This was a crucial period in Germany's modern history." "By the end of the 1950s, they hadn't just staged an extraordinary recovery, they had done the groundwork for what is today one of the most productive and powerful economies on the planet." "But you might well be wondering, where was Britain in all this?" "After all, we had won the war." "Surely we had a head start, didn't we?" "NEWSREEL: 'On Wednesday, His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester 'opened the first post-war motor show at Earls Court, 'with congratulations to the industry on its magnificent achievement 'of £100 million worth of cars exported since the war ended.'" "'50s Britain had never had it so good." "We were now making and selling more cars than ever." "At the start of the decade, we were behind only the Americans in the league table of world car-exporters." "But things weren't quite as rosy as they seemed in the English country garden." "HORN BEEPS" "We always think of the 1970s as the decade when things started to go wrong for British industry." "But I don't think that's right." "By then it was already too late - the rot had set in earlier." "I think it was in the affluent, comfortable '50s that the problems really began." "We were, I think, a bit TOO affluent and comfortable, a bit TOO complacent - utterly oblivious to the rise of our competitors." "Here she is, a wee Scots lassie." "Yes, it's Molly Weir." "So, you're a Morris Minor fan too, Molly?" "Och aye, our Minor takes all the family and our luggage in comfort." "It's very economical too, but, you see, it's a Morris." "We might have had a big car industry but size isn't everything." "The men running Britain's car companies were getting old." "And by the jet-age 1950s, their autocratic, amateur spirit looked increasingly old-fashioned." "The English idea of gentlemanly behaviour..." "It involves a certain amount of self-deprecation, a certain bit of casualness, we sort of distrust seriousness and professionalism in some ways but not in our motor cars, and the Germans were able to provide us with magnificent tokens of professionalism and seriousness," "which our native manufacturers could not." "They also worked rather better." "We did still make good cars like the Morris Minor that I'm driving now, but we didn't market them as successfully as the Germans, we didn't push them aggressively enough overseas." "You know how many Morris Minors we sold?" "Over a million." "But do you know how many Volkswagen Beetles the Germans sold?" "20 million." "The real problem was that we were blind to the expanding market right on our doorstep " "Europe." "More than two thirds of our car exports" "STILL went to the British Commonwealth." "One of the biggest mistakes we ever made as a country was to overestimate the importance of our Empire." "In those crucial two decades after the Second World War, our politicians and our businessmen thought that we didn't really need to worry about Europe because Britain had wider horizons." "Our car-makers, they thought, would always be able to rely on the captive markets of our old colonies." "To put it bluntly, we'd always be able to flog them our dregs." "The Standard Vanguard was designed for export." "Its naval name was meant to recall the great days of Britain's Empire." "There was only one problem - the suspension." "When the Vanguard's proud new owners took it out for a spin, the car began to fall apart." "Good evening." "The Suez Canal is a name familiar to everyone." "I've come to talk to you tonight about what's happened there in the last few day and what it means to us." "And Britain's Empire, too, was on the brink of collapse." "In 1956, Britain made a desperate bid to recapture the Suez Canal - the vital artery for Middle Eastern oil." "But when the operation backfired, petrol prices went through the roof." "Sound the trumpets." "Beat the drums." "Wave the flags." "British flags... for the fabulous twins - the Austin 7 and the Morris Mini Minor." "MUSIC: "Say A Little Prayer" by Burt Bacharach" "As a result, designers for the British Motor Corporation came up with a new car that was smaller and needed less petrol." "They called it the Mini." "We got to make a car - a very small car - for the housewife, which is economical to run and has lots of shopping space inside and therefore it doesn't need a big boot." "Everything stows away so neatly and easily." "Four happy people in a big, big, little car." "MUSIC: "Everybody Be Happy" by The Kinks" "The Mini is probably the most celebrated car in British history." "But while the Beetle was the cornerstone of Germany's 21st-century empire, the Mini was a result of Britain's imperial decline." "The Mini had been designed for ordinary working-class families." "But by the late '60s, it was being driven by models, actors and pop singers." "Even its marketing was less Coronation Street, more Carnaby Street." "The Mini - cheap on petrol." "British made!" "Small on the outside." "Big on the inside." "Don't just wave the flag, drive it." "The Mini was stylish, but it was also cheap." "A basic model cost just £350." "But as a rival firm discovered, the British Motor Corporation were losing £30 for every Mini they sold." "Ford are very good at costing what a car cost to make, and discovered that they must be making it for a loss, they couldn't see how it was possible." "So, they actually sent their report to the chairman and said, "We think you need to be charging more for this."" "And...it was ignored and I think this pervades a lot of the story of the post-war British car industry." "Arrogance pervaded it." "There was a feeling, you know..." "Britain had won the war, it still had..." "It was coming out of its Empire.." "It very often knew best, or thought it did." "And they felt, "Well, we don't need to be told by Ford" ""what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong."" "But, in fact, they were doing it very wrong." "MUSIC: "Son Of My Father" by Chicory Tip" "# Moulded, I was folded I was preform dried" "# Son of my father" "# Commanded, I was branded in a plastic vac" "# Surrounded and confounded by statistic facts... #" "Far from being a symbol of '60s cool, the Mini was really a symbol of something rotten at the heart of the '60s economy, a brilliantly-designed metaphor for a managerial industry crippled by a complacent leadership," "dreadful salesmanship and a fatal culture of self-satisfaction." "SONG: "Theme from Are You Being Served?"" "Today, we're used to the idea that when it comes to manufacturing - from your kitchen fridge to your bathroom shower - nobody does it better than the Germans." "But, at the time, Germany's economic revival brought back bad memories." "Guten Morgen, mein "Herr-ing"." "There you are, then." "Another load of Kraut chitfers." "That's 100 hats with shaving brushes on the side." "We'll never sell them, you know, Captain Peacock." "It is not for us to reason why, Mr Humphries." "Young Mr Grace, in his wisdom, has seen fit to mount a sales campaign to push German goods." "Well, it's difficult enough to sell English goods, without a lot of rubbish from the damned Boche." "SOFT-ROCK MUSIC" "But the battle for drivers' hearts and minds was about to move onto the home front." "As the Germans prepared to launch their invasion of Britain, they had a new weapon up their sleeve " "The Volkswagen Golf." "It was a hatchback, which was still something of a novelty at the time, so it was far more practical - a Mini did not have a hatchback at all." "It was a very clever move by Volkswagen as well because it had Volkswagen engineering but it had Italian style." "The bodywork was designed by a company called Italdesign - a very well-known designer called Giugiaro." "It was just a stunning sort of angular and very efficient and practical car." "The Golf - in every test, one of the best." "SOFT-ROCK MUSIC" "British drivers didn't get their hands on the Golf until 1974." "But in its way, it was an enormously symbolic moment." "Remember, we'd only joined the Common Market, what became the European Union, a year earlier." "But we were becoming a much more self-consciously European country." "We went on Spanish holidays." "We drank French wine, we ate Italian food." "And now, more and more of us were driving German cars." "The ugly whine of foreign engines rent the peaceful autumn air of the English countryside." "All ready, one traitor in eight has traded with the enemy." "Are you one?" "Have you bought foreign?" "What about you, sir, could I ask why you're driving a foreign car?" "Well, this particular model is because I find it very reliable... good performance and..." "I've had it for three years now and I had no trouble whatsoever with it." "You've had some bad experiences with British cars?" "Yeah, Ford - the bottom dropped out with rust after about nine months or something." "Have you tried British cars?" "Yes, I had a Jag before that, and Fords before that and it was the usual trip down to the garage every fortnight." "It really did hit home when my brother came home with an Audi..." "That was quite a shocking thing cos he had owned British cars forever and then he bought an Audi but it was an astoundingly different car." "Leading the blitzkrieg, was Volkswagen's hatchback." "VW sold 800 Golfs in the first year and 20,000 in the second." "To British motorists, its reliability seemed simply extraordinary." "Even today, if you don't own a Golf yourself, there's bound to be one in a drive near you." "He's off in that new car again." "Hmm." "Wouldn't catch me in a Volkswagen." "What's wrong with a Golf?" "Well, it's not exactly big, is it?" "Actually, it's bigger than it looks." "He'll never get that lot in there." "Anyway, I don't like rear-engine cars." "The engine's in the front - it's water-cooled." "The back seats fold down too." "What was it that the Golf did that British cars didn't?" "It worked, for a start." "It was a very, very practical car, so I think people could see it as a car that they could use, we could get working with straight away." "Lift up the back, put our shopping in, fold the seat down." "For most British buyers that was great, but it also helped that it was a Volkswagen, so that means that it's related to the Beetle and that was the beginning of our love affair with cars which weren't British which did work." "MUSIC: "Mama Weer All Crazee Now" by Slade 1974, the year the Golf was launched, was a great year to be German." "On the football field, they won the World Cup at home in Munich." "We didn't even qualify." "# I said, "Mama, but we're all crazy now..." #" "And while Slade's lurid costumes were getting rather old hat, the German synth-pop band Kraftwerk were reaching for the future, with their breakthrough album Autobahn." "MUSIC: "Autobahn" by Kraftwerk" "Nothing better captured modern Germany's infatuation with the machine - their love affair with "das Auto"." "Britain's motorway system was only 16 years old." "But the autobahns - mostly free from speed limits - dated back to the '30s." "Here was the supreme symbol of Germany's commitment to power, speed, and modernity itself." "The autobahn was just such a symbol of the German character, in that it looks utterly rational and they're magnificently engineered, wonderful roads..." "But they look rational but they're also vaguely mysterious and romantic," "It's not just transport, it's..." "It's, you know, it's philosophy and religion as well." "For many people in Britain - especially those who remembered the war - the Germans' new-found success was deeply disturbing." "You know how me dad feels about the Germans - won't even accept a lift in our Audrey's Volkswagen." "So what was the secret of the Germans' success?" "How did they do it?" "It wasn't just about the design and branding." "There was something deeper - something that goes to the very heart of the story about why British manufacturing declined, whereas our German competitors went from strength to strength and are still going strong today." "Ever since the '50s, German firms have been renowned for their excellent labour relations and tremendous productivity." "Even today, they make extraordinary allowances for their workers, as the top union negotiator Stephan Wolf explains - very quickly." "TRANSLATION:" "We have come to a clear agreement with the company that employees can switch off their smartphones after working hours, so they can enjoy their spare time." "This initially was a contentious issue between the company and the work councils, but we managed to push our opinion through, as the company profits from employees who are able to relax and recover after work." "So if you work for Volkswagen, you clock off, and after 6:15, there's no danger of getting a call, an e-mail, or even a text from the office, until just before your shift the next day." "Somehow, I can't imagine many British businesses agreeing to that one." "In all major German companies, the workers representative is provided with the staff car and an executive office." "And despite the management trappings of his office, he's very much a union man." "German law has long required that every firm has its own works council." "And that, instead of fighting the management, they work together, in a spirit of mutual trust." "They even hold board meetings with VW's management, discussing the future of the company." "Again, hard to imagine many British firms signing up to that." "MUSIC: "Rock On" by T-Rex." "Now this is the key to the difference between the Germans and us." "And it's all a question of class." "Post-war Britain was a society drenched in class consciousness all the way from the factory floor to the wood-panelled boardroom and the men who led our car unions saw themselves as class warriors, standing up to the bosses on behalf of the workers." "But their German counterparts were very different, they saw themselves as partners, working with the management, and responsible, not just to their members, but to the national good." "We wants deeds not words, you see, otherwise we're coming out." "I will not yield to threats by politically-motivated scum." "Ah!" "I don't think my members would appreciate that, nomenclature!" "Well, that's what they are, isn't it?" "Marxist scum." "Oh, yeah." "Reds under the handbags - I'll flush 'em out!" "Right, we're all coming out then." "You're all sacked." "Right, you bastard!" "Inside Britain's troubled car factories, there wasn't much talk of the national good." "In 1968, our remaining car-makers had been merged into one gigantic company..." "British Leyland." "With 48 factories and 190,000 workers, this would be our secret weapon to fend off the foreign invaders." "Instead of having the scattering of Rover agents, Triumph agents," "BMC agents, Leyland agents and so on, we'll be able to provide a tight, compact organisation, which will enable you to get parts, service and sales anywhere throughout the world." "MUSIC: "I Saw The Light" by Todd Rundgren" "Right from the start, BL ran into trouble." "Almost every week saw more strikes, led by a new generation of union militants." "Immediately the decision for action is endorsed by the membership." "All of those in favour, please show." "ALL:" "Yeah!" "We'd have preferred not to have gone on strike." "We had no alternative." "NEWSREADER:" "In the Midlands, the motor industry is, of course, the big employer." "But recently, well, it's been going through a pretty bleak time." "Last month, for the first time ever, foreign car-makers grabbed half the British market." "Of course, there were strikes in German car plants too." "But you could count them on the fingers on one hand and still hitch a lift home in a new Golf." "It's easy to blame Leyland's woes on a handful of union extremists." "But Britain's car workers didn't just want more money... they often wanted more professional respect." "The problem that we've had in the country for so many years is that being an engineer or being a mechanic is not a respected profession, it's seen as somebody who bashes a hammer against a piece of metal " "it's not credited with any skill at all and not regarded." "Whereas, in other countries, and Germany in particular, you will find they're all professors and doctors and they are so highly qualified." "While Britain's car workers, sick of their primitive conditions, were fighting the class war," "Germany's factories were being radically modernised." "David Buckle worked on the steel press line in the Cowley plant in the mid-'70s." "On behalf of his union, he went on a fact-finding mission to VW's Wolfsburg plant in 1977." "And what he saw there blew his mind." "Unlike here, where we worked on individual cars, they had a huge round table and there was a car door on each point of the crucifix... that was one set of car doors." "While one operator was working on one door, robots were working on the other." "We hadn't had robots in this factory, we knew nothing about robots." "Right." "Today, Cowley's Mini plant has more than its fair share of robots." "Of course, we could have installed robots earlier if we'd wanted." "The tragedy, though, was that British Leyland shrank from radical modernisation - not least because they knew that the unions would never stand for it." "Meanwhile, the Germans were racing ahead." "Mercedes, for example, were already working on cruise control, airbags and anti-lock braking." "You could even buy a bulletproof Mercedes 600." "British Leyland's cars weren't even rustproof." "'This was our answer... 'the Austin Allegro." "'Unfortunately, the ads were the best thing about them.'" "# Allegro has vroom for five" "# Allegro has vroom for five... #" "By now, British Leyland had become the embodiment of what the Germans were calling "the British disease"." "Every year, cars like this one, the infamous Austin Allegro, with it's square steering wheel and Spanish Rose interior, were making thumping losses." "Every week there were more strikes." "And what made the Allegros failure so resonant was that across much of British industry it was the same story - complacent management, chaotic production, militant workers, and yet more strikes." "Indeed, if there's one statistic that speaks volumes of the difference between Britain and Germany in the '70s, it's this one." "In 1978, for every day that German manufactures lost to industrial action, we lost ten!" "DISCO MUSIC" "STEPHEN BAYLEY:" "We lack the commitment, we lack the discipline, and we lack the interest in being industrially competitive." "My honest feelings is it's not in the English soul to mass-produce motor cars." "Whereas the mass-produced motor car is, I think, the most complete expression of the German psyche." "And while cars like the Mercedes 600 were testament to Germany's new ambitions," "British cars were notorious for slow delivery and shoddy workmanship." "Who can forget this wedge-shaped beauty?" "The Austin Princess." "MUSIC: "Take The Long Way Home" by Supertramp" "That wedge shape that it has was very much in vogue in the '70s." "It was THE car to have." "God, you're beautiful." "Oh, what finish, what style." "# Cos you're the joke of the neighbourhood... #" "What undermined it was," "I think there a strike almost straight away and then there were a couple of... significant quality issues that came about because it hadn't been sufficiently well engineered." "One was - and it sounds rather dramatic, and in a way it was - the rear suspension... would collapse." "New car, George?" "Certainly is." "Much room inside?" "Mustn't grumble, you know - average." "Goes well, does it?" "Well...average." "'When British Leyland launched the Princess in 1975, 'the slogan ran - "not the car for Mr Average."" "'That was a shame." "Because the key to the Golf's appeal 'was that Mr Average rather liked it.'" "SONG: "The Floral Dance"" "Desperate to save the company, the government brought in a new man to run British Leyland - a ruthless South African called Michael Edwardes." "INTERVIEWER:" "Did you hesitate for some time about taking the job?" "One of the decisions I had to make was whether the job was doable at all." "And I came to the conclusion that somebody could do it." "And that maybe I could do it." "So, could Michael Edwardes really turn British Leyland around?" "These are newly-declassified documents from the first months of Margaret Thatcher's new administration in 1979 and they give you a real sense of the despondency at the top about British Leyland's prospects." "Now, BL were asking for an extra 130 million from the taxpayer in 1980/81 just to keep going, and this is a memo from Thatcher's Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, in which he says, "Every year things get worse, instead of better." ""The productivity is atrocious." ""Their market share has slumped from 33% in 1974" ""to just 16% in the last two months." ""It begins to look as if the illness is terminal."" "Now, if you think that's bad, this one is from her Chief Policy Advisor, Sir John Hoskins." "And he says British Leyland's prospects are," ""nearly zero", but they have to give British Leyland the money, he says, because the public demands support for Edwardes." "It's an intriguing sign of the sheer importance of the car industry in the public mind in the 1980s that even Margaret Thatcher, the arch privatiser, shrank from cutting it or closing it down, because the car industry was seen an indication of our national virility." "If the car industry went, we would be impotent on the industrial stage." "1980s POP MUSIC" "But British Leyland had one card left." "A car they'd been working on for almost a decade - modern, competitive, young, sexy... and heavily subsidised by the taxpayer." "The Mini Metro." "Launched in 1980 " ""A British car to beat the world."" "Some of you may have noticed that for the past few years" "Britain has been invaded by the Italians, the Germans, the Japanese and the French." "Now we have the means to fight back." "SONG: "Rule Britannia"" "The new Austin Metro." "A British car to beat the world." "MUSIC: "The Look Of Love" by ABC" "The Metro cost £3,000 and BL sold more than a million." "It became almost fashionable." "Even Prince Charles's fiancee, Lady Diana Spencer, drove one." "But although the Metro was one of the best-selling cars of the 1980s, it was never going to be enough to fend off the German competition." "My parents had a Mini Metro, a lot of people did." "It was, on the surface, it looks like quite a successful car, but was it?" "The sales figures predicted for it were wildly optimistic." "They really did think they were going to sell 300,000-400,000 a year and it never came anywhere near that." "I think they sold, in the first year, 174,000." "The Metro was up against the Volkswagen Polo and it was up against the Ford Fiesta, so the Metro was, in a way, an afterthought - it was something that came very late." "Now, Alan, you're going to have to trade down your Rover 800 for a smaller car." "Go on." "I picked up these brochures for the new Metro." "It's..." "It's a lovely car." "Lynn..." "And if you do..." "Lynn, I'm not driving a Mini Metro." "But you do have to make substantial savings." "Lynn, I'm not driving a Mini Metro." "But if you do, you can keep Pear Tree Productions with a skeleton staff of two." "There's no point finishing the sentence, because I'm not driving a Mini Metro." "MUSIC: "Don't You Want Me" by The Human League" "The truth is that the Mini Metro never really stood a chance." "British Leyland had fallen into the trap of fighting the last war, not the current one." "Their adverts harked back to the past, when they should have been looking forward." "And crucially, they never really understood the importance of an up-to-date brand." "It was in the 1980s that we really began to define ourselves by what we bought... and what we drove." "This was the decade of Levis, the Walkman, Nike and Armani." "The decade when ad men sold us designer sunglasses and a motor to match." "In Germany, one car-marker more than any other, realised that for people making money in the 1980s, and there were lots of them, the priority was to look good." "And to look good, you needed the right badge on your motor." "Now, you wanted your car to have sex appeal but you also wanted it to be reliable." "It is, after all, quite hard to look good when you're standing by the side of the road waiting for the German equivalent of the AA." "This is the Munich headquarters of the Bavarian Motor Works" " BMW." "It's their equivalent of Volkswagen's Autostadt." "They call it "Die Welt" - the world." "An appropriate hub for a company with global ambitions." "This is where young Bavarian families come to worship at the altar of the automobile." "And that's the point." "This is where BMW suck you in." "This is where they get you." "A gigantic tribute to the allure of the brand." "All the German manufacturers, they've built these cathedrals, these temples to themselves." "It's somewhere between a department store and a museum." "And a cathedral." "You go there to visit... and to desire, or you can go there to purchase." "It's again, it's another..." "It's again, more emphasis on seriousness." "I mean, buying a car in Germany is not just a grubby transaction which involves transferring money from one account to another." "It's engaging in an immensely serious, culturally rich, and occasionally rather beautiful and moving event." "MUSIC: "I Feel Love" by Donna Summer" "The car that really made BMW's name was their iconic 3 Series." "It was slick, sporty and stylish." "Along with the German-made Porsche, it was THE car of the '80s." "But the key to its appeal wasn't the engineering - it was the idea." "When you bought a BMW, you were buying into that archetypal '80s concept - a lifestyle." "What does having a BMW mean to you?" "Comfort." "Status." "Yes, I suppose so, yes." "Status?" "Sounds awful, doesn't it?" "So, it's status?" "I suppose it does - status." "Yes, success." "One of BMW's thrusting young salesman put it this way," "The BMW, he said, was not just a capitalist's car, it was an entrepreneur's one - a risk-taking, ambitious individual's way of saying that they were doing rather well." "A Saab, he said, was a socialist dentist's car." "Volvos were for dabblers in antiques." "A Mercedes belonged to the company secretary." "An Audi suggested that you didn't quite have enough money for a Mercedes." "And a Rover was a cry for help." "In Margaret Thatcher's Britain, the BMW badge became a status symbol - as one young salesman discovered." "Now, this is where a dashing young salesman called James Ruppert enters the story." "Because you were a BMW salesman on Park Lane, I think?" "That's right." "It really was when the yuppie was born and you would have people coming from, from the city and they would, sort of, make a pilgrimage up to Park Lane in their lunch hour or after hours and drive a car and want to buy it." "I delivered more cars to the centre of the city than any other place." "I can remember that so..." "Almost every day I'd be driving a car." "Early morning I'd pick it up, drop it off and another banker very happy indeed - with his braces." "'But as the Welshman behind BMW's marketing freely admits, 'a brand is all in the mind.'" "In the premium segment, we're clearly selling an emotional product." "You know, it comes with a strong brand, but you know, what is a brand?" "A brand is effectively a promise, you know, it's a promise of innovation." "It's a promise of outstanding design." "it's a promise of fantastic materials." "It's a promise of technology on board." "It's a promise of safety." "Of course, it is still JUST a car." "But that's not what BMW want you to think." "They're selling an idea, an illusion that the right car will make you happy." "But there is genuinely good engineering beneath the hype." "And behind the wheel of a BMW, even grumpy old men can get carried away." "Honestly, I haven't driven anything... this, sort of, perfect since..." "I don't know, since the original Golf GTI, in fact." "But the real story of the 1980s wasn't just the triumph of individual German car brands." "It was the rebranding of Germany itself." "Thanks largely to the success of its cars, the land of sausages, sauerkraut and lederhosen was now becoming distinctly "cool"." "Even the German language, so often dismissed as "guttural and ugly", was now a potent weapon." "Every year, the Schmidts, the Mullers and the Reinharts drive to their holiday villas." "The Schmidts' car is slow and rather noisy." "The Vorsprung Technik campaign is one of the cleverest advertising campaigns...ever." "The Mullers drive a big, thirsty car." "It allowed us to mock the Germans." "The Germans always have tried to be first on the beach and the Germans always..." "You know, they're domineering, bossy people." "The Reinharts drive an Audi 100." "But at the same time, they quietly acknowledged that Germany was also a source of excellence." "And the moral of the story is... if you want to get on the beach before the Germans, you'd better buy an Audi 100." ""Vorsprung durch Technik", as they say in Germany." "British Leyland has announced a loss of over £150 million for the first half of the year - more than the loss for the whole of last year." "By now, British Leyland were dead." "The company had been split up and sold off, and in 1994, the last heir to British tradition of mass car production, the last company to make the Metro, the Rover Group, passed into the hands of..." "Well, of all people, the Germans, as part of BMW's expanding empire." "But you know the really humiliating thing - that not even the Germans could turn Rover around." "It carried on losing money and after just six years... they got rid of it." "Of course, the fact that BMW had bought Rover AT ALL was enormously revealing." "For, by the 1990s, our factories were becoming offshore outposts of Germany's automotive empire." "Now, not even Britain's greatest hero could resist the allure of a German motor." "Q:" "Right, now pay attention, 007." "First, your new car." "BMW - agile, five forward gears, all-points radar." "Self-destruct system and naturally, all the usual refinements." "And as the supreme symbol of their continental ambitions, the Germans were all too keen to embrace Europe's new single currency - the Euro." "With trade barriers down and their neighbours borrowing and spending as though there'd be no tomorrow," "Germany's manufacturers were laughing all the way to the bank." "Of course, there'd be a sting in the tail for the Spanish, the Greeks, and all the rest - a whopping great bill." "But by then, the only people who could bail them out were the Germans!" "AMBIENT ELECTRONIC MUSIC" "The Euro has been good for the Germans." "They've never sold so many Audis to Athens, so many Mercedes to Madrid." "But as their ads suggest," "Germany's car-makers now have genuinely global ambitions." "MAN:" "Hot!" "Coool!" "Eight out of ten German cars are actually sold outside Germany." "Now, not just to their traditional customers in Europe and America - which incidentally have carried on growing - but to some of the most dynamic, developing countries in the world " "Brazil, Korea, India, Russia." "Last year, you know, they sold half a million cars just in China." "Now here's the interesting thing." "What are some of the most prestigious brands?" "They're British Brands." "Take BMW, when they got rid of Rover, they did something very, very clever - they kept hold of Mini and in 2001 they relaunched Mini to tremendous acclaim." "We took on Mini, which, in essence, was a small car, you know - great character." "Was over 40 years old and had a history in the..." "Effectively the growing up of many, many people, and not just in the UK, all around the world." "But more importantly, we turned it into a brand." "And now there are seven members of a family, but very, very clearly under the brand of Mini." "In just 12 years," "BMW have sold over two million Minis in more than 100 countries." "But the Germans didn't stop with Mini." "BMW own Rolls-Royce, too." "Even Bentley, perhaps the most prestigious of all British brands, answers to Volkswagen's steely commander-in-chief." "TRANSLATION:" "Bentley is a good example of how 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." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd"