Why were a majority (almost all) of British Automobiles brands sold to foreign companies?

Answer 1

Like the rest of nationalised companies in the UK. Mrs Thatchers GB FOR SALE campaign. Sad. isnt it. She sold this country off cheap....

Answer 2

Sorry to upset the anti-Thatcher brigade, but the reason that Britain doesn't have a car industry anymore is mainly down to 2 things.
1: The unions. During the 70's, it was considered acceptable to turn up for your night shift at British Leyland with a sleeping bag, strikes were common & the 'workforce' cared not a jot for the quality of the end product, which brings us to..
2: The cars were CR*P! Austin Allegros & Morris Marinas may have recently aquired a perverse 'classic' status, but back then, you could buy a Toyota Corolla & be fairly certain it would actually start in the morning. Or a Datsun, or a VW Golf.
Sadly we only have ourselves to blame.

Answer 3

When the previous owners put the companies (or the brand names in some cases) up for sale, a foreign company was usually the highest bidder. Simple economics.

It isn't a new phenomenon - General Motors acquired Vauxhall in 1925.

However, Britain has also historically welcomed foreign manufacturers who wished to set up plants here - such as Ford (as long ago as 1911) and more recently Nissan (1986), Honda (engine plant in 1989, car plant in 1992) and Toyota (1992).

Answer 4

I could go on for an hour explaining it but I won't bore you and will sum it up since the same will happen with our own country.

UK has their currency, the pound, not the EURO like the rest of Europe. When we buy a Jaguar here in the U.S., it's much harder for them to make a profit because the Pound, is worth more than the dollar when you convert money.

And situations like that is why most manufacturing jobs have left the UK, and as they are in the U.S. Pretty soon, for american domestic manufacturer's to post a profit, the cars will need to be assembled in China. And the reason the Japanese are profitting so highly is because their government manipulates their currency (yes, sort of illegal) to make sure they are profitting highly.

Oil is traded is bought/sold/traded in dollars, if that were to ever change to lets say a Euro or Pound, we would be in deep doo-doo. But the American government has an agreement with the middle-east and to paraphrase, it goes something like this.

US to Oil Shieks: "we will buy all your oil in dollars, but you must promise to continue to use those dollars to buy things".

Hmmm sound good right? Well, if the dollar is weaker than the Euro/Pound, why would they want to buy a 1000sq.ft. pad in London for $1.1Mil, when they can buy 3000Sq.Ft. house in Disney World area for $400K. Case in point, they get more for the money here.

So that leads us to another road... where we are being priced out our own country because others are buying is up.

Thats it in a nutshell :)

Answer 5

Cheer up. Red China is buying most of the available oil. Think of the purchases as doing reader a favor and enjoy what you've
got left of North Sea oil with fewer petrol sucking machines running amuck in the UK.

Answer 6

Because the foreign owners of our own once owned plants wont take any crap that the british management put up with, they were scared of the unions.

Answer 7

Thatcherism

Answer 8

Becaue there the ones with money.

Answer 9

because they were the only ones who wanted them