ABSTRACT
Inward direct investment has a long history in the United Kingdom. A few early examples provide some flavour. In 1852, Samuel Colt established a revolver factory in London. Stopford and Turner suggest1 that this was perhaps the first foreign arrival in the novel form of manufacturing investment, and also credit Colt with the introduction of mass production systems (based on interchangeable parts) to replace the traditional craft systems of engineering. In 1896 Daimler, the German motor vehicle manufacturer, arrived and was followed, two years later, by the component producer Bosch. In 1908, Ford established a factory in Manchester to assemble Model T's from imported components. General Motors purchased Vauxhall Ltd in 1927 in response, it is suggested, to growing import duties and quota restrictions. Much of the early investment was undertaken by US companies.2 Other notable examples include National Cash Register (1895 - office equipment and cash registers), Remington Rand (1937 - office equipment), and Cincinnati Milling Machines (1933 - machine tools). It is thus interesting to note at the outset that considerable early investment took place in the motor vehicle and office equipment industries, that the Ford factory might today have been denounced as a 'screwdriver' plant, that restrictions on imports provided an incentive to investment over sixty years ago, and that component manufacturers have dogged the footsteps of their client companies for even longer. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
