ABSTRACT
Since its earliest days the role of the automobile in Britain's economy has been well documented. Yet the car industry remains a source of considerable controversy on topics as diverse as strategy, structure, exports, trade unions and entrepreneurship. Few hard and fast conclusions on any of the aforementioned topics have been arrived at and so the industry remains and will remain for a long time a fruitful field of research. General surveys of the industry (Wood, 1988; Adeney, 1988; Church, 1994) pay very little attention to the impact of World War II on the industry while more specifically oriented works (Thoms & Donnelly, 1985; Whiting, 1983; Hayton & Harvey, 1993) focus very specifically on the experience of firms in the Coventry and Oxford areas. Finally, although Corelli Barnett discusses the role of the industry during hostilities (Barnett, 1986) the approach is rather generalist and is primarily a study in political economy.
