ABSTRACT
In the later 1970s the government made a number of efforts to revitalise the UK motor industry. Public funds were used to help BL and Chrysler (UK) make a comeback. Efforts were made to curb imports, both directly by extracting voluntary import quotas from the Japanese and through the use of technical restrictions to impede European imports, and indirectly by financing import substitutes and by holding down the price of petrol. For the most part the government ceased to use the industry as a tool to manage the economy.
These efforts had limited success. Other government policies, particularly the Social Contract, aggravated labour relations, the key element in a recovery by the industry. Labour relations were also harmed by the way in which the Ryder plan and the Lever plan sought to use threats of investment cutbacks as sticks to achieve their goals. Furthermore, the Lever plan for Chrylser's financial aid, by seeking greater integration of Chrysler (France) with Chrysler (UK), encouraged the other multinationals to move more car assembly operations overseas and to more fully integrate their UK operations with their operations around the globe: by 1979, in consequence, Ford was the leading car importer into Britain. In 1978 Chrysler (UK), with neither government intervention nor opposition, became part of the Peugeot group. By 1979, as a result of international integration in the world motor industry, it was hard to know how much of any car was British, German, Spanish, American or whatever. A further outcome of increased international integration and lower tariffs by 1979 was that the government's ability to determine how the UK motor industry performed had been considerably circumscribed. Still, the government continued to have a strong interest in the UK motor industry and remained totally committed to the car as the prime means of private transportation.
