ABSTRACT
When war broke out in 1914, most cars in Australia were British-made. The war brought the effective cessation of car imports from Britain and a clear field for American producers. By war's end Britain's pre-war dominance of the Australian market for motor cars had ended. The war had paupered Britain and much of its industry. The slump of 1921 and the strikes that followed left British car manufacturers with few resources, and a local market, 85 per cent of which had been taken by United States producers. From the British point of view, it was a matter of starting all over again. As W.E. Rootes, the founder of one of Britain's most important car manufacturers, put it, 'we had to regain our own markets at home, and then make some money before we [could regain our export markets]'.1
