Jason Moore08/03/2017 00:00
TW
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"Building in Britain is not essential to BMW’s Mini brand as most customers do not know where the compact cars are built," said Peter Schwarzenbauer, the Mini boss. Now, this is rather an interesting statement when you consider that British politicians are forever pointing to Mini as a British success story. I got the impression that David Cameron, the former British prime minister, lived in the Mini factory. What is starting to come to light is what some people elected to forget during the Brexit debate - that many leading British-based companies are as about as British as a German sausage or a French loaf of bread.

The British car industry, which is often named by the government as one of the driving forces of the British economy, is principally foreign-owned and of course a considerable amount of its output is for export. Obviously the major European and Japanese car manufacturers which have factories in Britain are concerned about possible additional taxes post-Brexit. Their plan "B" is to simply move production to somewhere else. Britain may try and paint a happy picture of a post-Brexit boom but the sad truth is that a sizeable part of Britain's manufacturing base is foreign owned and of course foreign companies can go anyway.

As the boss of iconic brand Mini has said most people probably do not know that the Mini is made in Britain. It certainly sounds like The German Job rather than the Italian Job.