Costas Pitas and Gilles Guillaume:
When Britain lost its last native car company 20 years ago, it was lamented across the political spectrum as a national catastrophe.
“The sheer stupidity and immorality of this betrayal is too scandalous to be ignored,” wrote a columnist in the conservative Times of London.
The left-leaning Guardian bemoaned: “No one can conceive of Renault, Fiat or indeed BMW fattening themselves up after years of emaciation, ready for sell-off to a foreign rival.”
Britain’s Rover was falling into the hands of BMW – 50 years after Germany had begun pulling itself out of the economic abyss left by the Second World War.
The blow to British pride was made all the more acute by the success of France, where Peugeot and Renault were speeding ahead. In 1994 French producers made more than three million cars, double Britain’s output.