Automotive industry - Post-WWII Europe (2024)

In Europe motor vehicles were recognized as an export item that could help restore war-shattered economies. Britain, for example, earmarked more than half of its automotive output for export and restricted domestic purchases for several years after the war. In addition, the horsepower tax was abandoned to enable British manufacturers to build profitably for the world market. The most popular British designs (excluding specialized luxury vehicles such as the Rolls-Royce) continued to be lightweight cars, including several models with an ingenious front-wheel drive. The trend to consolidation led in 1952 to the merger of Morris and Austin to form the British Motor Corporation, Ltd., a combine that accounted for about two-fifths of Britain’s motor vehicle production. Another British combine was formed around Leyland Motors, which had grown into the country’s largest manufacturer of commercial vehicles and became a power in the passenger-car field by acquiring Standard-Triumph and Sunbeam in the 1950s. Leyland and the British Motor Corporation united in 1968 as the British Leyland Motor Corporation (later British Leyland Ltd. and, after 1978, BL Ltd.); this move, sanctioned by the government, was intended to forestall possible American domination of the British automobile industry. Except for Rolls-Royce, whose automobile production was only a very small part of the company’s business, British automobile output was then largely controlled by four firms: British Leyland, Ford, Vauxhall, and Rootes, which came under Chrysler control in 1967 but was sold off to France’s Peugeot-Citroën in 1978. When British Leyland had financial difficulties in the early 1970s, it was taken over by the government.

In the 1980s the remaining parts of BL, which by then was focused on building Jaguar, Mini, and Rover cars and Land Rover sport utility vehicles and commercial trucks, became the Rover Group. Eventually Jaguar regained profitability, and the British government sold off the company through a public stock offering. The remaining Rover/Mini operations were acquired by British Aerospace Corporation. Rover then entered into a cooperative venture with Japan’s Honda in which cars of Honda design were built at Rover plants for sale in Britain and other European countries under the Rover and Honda brands. A small number also were exported to the United States under the Sterling name. Eventually Honda became dissatisfied with the venture, and British Aerospace sold the Rover/Mini operations to BMW of Germany in 1994. In 2000 BMW sold the Land Rover segment to Ford, which had acquired the stock of Jaguar in 1989, while its Rover cars segment was spun off to a British consortium and became MG Rover Group Ltd. BMW retained the profitable Mini operations. In the late 1990s Britain’s Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, then owned by Vickers PLC, became the subject of a bidding war in which Germany’s Volkswagen emerged as the owner of the company’s Bentley brand and all of its manufacturing facilities; BMW emerged as the owner of the Rolls-Royce brand with respect to cars, effective at the end of 2002. Three years later the ailing MG Rover Group was forced to sell off its assets, and in 2008 Ford sold Jaguar and Land Rover to the Tata Group of India. In addition, GM sold Vauxhall to the French PSA Group in 2017.

The post-World War II revival of the German automobile industry from almost total destruction was a spectacular feat, with most emphasis centring on the Volkswagen. At the end of the war the Volkswagen factory and the city of Wolfsburg were in ruins. Restored to production, in a little more than a decade the plant was producing one-half of West Germany’s motor vehicles and had established a strong position in the world market. Breaking away from what had become standard design, the Volkswagen used a four-cylinder air-cooled engine at the rear of the car. It also dispensed with the annual model change that had become customary with other automobile manufacturers. Although the company had been founded by the German government, in the 1960s the government divested itself of 60 percent of its interest by selling stock to the public, an unusual case of denationalization in an era when nationalization of industry was far more common. In the same decade, Volkswagen acquired Auto Union, which evolved into its Audi luxury car segment. In the late 1960s BMW rose from a builder of small, oddly styled Isetta cars and motorcycles into one noted for high-priced passenger vehicles and premium motorcycles. Opel became the base for the European operations of General Motors, and by the 1990s it supplied much of the small-car engineering expertise for GM operations around the world; however, Opel was sold to the PSA Group in 2017. Prior to its merger with Chrysler Corporation in 1998, Daimler-Benz had developed diversified interests ranging from trains to aerospace products. After Daimler and Chrysler split in 2007, Daimler-Benz was renamed Daimler AG.

Fiat (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino), a firm founded in 1899 but without a mass market until the 1950s, dominated Italian automotive production. The French industry was centred on Renault, Peugeot, Citroën, and Simca. Renault was nationalized at the end of World War II, and it became a public corporation in the 1990s. Citroën was acquired in 1976 by independently owned Peugeot to form PSA Peugeot-Citroën (later PSA Group). Simca became a Chrysler property in 1958 but was sold to Peugeot in the late 1970s. Although Sweden was a relatively small producer, Swedish builders Saab and Volvo became important factors in the world market during the 1960s and ’70s. Their car operations were acquired in the 1980s and ’90s by General Motors and Ford, respectively. However, both Saab and Volvo were sold in 2010, and the former went bankrupt the following year.

Japan

The most spectacular increases in automotive production after World War II occurred in Japan. From a negligible position in 1950, Japan in 30 years moved past West Germany, France, Great Britain, and the United States to become the world’s leading automotive producer. Steadily growing export sales of Japan’s small, fuel-efficient cars played a major role in this achievement. During the late 1970s and early ’80s, Japan’s principal automakers—Toyota, Nissan, Honda, and Tōyō Kōgyō (later Mazda)—enjoyed impressive export gains in North American and western European markets. These companies as well as Mitsubishi, Isuzu, Fuji, and Suzuki later opened manufacturing plants in major markets outside Japan to ease trade tensions and increase their competitiveness as the value of Japan’s currency soared. By the 1980s Japan’s carmakers were seen as the models for others to emulate, especially for their “just-in-time” method of delivering components to the assembly plants (see Consolidation, below) and the use of statistical process controls for enhancing vehicle quality, which ironically had been developed in the 1950s by an American but rejected at the time by American manufacturers.

In the 1990s the Japanese economy suffered a severe and prolonged recession, and the complicated interlocking relationships and cross-ownerships between Japanese automakers and their major component manufacturers and banks imposed severe financial hardship. At the end of the 20th century, many Japanese automakers and several major component manufacturers were either controlled by or had joint operations with non-Japanese firms. Renault, for example, held a controlling interest in Nissan, and in 2016 Mitsubishi joined the Renault-Nissan alliance.

South Korea

In a span of 20 years beginning in the 1970s, South Korea’s automotive industry rose from a small government-controlled parochial industry to a significant place in the world market. Three major companies—Hyundai Motor Company, Kia Motors Corporation, and Daewoo Motor Corporation—accounted for about 90 percent of the South Korean market, while the remainder was split among two minor producers and imports. Hyundai, the country’s dominant automaker, produced cars, light trucks, and commercial trucks and buses; it was part of the larger Hyundai Corporation, which had interests ranging from construction to shipbuilding. Kia, South Korea’s second largest automaker, was acquired by Hyundai in 1999. Daewoo, owned by the Daewoo Group conglomerate, entered the automobile field on a large scale in the 1980s and had won nearly a fifth of the market before entering into financial receivership and reorganization in 2000. Two years later it was sold to General Motors.