Paul Simon, Phil Collins and Leona Lewis have sung about homelessness and the poor man behind St Martins in the Field church just off Trafalgar Square – from whom I buy a ‘Big Issue’ every week – lives the nightmare (though he has a cheerful smile every morning). On a corporate level, Ford is also finding out the big downside of homelessness.
Ford is Europe’s number three car maker in sales. In the opinion of many experts – and me – it has the best range among Europe’s mass makers. But while Peugeot (France), Renault (France) and Opel (Germany) are all enjoying huge government bail-outs – in contradiction to the spirit and rules of the European Union – and while Volkswagen (Germany) and Fiat (Italy) could no doubt demand similarly skewed state assistance (although they haven’t), Ford fights on alone, stateless, homeless. Ford is the only major unallied neutral European car maker. It is has no European country to call home.
It has only itself to blame. In 1999, despite its preponderance of British senior managers, and its historic dominance of the UK car market, it relocated its European headquarters from Brentwood, Essex to Cologne in Germany in a cynical attempt to boost its German credentials and enhance its appeal in Europe’s richest car market. But the Germans weren’t fooled. They have quite enough national champions without this Anglo-American interloper. The Brits weren’t fooled either. That was the end of the Ford/UK government ‘special relationship’.
Ford remains a committed player to the UK. Unlike all other mass makers (except Nissan), it has a major engineering and R&D centre in Britain (in Dunton, Essex). It makes engines and vans. It could, once again, be the Nation’s Car Maker. The clever thing to do would be to abandon Cologne – a failed experiment – and relocate the European HQ back to Britain. And maybe bring some car production – such an emotive subject – back here too.
There is only one problem. As Ford’s charismatic government affairs boss Wolfgang Schneider (a committed Anglophile) notes: ‘The UK is the only country that plays by the rules’.
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