How to feel good about UK automotive An enthusiast's guide

We've come a long way together, through the hard times and the good. STEVE CROPLEY celebrates the British automotive industry

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There's a pervading feeling, even among those who reckon they know the automotive scene, that the UK isn't much good at making cars. Not like the Germans or the French. Or even the Italians. We started the post-war years as the world's biggest car exporter, even beating the Americans, but have frittered the advantage away over the seven intervening decades.

Admittedly there have been hurdles. The competition has become much keener, especially since we did our best to help the German car industry rebuild itself post-WW2 and connect it to a bigger home market than our own. The French rapidly rebuilt as well, driven by its citizens' greater penchant for buying home-made products than our own.

Then the foreign imports started arriving in force. The Americans came in the 1950s and 1960s, then the Japanese in the 1960s and '70s.

We shot ourselves in the foot by making Austins, Morrises and Rovers (plus a few Wolseleys and Rileys) with impressive technical appeal but disastrous build quality and not much export clout. The Koreans (its industry inspired by an Englishman) arrived through the 1990s and 2000s, and now the Chinese are on our doorstep with offers of advanced electrified products that are arguably more enticing than those of any predecessor.

Still, we were assisted by the 1980s arrival of Japanese companies such as Toyota, Honda and Nissan as manufacturers - a result of our efforts to limit their imported models. They liked our stability, our lingua franca, our welcoming government and our thriving fleet market, so car manufacturing in the UK stayed healthy.

Influenced by enlightened foreign management and labour relations (Honda's arrival at Rover in 1979 was especially important), UK car-making's apparently unfixable union problems melted away. Nissan's Sunderland operation became, and remains, one of the company's global jewels; Toyota Derby and Honda Swindon thrived.