 Industrial policy and the British automotive industry under Margaret ThatcherTommaso Pardi Business History, 2017, vol. 59, issue 1, 75-100 Abstract: When one looks at the landscape of the European automobile industry before and after the economic crisis of the 1970s, the major difference lies in Great Britain. Everywhere else, the ‘national champions’ also went through periods of crisis but managed to maintain or restore control over their national markets with the support of their governments and main stakeholders. In Britain, not only did the nationalised British Leyland (BL) lose half of its market share and did not manage to recover, despite substantial injections of capital from the State, but the British government also subsidised the establishment of a new domestic competitor, the Japanese carmaker Nissan, followed in the 1990s by Honda and Toyota. This article exploits new archive material to advance a new explanation that connects these two ‘exceptional’ outcomes of the 1970s crisis on the British motor industry. It shows that the key to understanding this otherwise contradictory industrial policy lies in the shifting of political support from the ailing BL to its main suppliers. Date: 2017 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:bushst:v:59:y:2017:i:1:p:75-100 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2016.1223049 Access Statistics for this article Business History is currently edited by Professor John Wilson and Professor Steven Toms More articles in Business History from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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