FALLING SALES and rising prices are hitting the entire British car industry causing a crisis of epidemic proportions.
BLMC, forced to beg for a £100 million cash injection to stop the company fulling apart, have already axed 7,500 jobs this year.
Chrysler and Fords are both planning new redundancies. At Fords, 11 per cent of the 10,000 staff workeis will lose their jobs.
DESPERATE STRAITS
The car component side of the business is in desperate straits. At Wilmot Breeden, Birmingham one of the country's biggest car composent suppliets-the management have ended the night shift, and 500 wor kers are to be sacked.
Lucas, the other big car composent firm, is planning to give its wotkers an extended Xmas holiday. Three Lucas factorles will then go. on short-time in the New Year. And Goodytar have announced plans to My off 3,700 production workers for two days after Xmas.
For every worker engaged in the car factories there are at least four other workers in the ancillary and component industrica. No wonder pessimism is spreading like wild fire throughout the cconomy at the near collapse of BEMC and the crisis which is wracking Vauxhall, Fords and Chrysler.
FOR REAL The employers and the Government know that this is not some temporary recession. This time it is for real. Throughout America and Europe, car sales are running between 20 to 25 per coat down. The European car market faces a picture of black gloom and despair. The car bosses predict a market of not more than 1.5 million for 1975, and more cautious observers predict it will not get beyond the seven million THAT.
As the Sunday Times woefully commented: "At this level, the British industry and a large part of the Italian industry could shut down for a whole year and still leave the industry with over capacity.
IN STOCK European car makers have over 800,000 cars in stock. Britain's total production for 1974 is expected to be roughly double that figure.
are being eaten up by the locust of inflation. Production costs, however. are climbing upwards. Only onc year ago car prices averaged about El for one ce. That his now gone up to El.50 a ce, and it will soon reach The staggering figure of CZ.
three-day week carlier this year have masked the worst effects of the world-wide depression on the British car industry, so that it has not built up its stocks to the same extent as its overseas competitors.
and under-invested British car industry is worst equipped of all to face the recession. The IOp a gallon on the price of petrol is another severe blow to the car manuficturen.
the employers begun proparations for no centralised response to the attacks of the employers. They appeur to live in a cloud-cuckoo land of makebelieve that it's all a temporary nightmare and things will probably get beller.