article_snippet.sent: all those thousands of cars were examples of British manufacturing and design and engineering – and all those thousands of cars were about to be loaded on to ships and taken to other European countries, and to Africa, and Asia; and I reflected on one of the most stunning turnaround stories in the economic history of this country.
article_snippet.sent: Britain last year produced more than 1.5 million cars –
article_snippet.sent: and we are poised to overtake France and become the second biggest car manufacturing power in Europe.
article_snippet.sent: Across the West Midlands – and indeed across this country – there are now literally thousands of businesses, large and small, that are engaged in automotive innovation and supply; and there was a time when no one would have believed that was possible.
article_snippet.sent: It is incredible but true that Britain now has more specialised motor manufacturing marques than any country on earth – Lotus, McLaren, Bristol, Morgan, Caterham, TVR… the list goes on.
article_snippet.sent: The West Midlands is once again the epicentre of one of the world’s densest ecosystems of motor manufacturing and development.
article_snippet.sent: Those British-made vehicles are the sign of an economy that is back on Those British-made vehicles feet after the Labour-made disaster of 2008-9, in which motor manufacturing fell by half a million cars; an economy that has seen the creation, since 2010, of about two million jobs.