A company allot of you probably have never heard of; SAIC Motor UK based in Longbridge are making over 200 job cuts at their engineering centre. A little background to the company, they design and develop MG & Roewe models for their parent company SAIC. I used to work at the sister company MG Motor UK in the production team and sadly we lost our jobs 3 years ago.

So this news of the engineering centre is no big surprise to myself but a tragic story, SAIC used them to teach the Chinese engineers how to engineer & build cars to MG Rover engineering standards, and now they know enough they will shut the place. I have many friends still there who are devastated and in shock. The UK car industry is not in good shape at the moment which is very sad.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industr...ze-uk-base

No surprise at all, I worked in Automotive R&E for 35 years and we could see the writing on the wall decades ago, all these countries with cheap labour and big local grants to transfer manufacturing/research there, my company gradually closed almost every UK plant for them to move to Europe somewhere, just closed the head office building this year after 50 years, next WILL be the R&E Centre in a few years, it was always over our heads, not a nice way to work.

Feel for your mates my friend. Regards

David

Lovely i6 has now gone, but not me......

Please let me know if anything in my post offends you, as I may wish to offend you again......

Oh yes you are 100% correct, they use our knowledge and once they have got it they close the UK places down, I feel for yourself too having to live in fear like that. I think there is a major problem with government policy with companies, in Germany I believe the government will fine companies for making redundancies unless justified, i.e going into administration. That is a policy that should be adopted here to prevent foreign companies doing such things like this.

Correct, every time our Company had a round of “cost savings” it was the muggins in the UK that got screwed where as our colleagues in Germany were as safe as houses.

I was lucky I managed to get out before the big cuts, I was “last man standing” in my department at the end and to show you what management were like they asked me if the department could manage without me IDIOTS!

Naturally I said it’d be no issue at all, so they let me go..........a couple of times in the following year I had a few calls to pop back and help.......yeah right  Regards

David

Lovely i6 has now gone, but not me......

Please let me know if anything in my post offends you, as I may wish to offend you again......

steven211 wrote:

A company allot of you probably have never heard of; SAIC Motor UK based in Longbridge are making over 200 job cuts at their engineering centre. A little background to the company, they design and develop MG & Roewe models for their parent company SAIC. I used to work at the sister company MG Motor UK in the production team and sadly we lost our jobs 3 years ago.

So this news of the engineering centre is no big surprise to myself but a tragic story, SAIC used them to teach the Chinese engineers how to engineer & build cars to MG Rover engineering standards, and now they know enough they will shut the place. I have many friends still there who are devastated and in shock. The UK car industry is not in good shape at the moment which is very sad.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industr...ze-uk-base

They are called ROEWE because Chinese pronounce ROVER.............R O E W E...................

I used to work for Fujitsu and in a meeting about charging VAT for various customer types a Japanese guy said "is that Regal?" we paused an looked confused then another said "no that must be irregal" 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
5 x FL2 4 manual + 1 auto
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Mowog wrote:

steven211 wrote:

A company allot of you probably have never heard of; SAIC Motor UK based in Longbridge are making over 200 job cuts at their engineering centre. A little background to the company, they design and develop MG & Roewe models for their parent company SAIC. I used to work at the sister company MG Motor UK in the production team and sadly we lost our jobs 3 years ago.

So this news of the engineering centre is no big surprise to myself but a tragic story, SAIC used them to teach the Chinese engineers how to engineer & build cars to MG Rover engineering standards, and now they know enough they will shut the place. I have many friends still there who are devastated and in shock. The UK car industry is not in good shape at the moment which is very sad.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industr...ze-uk-base

They are called ROEWE because Chinese pronounce ROVER.............R O E W E...................

steven211 wrote:

A company allot of you probably have never heard of; SAIC Motor UK based in Longbridge are making over 200 job cuts at their engineering centre. A little background to the company, they design and develop MG & Roewe models for their parent company SAIC. I used to work at the sister company MG Motor UK in the production team and sadly we lost our jobs 3 years ago.

So this news of the engineering centre is no big surprise to myself but a tragic story, SAIC used them to teach the Chinese engineers how to engineer & build cars to MG Rover engineering standards, and now they know enough they will shut the place. I have many friends still there who are devastated and in shock. The UK car industry is not in good shape at the moment which is very sad.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industr...ze-uk-base

This has been on the cards since the day it opened. The Chinese got everything they wanted from Rover very cheaply, with little commitment in return. As soon as they had all the skills that they needed it was always all going back to China. I just can’t believe that it’s taken them this long.

Fortunately, we never showed them how to make good cars

Honda have just announced that it is closing its Swindon plant and moving production out of the UK in 2021.

The Honda announcement was months ago......sad indeed. Regards

David

Lovely i6 has now gone, but not me......

Please let me know if anything in my post offends you, as I may wish to offend you again......

Honda have no commercial reason to justify the plant remaining open anymore, as a tariff deal was done with Messrs. Junker, Barnier and Verhofstadt behind closed doors. They won't be the last either, sadly.

Shafted by the EU yet again...... MY13 HSE Lux.......faultless since new.

We can look forward to a lot more of that when (if?) we’ve given away all of our influence inside the EU

Absolutely. A 15 year old preparing for a Business Studies exam could have predicted the outcome. Of course a producer will move to a market where his goods don’t face tarrifs and have the lowest supply chain costs . Still it won’t worry Farage , £160k lump sum and £65,000 pa pensions lined up for retirement from the system he hates so much. I’m sure he’ll buy some of the jobless a pint 2009 GS Auto Zermatt Silver - Sold June 21 after 10 years of ownership

2016 Subaru Outback SE 2.0 diesel SE Premium Lineartronic Sold 2024 after 8 years and 80k miles . Best Car I ever owned !

2023 Toyota Hilux invincible X 2.8 Auto .

The Honda plant closure was planned long before Brexit reared its head, the “deal” with the EU and Honda import tariffs had been going on for a couple of years now, everyone knew as soon as they (Honda) could avoid EU import tariffs the Swindon factory would close.

Just a shame some enterprising EV manufacturer who is in the vicinity couldn’t do a deal and take the factory over, oh no....hang on Dyson is manufacturing in the Far East.....how odd  Regards

David

Lovely i6 has now gone, but not me......

Please let me know if anything in my post offends you, as I may wish to offend you again......

MartynB wrote:

Still it won’t worry Farage

Tigger wrote:

We can look forward to a lot more of that when (if?) we’ve given away all of our influence inside the EU

You need to look back in anger at WHO gave it away in the first place........ Top Tip: it WASNT Margaret Thatcher  MY13 HSE Lux.......faultless since new.