Lack of competition

I believe that the answer is to be found somewhere in the years after 1945 when the British car industry found itself in a world almost without competition, outside of North America. The temporary absence of German and French companies in the marketplace and the huge pent-up demand that the war years produced, meant that British companies had been able to make sales all round the world without having to strive for excellence in design, technology or marketing – or even price or reliability. They saw no reason why they should not simply start again from where they left off in 1939. unlike the Germans and later – the Japanese.

The Jaguar XK120 was a brilliant design but it was badly made and had little commercial success - in fact production never reached more than a few thousand models a year. In spite of this, the Jaguar XK120 was, and still is, a romantic dream of a car, and even today a good model will cost in excess of £50,000.

2008-05-17