This month, the strength, breadth and diversity of UK automotive manufacturing is being celebrated in Ignition, the app-based magazine from Auto Trader.
The ‘Best of British’ special issue sees the magazine’s editorial team visit five of the UK automotive industry’s production facilities while putting some of the manufacturers’ most successful UK-built models through their paces.
Starting at Nissan’s Sunderland plant, the tour continues to Jaguar Land Rover in Halewood, Toyota’s facility in Burnaston and MINI Plant Oxford, concluding at Morgan’s headquarters in Malvern. The feature showcases some of the industry’s most head-turning UK-built cars, including the Nissan Juke, MINI Cooper S and Range Rover Evoque.
The UK plays host to more than 30 major automotive production facilities for car, commercial vehicle and engine manufacturers as well as a host of component suppliers. The industry’s manufacturing turnover exceeded £59 billion in 2012 as export volumes hit record levels.
SMMT’s Interim Chief Executive, Mike Baunton said, “The UK automotive manufacturing industry is certainly worthy of celebration; 1.6 million vehicles were produced in the UK in 2012 and we’re confident of approaching record-breaking levels of car output around 2016. This is thanks to multi-billion pound investments that UK facilities have received from global automotive companies over the past few years.”
In addition to good prospects for growth in output volumes, industry is also continually enhancing the ways in that vehicles are manufactured; automotive production now uses 44% less energy and emits 40.3% less CO2 than in 2000.
Click through for further details or to download the latest issue of Ignition for iPhone or iPad, or for more information on UK automotive manufacturing, see SMMT’s 2013 Automotive Sustainability Report.
