vc10 wrote:Aesma Thanks for that information , now tell me how many Renault or Fiat plants were closed down for this to happen
Dear vc10, where yuor chairn drops off, that's when you assume that no loan to Ford Turkey would have saved the Southampton plant with final assembly of 30,000 Transit Vans/yr.
Originally Ford Transits were assembled in Cologne, West Germany and in Southampton. For Ford to make ends meet producing the Transits they had to find cheaper places to make them. It was a gradual process. First went Cologne, then Southampton.
What the alternative to the cheap loan to Ford would have been, we can only guess about. But it could be Ford choosing to not upgrade the Turkey plant, close down the Southampton plant and reduce engine/tranny etc. production in Britain and the EU accordingly. It could also be to give up the Transit model altogether and reduce engine/tranny production even more for the benefit to Japanese and Korean competitors.
Believe me, final assembly of very basic cars in limited numbers is never again going to happen in Western Europe. We shall be happy that upmarket cars and large trucks still earn us butter on our bread.
Final assembly of very basic cars in Western Europe, that will in the future only happen when we are talking very sophisticated and highly automated plants with output counted in the millions/yr.
In order to judge such EIB decisions you need to do your homework in an orderly way, or trust that the EIB has done it for you. That was way too complicated for Farage, but that's only a problem for him, and for those who listened to him.