ddavidv wrote:NOHOME wrote: Actually, the cars you show are a good example of why the Brits ended up under the bus all on their own. Those cars represent the culmination of British technology. The styling was great and marketing worked. However, all they really were was 30 year old (or older) technology that had been assembled in an admirable fashion.With no real research having been conducted to advance the cause, there was no place to go but downhill.
Ehhhh, not sure I completely agree. Been around a lot of LBC's over the years, and the Mini is the first one I've owned. My impression is thus: The British had some ingenious designs, frequently created with little in the way of new componentry due either to frugality or the unwillingness of the manufacturer to spend proper funds on newer base equipment. Execution in design was frequently pretty good (wiper linkage cited above), but construction was frequently lackluster.
Leaving out the bit about build quality. I think we are saying the same thing? The brits were doing some neat cars using obsolete technology. The downfall of the industry was that they let the development pipeline run dry. That is a very difficult situation to recover from. The US did the same and it caught up in the 70s. Recent events prove that they are about to suffer the same fate as the British builders due to this oversight.
The wipers that everyone keeps mentioning are a POS even by 1960s standards. Yes they fit every car the brits built and yes they were cheap to make, but they are noisy and problematic in that they tend to leak where they exit the cowl. They need to be removed cleaned and regreased every five years or so else they seize up. Great 1950s design. Lousy when put into a 1970s context, especially when the Japanese came along with fresh hardware and a commitment to develop it on an ongoing basis.
