BBC Documentary - Das Auto The Germans Their Cars and Us

Roadster44

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Excellent documentary which I just finished watching on BBC World - it discusses the rise and eventual domination by the German car manufacturers and also compares their success to the British automotive industry's hardships, especially in the 70s. Very interesting video, I appreciate its chronological analysis of German vs British approaches.

[video=youtube;fFZe7-l-Ju0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFZe7-l-Ju0[/video]
 
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When this first aired it came on right after Top Gear's 'Britain...fuck yeah!' segment they ended the series with highlighting how awesome the country is at engineering and making vehicles. I loved the irony.
 
When this first aired it came on right after Top Gear's 'Britain...fuck yeah!' segment they ended the series with highlighting how awesome the country is at engineering and making vehicles. I loved the irony.

Perhaps the message of the documentary was that, especially in the end, while Britain still manufacturers car, the actual ownership of plants belongs to foreigners, such as VW, BMW, Tata Motors and so forth.
 
I understand Clarkson's point, but there are major differences between the point of TG episode vs. the documentary.
 
One thing it shows is that amateur management plus communist inspired unions a good industry do not make. In the class ridden society, which is now as I write returning after a brief period when there were people able to climb the ladder, means that very few British CEO's understand strategic thinking - cutting costs yes, strategic thinking no. Posh people, who do not work or even like manufacturing anyway call it 'metal bashing' with great distain, and they hate it.

BTW if you keep cutting costs you end up with your best employees leaving. ? Then I wonder what happens?

Successful Car companies are all foreign owned with the exception of Morgan AFAIK. Morgan has no plans to expand or embrace new technology (unless they have to).
 
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In fairness to Britain though, I believe that today the business community is a lot more competent than they were in 70s, 80s, 90s.
 
I?m quite pissed they would dub the german interviews with english with a german accent ...
 
I?m quite pissed they would dub the german interviews with english with a german accent ...

I haven't watched it yet, but is it possible that they just took germans to translate/dub that bit, who had german accent? But neither this or your version would really suit a professional documentary made by the BBC.
 
I did not notice, I must say.

I thought it was a good programme but like Jeremy I think that to run it immediately after Top Gear with their attempt to speak up for manufacturing was not a good idea.

One troubling thought I see no improvement in the quality of strategic management thinking, yes maybe the gross incompetence of yester year is gone but in the main many faults are still there. All our best people go into the City, Medicine, the Law or something similar.

Back in the 70's I was looking for a degree in Production Engineering - there was one course in the whole country (you know how to produce stuff quicker, cheaper and to a superior quality using scientific techniques) - yes ONE! I did computer science instead.
 
I haven't watched it yet, but is it possible that they just took germans to translate/dub that bit, who had german accent? But neither this or your version would really suit a professional documentary made by the BBC.
I?m not sure about the native language of the guy making the dub; could very well be a german, or a native english speaker faking it. I?m not sure.
But still, there are enough professional translaters who don?t deliver accents. Dunno why they would do that, just a mistake or for "entertainment purposes". It just seems odd for a documentary, and a BBC one at that.
 
I?m not sure about the native language of the guy making the dub; could very well be a german, or a native english speaker faking it. I?m not sure.
But still, there are enough professional translaters who don?t deliver accents. Dunno why they would do that, just a mistake or for "entertainment purposes". It just seems odd for a documentary, and a BBC one at that.

Additionally, the person doing the translating and the person doing the dubbing do not need to be the same person.
 
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I watched it and found it to be quite interesting. However, I also don't particularly like the interview snippets with dubbed Germans now speaking English with a German accent.

Additionally, I'm not so sure about the content. In the last interview With VW's Winterkorn at 56:02, he clearly says about Bentley "..., und das ist ein sch?nes Beispiel f?r Gro?britannien ...". The correct translation would be: "..., and that is a nice example for Great Britain ...". However, it was translated to: "..., and that is a good lesson for Great Britain ...". Together with the following off-commentary, this false translation makes a huge difference. It seems Winterkorn's statement didn't quite align with what the BBC was trying to say. :rolleyes:
 
I eventually got around to watch it. My thoughts on it:

- some interesting background on the british car industry I didn't know
- that translators accent was really terrible, and yes that was avoidable in something like a BBC production
- felt like 75% of it was a VW commercial

But overall not too bad, not neccessarily a wasted hour :).
 
Not really much new info here to be honest.

One only needs to compare my Dolomite with something like Dr_Grip's Kadett (although technically Opel is GM owned). Both small, rwd family cars with OHV engines being produced in the mid 1970s.

The Kadett generates more power from a 1.2 than my 1.3, and it's a newer design, the Triumph engine dates from the early 50s and suffers from common crankshaft problems due to being bored out from 803cc and not being engineered to cope with it. The bodywork is also dated, it's just a facelifted version of the body from 1965, the same age as the Kadett B!

If you were looking for a new car in 1977 it'd be pretty clear which one of these two was a more modern design:
1977-kadett-c-limousine-1b.jpg

5922674583_727bd909e4_b.jpg


To think BL were still attempting to sell the Dolomite in 1980 boggles the mind... The fact the Opel might actually have been put together correctly in the factory is a welcome bonus.

But hell, we were still trying to flog these in 1970:
4898557483_3748656005_z.jpg

7782757646_b3f4410923_z.jpg


That's one car from 1959 with the tailfins to prove it and another from 1948 that's made from wood... We seemed to be quite oblivious to the fact our cars were already several decades old when we got them from the dealer until Germany and Japan really threw cars at us in the late 70s.
 
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It was an interesting documentary, as a Brit, it seems that when Germans run our car factories they do rather a good job (RR, MINI, Bentley), a pity that VW didn't pick up TVR and as a Lotus enthusiast I'd love to see some German money underpinning them and helping them grow. OK, so Rover died under BMW, but the 'English patient' was beyond saving when they stepped in IMO.

Oh, and Clarkson's tweets show how out of touch HE is, he should stick to entertainment instead of getting political.
 
Just saw the documentary and while it was all interesting and astonishingly self-reflective and and self-critical, I strongly think that the mindset, which is ultimately responsible for the downfall of the British motor industry, is still existing there.

The idea of classes and class consciousness - which to me is the root of all the evil - is still very alive and kicking in Britain. It makes me doubt, that a successfull all-British industry under all-British ownership and management could be possible again... Not because of the workers or the general population but because of the mindset of the intellectual and economical elite.

I mean seriously: Even in their most objective moments, most of those educated, intelligent British chaps can not overcome their tendency to look down on others and make fun of other countries' national peculiarities. Admiration is almost always mixed with mockery, compliments always given with a grain of salt, as if the goal is to steadily convince themselves of still being superior to other despite the dismal realityof today's Britain. It seems to be a natonal reflex - like the constant and very often annoying self-criticism of us Germans.

And as a modern-day European, I have the feeling that the intellectual elite of the British, the part of the country that's responsible for its 21st century route, still think they're something better than the rest of the world. Maybe they should consider, that most of the British population has already arrived in a unified Europe, that the normal British citizen has even become "less British" during the last 20 or 30 years, while the conservative "upper class" still make a clear destinction between "us and them" not only on the national but also on the international level.
 
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