Sheet Metal Stamping Simulation

As the Paris Motor Show takes place, the UK is still a major player when it comes to manufacturing even though it does not have many domestically-owned car makers.

Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Ford, Jaguar, Land Rover, Vauxhall, Bentley and BMW all help to make Britain the fourth largest vehicle manufacturer in Europe, assembling cars, vans and engines for the UK and for export.Some 820,000 jobs depend on the automotive industry - a staggering number but 54,000 fewer than five years ago before the financial crisis.

For years before the recession it was generally accepted there were too many car companies producing too many vehicles.Since then demand for cars has fallen and there's little reason to suppose it will return to pre-recession levels.

In 2007 we bought 2.4 million new cars in the UK; in 2009 we bought 1.9 million (285,000 at a hefty discount thanks to the scrappage scheme).But even with the recovery underway the industry is not expecting UK sales to rise much above two million for the next three years.
So how is a weakened industry going to adjust to what would appear to be a permanent fall in demand? It's not as if there are fewer companies around.The recession was a disaster for the car industry but somehow the big players like General Motors and Jaguar Land Rover managed to pull through.
The company bosses I have spoken to are, to a man (and they are all men), relentlessly optimistic about the challenges ahead.Some of those challenges are exciting. Today the combustion engine is king but the move towards alternative ways of powering cars is steady and inevitable.