► ‘East beats West’ – CAR’s landmark Feb ’86 cover story
► The moment Europe’s automotive crown passed to Japan
► ‘The gravest threat to Europe’s motor industry for a century’
It is time for the ridiculous prejudice to die. It is time, moreover, to worry. The Japanese car industry – just half as old as the one in Europe – has discovered the final secret of building its cars with ‘European’ qualities, and it is pulling out, even, as weeks go by, a lead over even the best manufacturers in the European car business.
It has been pleasant, all these years, to tell ourselves that Japanese cars, despite their practical qualities, their economy, convenience and value, lacked that indefinable, mystical quality of character that went to make a good European car. Perhaps, even a couple of years ago, that was true. But now, the excellence of the best Japanese models makes a mockery of the idea.
The launch in Britain of half a dozen particularly fine Japanese cars has put the evidence in the showrooms. The Toyota MR2 and Corolla GT, the Nissan Silvia Turbo, the Mitsubishi Galant, the Honda Accord and the terrific Celica GT are the cars which make the proposition that the Japanese have found us out, utterly irresistible. Each is as good as a fine European, and better than the average of our cars.
It should come as no surprise that the Japanese have discovered how to build cars as good as ours are – traditionally the most stylish, most efficient and best-engineered in the world. The whole of the world’s market looks to ‘European-ness’ as a desirable design characteristic. The Americans desire it, and their market is massive. The Japanese, who concentrate more on the US market than our own, desire it, too. How ironical it is that the Japanese struggle to earn more US dollars is the reason they are building 70 ‘European’ cars which meet and beat our own.
CAR appreciates all good cars – Japanese, North American or European. But CAR is as aware as anybody that the European motor industry is under its most serious threat in a century. While racked by overcapacity and the consequences of legislators’ meddling, it is being confronted ever more directly by excellent cars produced by Japanese makers. Our observations and our concerns have led us to put together this issue’s 16 pages of material on the Japanese, their influence in Europe, their latest cars and their sales prospects here. We’ve asked Georg Kacher and Gordon Kent to comment on market curbs, conditions and prospects in mainland Europe and Britain respectively. Steve Cropley matches a couple of the finest Eastern arrivals against logical, creditable European rivals, and sees them do remarkably well. Kacher and Gavin Green have been driving a horde of Tokyo-release new models; Geoffrey Howard sums up the technical aspects which put the Japanese decisively ahead, at least on paper; and in this
month’s Giant Test, we’ve matched a trio of Japan’s standard-bearers – Toyota Celica GT-v-lsuzu Piazza Turbo-v-Honda Prelude.
This, we judge, is the moment for home truths. We’ve culled a few from the features you’ll find inside this issue. We guarantee they’ll make you blink.
•Do you consider that fine European engineering will win through in the end? That’s unlikely to be the case: at the beginning of the ’80s Japan was producing engineers at a rate which exceeded the numbers graduating in the US and all of Europe combined.
•Do you imagine that Japanese cars’ transport and import duties will curb their profitability? Think again: a survey with the working title Japanese Strategies In Western Europe, by Professor Krish concludes that by building assembly plants in Europe (such as Nissan’s facility at Washington, Tyne and Wear) Japanese manufacturers will be able actually to raise their profit levels on each car by between £200 and £400. So the Japanese manufacturing strategy, of which European governments heartily approve, is likely to be the most profitable they’ve so far devised.
•Do you imagine that Europe will always lead in the manufacture of specialist and expensive cars? Think again: this month’s Giant Test, which compares three £12,000 Japanese coupes, points out that just one year ago, cars of this type were in the £8000 bracket-yet the new breed attracts only mild criticism for over-pricing. Now, Celica, Prelude et al confidently occupy territory which has only Just been vacated by the Porsche 924.
•Do you imagine that the remarkable Japanese sales inroads will slow? Experts don’t believe so: figures recently published in the US forecast that the Japanese share of Europe’s market will rise to 1.2million sales by 1990-and 300,000 of those will be made in Europe. It is the published aim-of the world’s Number Three company, Toyota, to eclipse the biggest car makers, GM, not just the second-placed Ford. By 1990, says the Automotive News World Outlook, they will improve their world market penetration from 25percent to 33.3percent. And that they intend to achieve in four years!
The news is good and the news is bad. On the good side, the excellent affordable ‘character’ cars in which the Japanese are starting to specialise (you’ll read about them inside, too) are going to be imbued with all the practical, sensible qualities that attracted us to their economy cars (those are a declining breed). On the alarming side, those cars, all carrying high profit margins, are going to finance Japanese makers’ even more aggressive efforts in the ’90s. Their opposition will be a gargantuan US industry which seems to depend more and more on other people’s good ideas, and a European industry which seems to be slow to react and certainly has no surplus cash to throw at its problems.
Of course, we could all buy Toyota Celicas and enjoy our journeys home, putting such difficulties out of our minds. But for Europe’s problems, that would be the very worst thing to do.