The Great British luxury car boom?

This is just the sort of company that should be in crisis. Luxury cars, plenty of cylinders, made in a country that we hear down at the pub doesn’t make anything anymore. How wrong we could be.

It’s 0700 and the shift has just begun at Bentley Motors in Crewe. Now owned by VW, it has just posted some very positive figures. Last year they sold 7,003 cars, up 37 per cent on the previous year. It’s a similar picture at Rolls Royce: they delivered more vehicles last year than at any point in their 107-year history.

It seems the world, particularly the Far Eastern markets, can’t get enough of top-end British motors.

Michael Straughan, board member for manufacturing at Bentley, told Channel 4 News: “The world is full of wealthy people…and we try to find those wealthy people who will buy a Bentley. In China, there’s a love of luxury and we have a strong dealer network over there – if there are people who want a luxury car like a Bentley, we are ready to serve them.”

Bentley launched their new model on Monday at the Detroit Motor Show, the Continental V8, which the company claims is 40 per cent more fuel efficient than their other vehicles.

Good times?

So times are good? For now, yes, but Bentley is warning of a real threat to Britain’s mini motoring revival.

“There’s a shortage of people with engineering skills in this country. There’s absolutely no doubt at all there’s not enough coming out of British universities, we should all be worried about that,” Mr Straughan said.

Dr Dan Coffey, an economist who spent three years working at Rover, agreed that UK car plants are facing a serious skills shortage. However, he says you cannot blame the universities.

“No young person wants to go to the engineering sector, as it’s seen as a shrinking sector,” he told Channel 4 News.

“The decades of neglect, the decades of shrinkage unfortunately have shrunk the willingness of the young to take up careers in manufacturing and engineering.”