THE DAY CAR MAKING STOOD STILL
Adrian Hallmark recalls the last time he set foot in Bentley’s Pyms Lane factory; it was on the Tuesday after British industry submitted to the coronavirus pandemic and silenced its plants.
‘It was an eerie feeling. Every car on the line was covered with plastic bags,’ recalls the company’s chairman and CEO. ‘A few people were in the final rework area with maybe eight cars. Everybody I spoke to, they were gutted.
‘For two years we’d been building up to go for a record year, and people had put in enormous effort and energy to get us into that position. Ultimately, it’s “only” business, it’s not like losing somebody to Covid-19. But to have it ripped away, everybody was disappointed, frustrated.’
On a typical day at Bentley’s Crewe headquarters, some 4400 people would be on site. On 20 April 2020, there are fewer than 200, to keep the facility secure and key systems running. Despite the tiny headcount across the site’s 100 acres, each operative has to obey intricate social-distancing and anti-virus-transmission measures.
20 April was the day Britain’s vehicle assembly plants had hoped to restart production. Nissan in Sunderland, the UK’s biggest car factory, BMW’s trio of plants around the Chilterns, Jaguar Land Rover’s sprawling assembly network – all
