How Britain’s motor city roared to greatness – then went into reverse
Coventry was Britain’s “motor city”. The home of many world-famous brands such as Jaguar, Triumph and Rover, it boasted the nation’s best engineers, designers and brands. However, the city’s car industry went into a dramatic decline in the seventies and eighties, leading to mass unemployment. How did this hub of engineering excellence slide into obscurity in the space of a few decades?
Spring 2021 marks the beginning of Coventry’s year as the UK’s City of Culture and, to celebrate, car-loving presenter Mark Evans and I have pieced together the extraordinary story of the cars made in the city in a new documentary, Classic Cars: Made in Coventry.
The story of the city’s love affair with cars began back in 1897, when the first British-built production cars began to appear on the roads – and they were made in Coventry. In the process of filming the documentary, we unearthed rare archive of early car making in the city. But most exciting of all was filming Michael Flather, who owns the oldest regularly driven Daimler in Britain – it reaches a top speed of around 20mph. He said: “It brings a smile to people’s faces and everyone waves at you.”
But why did the car industry first develop there? For centuries Coventry had been a city of skilled weavers and watchmakers, but when those industries collapsed with the industrial revolution, their craftsmen found work in the new transport revolution
