Hinckley triumph moving production overseas

Of course I regret the job losses in the old world, but unfortunately I think that this trend will be almost impossible to reverse.
As I posted elsewhere on the forum, this trend will continue for as long as the following is true:
A call centre worker in India is considered to be very well educated and middle class - the monthly salary for such workers is around £130 (155 Euro/$170). It is likely the salary of assembly workers will be lower than this or equivalent - in the West this is lower than the daily wage for an experienced and qualified engineer
Profits are much higher when wage costs are lower
 
Well the opposition needed a health warning when the 'unreliable' Rob North triples stomped over everything .
To me, a T160 , Rocket 3 and Commando were and still are the best bikes ever made, yes they have their foibles but so what.
Anyway, why did you buy a Norton if you were called stupid ?
 
Well the opposition needed a health warning when the 'unreliable' Rob North triples stomped over everything .
To me, a T160 , Rocket 3 and Commando were and still are the best bikes ever made, yes they have their foibles but so what.
Anyway, why did you buy a Norton if you were called stupid ?

These works racing bikes were meticulously prepared by experts, the production bikes for joe public however, were cobbled together by a militant lot that went on strike on every occasion that came across and this was reflected in build quality. Why did I buy a britbike at the time ? good question. Must have been the desire to be different from the rest at the time, and I had more than average technical knowledge to sort out the faults and foibles of the british machinery, unlike my Jap bike riding mates. ( and I did nt care to be called stupid by them) the british bikes looked better in my view too .

Over here many British car and bike dealers were fed up with the Brtish material, and switched to Japanese brands by the early 70's.
 
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Well the opposition needed a health warning when the 'unreliable' Rob North triples stomped over everything .
To me, a T160 , Rocket 3 and Commando were and still are the best bikes ever made, yes they have their foibles but so what.
Anyway, why did you buy a Norton if you were called stupid ?

The best British bikes ever made were the 1958 7R AJS , the 1962 30 M Manx, and the 1965 Seeley G50 Matchless. They were actually 'fit for purpose'. They prove the British are capable of producing quality product.
What is wrong is the mindset. A cooperative does not work. What is needed is a corporation with a high level of employee share ownership as well as productivity gain sharing. Then everyone in the organisation would be pointed in the same direction and focussed on continual improvement. When a factory gets involved in motorcycle racing, everybody in the company should be behind the effort. This cannot be achieved by authoritarian management, it has to be voluntary.
In the UK, you still have the class system in which there is top down structure in companies. We all need to move away from that and have common goals. When push comes to shove, the Chinese rely on authoritarianism. It is very difficult to assure quality under those circumstances. With the Japanese, the controls are internalised. However the British democratic system can be superior, if the right mindset is applied. That was proved during WW2.
 
One of the things which really puzzles me - in Australia we have compulsory superannuation. Yet contributions to employee share ownership programmes cannot be used as a substitute.
 
It's not an isolated incident, since having his "lemon" my mate has spoke to many other owners whose bikes are defficient. I'm glad that yours is good, but that don't mean they all are.

And the same goes for any other bike manufacture not only Triumph.
 
Why did I buy a britbike at the time ? good question. Must have been the desire to be different from the rest at the time, and I had more than average technical knowledge to sort out the faults and foibles of the british machinery, unlike my Jap bike riding mates.

All lovers of british machinery (and I include myself in this lot) are maniacs who likes to torment themselves for brief moments of joy when the machinery works as it's supposed to.

:)

-Knut
 
Hinckley triumph moving production overseas


Apart from the press being a pack of treasonous turds , then . ( what else is new ) this lot

https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/n...talgia-of-norton-villiers-motorbikes-15620328

Instead of sitting on there asses & stealing the T 150 tooling, wouldve been building bikes , during the lock out.
Not playing cards .

The picture of the old farts at the N V T lay off , in 78 . Showed a pack of blokes brought up in the depession ,
worked of fought there but off in W W 2 , slaved for a pitance all their lives , and unable to make jackshit of W T F was going on .

Men of sober habits had been conspicuous from their absence for years . A bit of a case of
the road to damnation paved with goood intentions . or maybe it was the weather .

typical case of not seeing things through , and the majority of the press being snivling twerps .

Maybe Triumphs about to take over the world , and realises the ' British Empire ' is past it .
Being dispersed by solialist do gooders . Like the R. R. nyne , to the Soviets post W W 2 .

We dont want to hurt their feelings . Then there was the Marshall Plan . reivigorate the nazis & nips .
 
I have faith in my fellow man - I know their strengths and their weaknesses. A lot of things are about leadership - many people do not know how to lead a group. There is one basic rule - it you actually lead, they will follow. You can treat the guys as equals and still retain control as long as they are consulted and informed. Where I used to work, when the Spring Racing Carnival was on at Flemington, the guys would always find an excuse to clock-off and go there for The Oaks. All the managers had to do was work around it. What was lost in man-hours came back in good will. The best situation is when workers have sufficient information to self-manage and they are highly motivated. In Australia, that usually only occurs in one-man businesses.
With people such as Stuart Garner, he is probably with his workers, but not of them. In Australia, many managers have been educated in the private schools. It is rare for a trades-person to become a professional engineer or scientist.
 
The British are rarely losers, because their mentality is an art form.
It is not how you play the game, but how you win that counts ? - I notice the Brits want to dictate the rules under which they will export to the EU - that is a very good start.
 
BMW are not alone Sam, the trend is definitely still for companies to move east, but there is a growing (if still small) trend of companies reversing that due to learning that the total cost savings are not what they expected them to be AT ALL.

Yes, wages are lower, but that’s only one of the many costs associated with a global supply chain...

Closing factories in one country and building in another, hiring and firing entire workforce’s, shipping out of ex pats on big packages, control of supply chains, length of supply chains, high staff turnover (in situations whereby the reason for being there is low wages, companies offer the lowest they can, workers then move around for a few extra cents per hour), and last but not least; overall quality control, are ALL things that cost money.
 
My 2013 Thruxton had a faulty oil cooler sensor a $35 part fixed under warranty, bike still ran just a fault code showing from the ECU, I do all my own maintenance on my bikes and so far I can't fault QC on my 2 Thruxton's, I am sorry your friend was one of the unlucky ones to have a lemon, but I also had a few warranty jobs done on my Norton when I bought it brand new all them years ago as well my 81 Triumph Thunderbird when I also brought it new and they were both Made in England and I also ride with a lot of happy modern Triumph owners, all Thailand assembled, so its the luck of the draw if you have problems with any new bikes.

Ashley
 
I have no doubt that the "triumphs" that are built now are reliable and well built but for me it's now the end of triumph unless they decide to switch back to major manufacturing in the UK
 
I have no doubt that the "triumphs" that are built now are reliable and well built but for me it's now the end of triumph unless they decide to switch back to major manufacturing in the UK

Yes, totally agree. However they won't be bothered about me as the last one I bought was a T509 21 years ago :-)
 
Having worked in engineering all my working life this is just another sad piece of news. What really annoys me is all the Union Jack waving bullshit by companies like Triumph & indeed by the British public. Britain is & has long been a spent force in manufacturing. When I was younger damn near everything was made in Britain, cars, lorries, coaches, motorcycles, aircraft, machine tools, electrical items, pots, pans, well you get the picture. Try buying British nowadays & you will struggle. This is why young people end up in shit jobs such as call centres etc.
Germany on the other hand seems to still make stuff & as a consequence are a much stronger & richer economy.
 
The main problem we have, is most people buy on price rather than quality. However manufacturing in Australia always depended on tariff protection, so quality suffered. What we have now are imports of products which are not much worse than those that used to be made in Australia. Lifting our game would probably now be too little, too late.
 
The Germans seems to be like the Japanese - the controls are internalised - a lot has to do with national pride. I had a Japanese exchange student living with me. When I walked out of my job, she was shocked. In Japan, they never do that. They play their part as a cog in the machinery. It is all dedication to the Emperor and the nation. The Chinese are different, their ideology is dangerous. It is all about compliance and control from the top.
 
Having worked in engineering all my working life this is just another sad piece of news. What really annoys me is all the Union Jack waving bullshit by companies like Triumph & indeed by the British public. Britain is & has long been a spent force in manufacturing. When I was younger damn near everything was made in Britain, cars, lorries, coaches, motorcycles, aircraft, machine tools, electrical items, pots, pans, well you get the picture. Try buying British nowadays & you will struggle. This is why young people end up in shit jobs such as call centres etc.
Germany on the other hand seems to still make stuff & as a consequence are a much stronger & richer economy.
My partner is a southerner who thinks everything made came from the anus that is London, I do my best when something pops up on TV with the comment made in Coventry, Birmingham, Lancashire and all the other manufacturing parts of the country that wasn't made of wind and P..s like she thought it was. Maybe HS2 is going to be for a quick escape route out, not into London.
 
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