Ralph Panhuyzen
1 min readMay 15, 2019

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From Great Britain, the dawn of motoring, to the country that lost all of its illustrious car brands to foreign OEMs, incl. the last of its Mohicans very recently, Morgan. Not only did the Brits see the Germans in particular turn those former UK brands into a success, but they probably get to witness them leave the UK as their foreign owners may not be prepared to pay UK import tariffs on the supplies to manufacture cars as well as tariffs when assembled cars are imported into the EU. The irony is that a British major stood at the rebirth of the world’s most powerful car company, Volkswagen, after WW2. There is definitely a bit of fatalism involved. Now that the decision is made to leave the EU, I have no doubt that most Brits think “let’s get on with it”. Too bad that they fell for a French game of chess. I remember the BBC covering what was happening in and around the Calais camp every morning in 2016. The prospect of having refugees make it across the Channel, was what made the British opt for a Brexit, by just a small margin. In the months right after the referendum was held the French police cleared the Calais camp. Is that a coincidence? Don’t think so.

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Ralph Panhuyzen

Dutchman identifying how high-tech bypasses common sense to sell us a solution that often misses the point what true progress is all about