The UK car industry is said to be in trouble.
Ford has stopped making cars at Dagenham, Vauxhall has closed its Luton car plant, and industrial relations at MG Rover's Longbridge factory are tense. The industry's slow decline from its 1960s heyday has in recent years been accelerated by a fall in export demand owing to the euro's weakness against the pound.
But reports of the industry's demise are exaggerated.
UK car output may have fallen by about 9% last year compared with 2000, but no fewer than 1.5 million still rolled off the production lines.
Ford
The world's second largest automotive company has stopped producing Ford cars in Britain, but instead, the UK is becoming one of Ford's centres for engine production.
At Bridgend, just under 1,400 workers make the engines for a wide range of Ford cars. In February last year, Ford released details of a £240m investment in its south Wales plant to build a new generation of Jaguar V6 engines. This investment is expected to lead to another 500 new jobs.
Dagenham, meanwhile, is set to become the "global centre" for diesel engines. The operation in east London employed 1,600 people before the car production was halted.
Ford says it wants to add 500 jobs over the coming years, although internal company documents obtained by the BBC last year suggested that some of these are actually just transfers from other parts of Ford UK.
At Enfield 1,000 employees work in a research and development centre, while in Southampton 2,100 people produce the Ford Transit van.
Jaguar, Aston Martin, Land Rover(Ford)
But then, Ford is still producing passenger cars in the UK, albeit in the disguise of its "premium" brands.
Jaguar, with plants at Coventry and Birmingham is the big success story of UK motor manufacturing, posting four successive years of strong sales. In 2001, the company sold more than 100,000 cars for the first time ever.
The new 'baby' Jaguar - the X400 - is being produced in Ford's Halewood factory, which churned out Escorts until September last year.
As a luxury car maker, price competition is not high on Jaguar's agenda, making it easier for the car maker to cope with the euro's weakness against the pound.
Another premium brand in the Ford stable is Aston Martin, a true niche car maker which will move production to the Land Rover headquarters where the "premium" brands' R&D will be concentrated..
Ford now also owns Land Rover, which it bought from BMW after the break-up of the Rover group.