Warning on Japanese cars

THE GUARDIAN

Mr W. H. Davis, a British Leyland executive, says two new Japanese cars that he has examined are very competitive with similar British models. Mr Davis, the new chairman of the Triumph division, did not name the Japanese cars.

Writing in the latest edition of the division's newspaper, he says: "The retail prices throughout the world and the dramatic increases in production quantities which have recently been published leave no room for complacency."

His call for improved production came as a "go-slow" by 90 drivers at Triumph's Coventry plant threatened to make 2,000 workers idle, and a strike by 24 engine shifters at Birmingham halted production of British Leyland's Mini line.

While the Japanese threat is mounting, Mr Davis said, an acceptable percentage in terms of Triumph's production programme had not been achieved on any day or for any week, during this financial year.

THE GUARDIAN
£2.5 MILLION STRIKE CALLED OFF

Twenty-six car workers last night called off a strike which has cost £2.5 millions in less than a week. The dispute stopped Mini production at the Austin-Morris factory. Longbridge, Birmingham, costing the company about 3,600 cars. Six thousand workers were laid off, half at Longbridge and the rest at a car body plant at Castle Bromwich.

The strikers, engine dispatchers who want earnings mere closely related to the piecework pay of engine assemblers, agreed to return to work tonight after six-hour talks yesterday with officials of the Transport and General Workers Union. The laid-off Longbridge workers are being called back at the same time.

At Coventry, 2,000 workers are still idle at the Triumph plant because of a work-to-rule by 90 internal drivers.

AUSTIN MORRIS
The MG 1300 Mk1 is dropped, although CKD production for export continues until 1973.