I think every member will be glad to see the back of 2020. It has destroyed many lives, businesses, overturned accepted social norms and events. It has also brought a lot of us closer together, removed veils and opened eyes to what is happening in front of them. As a...
After a truly different year, the Western Group of Motoring Writers broke new ground with its first on-line AGM. It didn’t go as well as we wanted but certainly most members who wanted to were able to join in and generally it ran as a Real World round-table...
Well Lockdown 2.0, or if you live in Wales Lockdown 2.5, is underway and highlights how differently the Coronavirus is being tackled. Strictly speaking, only essential travel is being permitted whether you live in Wales, England or Scotland and it’s been...
It has been a very strange summer. The national lockdown really hit journalists, PR departments and dealerships together with manufacturers in a way no one could have expected as we celebrated the arrival of 2020 in January. It was tough then with the global economy...
The SMMT still hopes to run its 2020 driving day, eventually. Latest is a move to 1 October, when the Government permits larger gatherings for business and sporting events. The SMMT and Millbrook have been working on the familiar pattern for the day but it will be...
Jaguar Land Rover is moving its petrol V8 engine line from the Ford Bridgend Engine Plant to its in-house power centre at Wolverhampton. Workers at the South Wales engine plant closing at the end of September, have been building buffer stocks of the V8 engines to...
Aston Martin production of their luxury £154,000 DBX SUV started recently in Wales. The big four-door model was announced for St Athan, some 20 miles west of Cardiff, in 2016 and over the last four years the company has been converting three massive superhangers into...
Tens of thousands of jobs are likely to disappear from the UK automotive sector before the end of the year. Some 11,349 jobs so far axed following lockdown will grow and despite this week’s 11% rise in new car registrations the outlook is bleak. That’s because the...
Car enthusiasts are getting a once-in-a-lifetime chance to buy a unique one-off four-year-old British sports car, and it could cost them hundreds of thousands of pounds. The Bristol Bullet roadster is among items being disposed of by joint liquidators of Bristol Cars,...
Long time Western Group of Motoring Writers’ supporter and Mitsubishi importer Colt Cars, of Cirencester has written to over 100 UK franchise dealers saying the news was unexpected from Japan and meant no new generation models would be coming through the system...
In a blow to Welsh automotive manufacturing which promised up to 500 jobs it said today, “INEOS Automotive can confirm that it is reviewing its manufacturing strategy for the new Grenadier in light of the COVID-19 pandemic – which has led to some delays in our...
There’s a new normal shaping the motoring world and how journalists and PRs react to it and one another. Motor shows seem to be dying faster than the fashions of the human models used to adorn the stands as the traditional calendar is not just screwed up and thrown...
This week we should have been enjoying the famous Western Group PR Driving Day, but instead we are all suffering to various degrees from the lingering effects of the Coronavirus-19 pandemic. In just over two- months our motoring world has ground to standstill....
A few months ago, no-one could have accurately predicted the volcanic social upheaval now shaking itself through Britain, the rest of the world and our particular automotive industry. Vehicle production stopped, roads emptied, showrooms closed and motorsport become...
The annual Western Group of Motoring Writers PR Driving Day has been cancelled for 2020, writes Robin Roberts. This tough decision to cancel the event scheduled for 3 June 2020 has been taken only after a lot of heart-searching in light of the very latest...
The quickening approach of pure battery and plug-in hybrid vehicles is providing a further challenge to PRs and agencies. We simply don’t have the infrastructure to support a big ev-car or van launch with most hotels running to just a couple of recharging points which...
