Episodes
What Britain Buys and Sells in a Day: Cars (BBC 2 Friday 2 June 2023)
What Britain Buys and Sells in a Day: Cars airs Friday 2 June 2023 on BBC 2.
Ed Balls, Ade Adepitan, and Cherry Healey, your hosts, investigate the frantic world of British exports and imports. They investigate how much we actually know about the logistics that allow Britain to buy and sell millions of cars around the world on an unprecedented scale, as our trading relationships face their biggest change in decades.
Ed has arrived at the Southampton harbour. He gets to ride in a tug boat that gently guides ships into the port, observes the massive ships that bring cars to and from our shores being loaded and unloaded at high speed, and pilots a miniature version of one of these ships to learn how to do it safely.
Cherry is awed to learn that all of Toyota’s imported parts arrive less than four hours before they are needed when she visits the company’s Derbyshire facility. All production can come to a halt if there are significant traffic or border delays.
Then, Cherry watches as the famous London cab is tested, with its doors opening and closing over a million times before it’s released to the public. At last, she stops by the opulent headquarters of Norton Motorcycles, a British company that exports 80% of its bikes thanks to the country’s well-deserved reputation for quality.
Ade finds out that the United Kingdom is the second largest market for Ferraris in the world during his visit to the Ferrari factory in Maranello, Italy. To learn more about the future of British automobile production, he also visits the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada, where batteries are produced.
Season 1 Episode 3 (of 3)
What Britain Buys and Sells in a Day: Cars airs Friday 2 June 2023 at 3.15pm on BBC 2
Featured Image Credit: BBC 2