BRITISH MOTORS

Hokitika Guardian, 4 January 1930, Page 2

BRITISH MOTORS

PRUDENTIAL to finance it. £1,000,000. MESSRS EOOTES’S plans. LONDON, October 25. Details of nn extensive scheme for the development of the export trade in British motor-cars were given to a reporter yesterday by Mr William 10. Bootes, the chairman and joint manning director of Messrs Bootes,' Ltd., the motor agents, of Piccadilly. After a meeting between Sir George May, secretary of the Prudential Assurance Company, and Mr William Bootes and his brother, Mr Reginald Bootes, it was decided that the Prudential should invest in Bootes, Ltd., for immediate use £1,000.OCX) to Foster trade at home and abroad. Mr William Bootes said: We have though tthat motor-cars in Britain have not been sold with the same amount of vision and eneig' and resource as in America, and this particularly applies to British sales in the Empire and throughout the world.

The only - way to counteract those conditions is by having sufficient resources to he aide to expand the shipment of ears and set up l office centics throughout the world so as to be. able to raise the standard of merchandising of our products. But this does not go far enough. Tt has got to be something bigger and on a larger scale.

CAPTURE EMPIRE TRADE

The Prudential is now satisfied that this is a matter of national necessity, and to further it it is putting '£1,000.000 in cash behind Rootes, Limited.

Here we have a great financial corporation, taking a lively interest m the motor industry for the first time in its 30 years’ history, and Sir George May, the secretary, is really fired with enthusiasm.

British motor manufacturers are now making ears which will. compete with the best in the world and which will sell anywhere. We are going to capture the British Empire trade which has hitherto been dominated by the United States. * There are going to be many more thousands of ears made in Great Britain than has ever been anticipated, and if we can capture the Empire and the international markets it is going to offer new employment to hundreds of thousands. I prophesy that in two or thice years a quarter of a million i people who are now unemployed will be working in the motor industry and m the indirect trades connected with it.