PastImperfect: The origins of assembly in Ireland
In the early days of the Free State, the generally
held belief in the motor industry was that local assembly of cars
and other motor vehicles was an uneconomic proposition owing to the
high costs and small population involved.
It was by importing cars that a worthwhile return could be made in the Irish market, and some Irish firms were quick to realise this. As early as 1907 RW Archer had become Ford's first contracting dealer in Britain or Ireland, and in 1919 Ashenhurst Williams & Co had acquired the first Leyland franchise. Alexander Buckley had become the importer for both Hillman and Singer - the Hillman brand becoming an early best-seller in Ireland.
Fiats had been sold in Ireland as early as 1903, but in 1923 opened an Irish subsidiary, Fiat Motors (Ireland) while Austin were sold here by Lincoln & Nolan, another firm in which R W Archer had played a founding role. This happened when Archer had become interested in selling the Chevrolet brand here and got Ford's permission to sell them through a different company to that handling his Ford franchise.
The result was the founding of the Lincoln Motor Company, while at the same time Andy F Nolan was selling another General Motors brand, the Buick. Eventually General Motors suggested that the two agents should amalgamate, which they did, as Lincoln & Nolan at Lower Baggot Street, Dublin, where they added the distributorship of Austins.
Thus Irish car importers operated more or less profitably in the early days of the State. But the State's new finance ministers quickly learned that the motor industry was an easy target for taxation, and tariffs soon built up on the importation of cars.
By 1932 this had reached such a level that it was becoming intolerable and the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Seán Lemass, introduced a new approach. He argued that there was no reason why the entire assembly process could not be carried out in Ireland, thus creating much needed local employment.
Lemass instructed that from November 8th 1934, the import of assembled cars was to be limited to no more than 420 between that date and the following June. The importation of body shells was to be at the special duty of 26.66 per cent and a new phrase - "CKD" or "completely knocked down" - was born to describe the conditions under which Irish car importers would have to operate.
To say that the motor industry was less than enthusiastic at first is something of an understatement, and many saw this as akin to financial suicide.
But Lemass' concept was not just about putting cars together in Ireland; he wished to encourage the local manufacture of as many components as possible and as time passed the assemblers also began to see possibilities in the new regime.
The importers of Dodge cars opened a factory in Wexford for the manufacture of car springs, and once Irish-made springs became available a protective tariff was applied to imported springs.
Other component manufacturers followed over time, creating for the first time in the Free State an infrastructure of light engineering firms which would form a significant part of the basis of our economic revival in the late 1950s and 1960s.