The transient power of dreams

The clean-up teams are in Honda’s Swindon plant now, dismantling robots and packing them up. Despite central and local government promises that it would find a buyer, in the end it was Honda that sold the 370-acre site to an industrial developer, which plans to turn the abandoned car plant, based on an old Spitfire factory and airfield, into a series of logistics centres.

The clean-up teams are in Honda’s Swindon plant now, dismantling robots and packing them up. Despite central and local government promises that it would find a buyer, in the end it was Honda that sold the 370-acre site to an industrial developer, which plans to turn the abandoned car plant, based on an old Spitfire factory and airfield, into a series of logistics centres.

At its peak Honda employed 3500 skilled workers at Swindon producing as many as 230,423 vehicles in a year. The Jazz, Civic, Accord and CR-V have been produced in the 36 years since Swindon opened in 1985; 3.7 million vehicles in all. Yet in its final years Swindon was producing less than 130,000, almost half its 250,000 capacity.