Last month, Ford said it was cutting thousands of jobs across Europe as emissions rules and declining demand ate into its profits. Another American carmaker, General Motors, pulled out of Europe in 2017 after persistent losses in the region.

But the losses in Britain, coming as the country tries to leave the European Union, have been striking. Nissan said in early February that it would be producing the next generation of its X-Trail SUV at its Kyushu plant in Japan, rather than at its factory in Sunderland, England. The plant will continue to manufacture other models.

Like Nissan, Honda stands to benefit from a new trade deal between the European Union and Japan, which will make it easier to produce cars in Japan for export to the bloc. Their production lines in Japan will also be closer to markets viewed as having greater growth potential, like China and Indonesia.

The sales market is changing across the globe. Car sales to individual customers appear to have peaked in the United States last year. An economic slowdown in China has deflated sales there. Silicon Valley tech companies are increasingly competing for talent among manufacturers.

“All of that is taking a huge amount of resource out of car companies,” said Peter Wells, a professor at the Centre for Automotive Industry Research at Cardiff Business School. “They’ve got to access those new markets, restructure their operations; it’s an enormous burden financially. It’s putting strain on the whole sector.”

“It’s all going on around this industry and it’s proving to be a turbulent strategic time for the participants,” he said.

The continued stalemate over Brexit has made it more difficult for businesses to plan their operations past March 29, the day of departure. Investment in the country’s auto industry plummeted by half in 2018, prompting a recent plea from the automakers’ trade association.