It is ironic that when the film was released in 1969, the UK industry, wracked by poor management and union militancy, was already tipping into the abyss. "Think where we would be today if we had done things differently back then," says John Neill, chief executive of Unipart. "We might, like the Japanese, have been producing 12m cars a year. Can you imagine what that would have done for national wealth, jobs, and well-being?"