As a hedge against a hard Brexit, Aston Martin has upped the UK content of their newest cars to 55%, making them properly eligible as ‘Made in the UK’.

With the UK car industry in a bit of a pickle over Brexit, with JLR dropping jobs, Nissan taking the next X-Trail to Japan and Honda closing down in Swindon, you might be wondering what’s going to happen next.

Well, for a change, there’s a bit of good news.

If the UK is to leave Europe either without a deal, or with a deal that doesn’t include the Customs Union or Single Market access, then WTO rules come in to play.

That will mean tariffs for car exporters which don’t currently exist, and the problem that even if free trade deals are done, many cars made in the UK won’t qualify as such because of the high percentage of parts not made in the UK, and will therefore still be taxed.

But it looks like Aston Martin has got a handle on this, and in the last two years has gone from using just 29 per cent of UK-sourced parts for its cars to 55 per cent in its three newest models. That would give them ‘Made in the UK’ status under WTO rules.

Aston’s achievement is no mean feat when you consider there’s nothing they can do about their engines and gearboxes coming from Mercedes and Ford in Germany. And it shows what can be done to mitigate potential problems in the event of a Brexit which leaves the UK outside Europe’s trade deals.

That said, it’s a chunk easier for AML than it would be for bigger, more mainstream, car makers.