Professor Garel Rhys steps out from behind his desk and strides across a startlingly patterned yellow carpet to shake hands warmly. It could be taken as a welcome in the hillsides, except that we are not in the Valleys but in Cardiff University, where Rhys has been a fixture for many years. An affable man, he talks quickly yet clearly with a pleasantly mesmeric Welsh lilt. No wonder he has been called "Garrulous Garel" in some quarters.
If being garrulous implies frivolity, however, perhaps the term is misleading. He is good-humoured, yes, but a serious academic - a professor of economics who is the UK's leading expert on the motor industry. For many years, his knowledge of the subject has made his opinions highly sought-after by politicians, civil servants and the media. His OBE in 1989 was followed four years later by an award from the Institute of Public Relations for being Welsh communicator of the year. "It doesn't sound much, but it's a bit like being Italian tenor or Brazilian footballer of the year," he beams.
He looks surprisingly sprightly at midday despite having answered an early-morning call from Radio 5 Live to appear on its Wake Up to Business programme at 5.45am. "That's nothing," he says. "When news of BMW's takeover of Rover was broken by Honda in Japan, BBC television rang me at three in the morning. My wife assumed someone had died when the phone went off. I think the people in the newsroom were so overwhelmed by the story, they lost track of time."
Events at what is now MG-Rover's Longbridge plant have occupied plenty of Rhys's time ever since he went to Birmingham in 1963 to study for a master of commerce degree. At the time, the company was known as BMC (British Motor Corporation) and young Garel was fresh up from Swansea with a 2.1 in economics. "The car industry was already in trouble," he recalls. "But our trucks were selling well around the world and my first idea was to study the British commercial vehicle industry from 1945 until whenever I finished my thesis. Still, one thing led to another and that was the result," he says, plucking from one of his packed shelves a rather musty copy of his first book, The Motor Industry: An Economic Survey.
Forty years on and he has recently been an expert witness before a trade and industry select committee, where he rejected claims that the management at MG-Rover was ring-fencing profitable parts of the business from the loss-making car division. "It is absolutely crucial that the car company does succeed," he told MPs, "because I do not think the rest of the company would have much of a future without it."
He is bullish about the car industry in Britain as a whole. "Unusually for a Welshman, I tend to be quite positive," he confides. "I always try to see down the middle of an issue."
And what does he see? "Well, thanks to the lessons we've learnt from the Japanese, the motor industry has gone from being synonymous with everything wrong about British manufacturing to being synonymous with everything right. Our growth is export led. Nearly 70% of all cars made here were sold abroad last year. That accounts for 9.5% of our visible exports. The motor industry is still a major part of the British economy."
On BBC Wales, Rhys was once subjected to what he calls a "tirade of abuse" from an environmental campaigner who suggested that he supported the car industry because his department in Cardiff was bankrolled by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. "I don't support the car industry any more than a professor of war history supports war. I study it. This department does research for all kinds of organisations, including the United Nations and the railway industry." The motor manufacturers' chair at Cardiff ran from 1984 until 1991, he adds - a period when his department was still quite critical of the industry in this country.
Still, it is easy to see how he has managed to ruffle the feathers of environmentalists. He is an economist rather than an ecologist, and media-savvy enough to lubricate his comments on the motor car with well-oiled quotes. So, while willing to consider hydrogen as a long-term alternative to petrol, he saw the fuel cell-powered car as no more than "a milk float with attitude". He has accused the government of using the motorist as a "milch cow in a most dishonest way". Britons would eventually be forced into a "Soviet-bloc" controlled lifestyle, he once predicted, with their freedom to travel curtailed by hidden taxes and tolls.
There can be little doubt, then, where he stands on the internal combustion engine and the long-term consequences of its invention. "To suggest that the motor car is a manifestation of evil is bizzarre," he maintains. "It's quite legitimate to ask that vehicles should be adapted to fit social need - for controls on safety and pollution, for instance - but don't dismiss all the benefits that have come from private transport. Without the car, places like Llandrindod Wells would be virtually cut off."
His personal experiences growing up in rural Wales, near Swansea, were not responsible for his belief in the individual's inalienable right to motorised travel. "We had three bus companies offering excellent public transport." But his upbringing left its mark in other ways. "I was brought up in a Calvinistic Presbyterian background, which led me to expect value for money," he says.
The first car he bought was German. That was in 1963, when 97% of the do mestic market was British-owned. "I'd read this chap called Jenkinson in Motor Sport magazine," he recalls, "and he was recommending the VW Beetle. Mine was second-hand and it turned out to be awful. What I quite liked, though, was seeing other Beetle drivers raise their hands in acknowledgement. It was like being part of a coterie."
So when he went to Hull as an economics lecturer, he bought another VW and that wasn't much better. A Triumph 2000, the only British car he ever owned, was even worse. "In 1967," he recalls, "I bought a third-hand Volvo and it was brilliant. I've never been too interested in what goes on under the bonnet, but I kept buying Volvos until 10 years ago. By that time, the prices were almost comparable with Mercedes-Benz, so I bought one of those and I'm still buying them."
The current Merc gets him from his home on the edge of Cardiff into the university in 12 minutes - on days when the traffic is tolerable. "The roads have become too clogged in the past 10 years or so. In real terms, the econony has grown by 40% over the past 14 years, while the transport system has grown no more than 7%. If this is to be a modern, vibrant economy, then the lubricant of transport has to be allowed to do its job. That means investing in roads as well as railways."
Does he ever travel by train? "It makes sense for long distances. But I went to Durham for a conference the other day, and the return [first-class] fare was £303." As a Calvinist, Presbyterian economist - albeit one who wants to travel first-class - that didn't strike him as value for money.
Chris Arnot, The Guardian
