Across Europe's quieting factory floors, a once-dominant industry is searching for new purpose — turning from the rhythms of civilian life toward the machinery of defence. Automakers like Ford, Renault, and Volkswagen, caught between the unfulfilled promise of the electric transition and the rising tide of Chinese competition, are bidding for military contracts to fill the silence left by 2.5 million vehicles worth of idle annual capacity. It is a pragmatic pivot, but also a philosophical concession: that the mass-market industrial order these companies helped build may no longer be theirs to
Europe's struggling automakers pivot to defence spending as Chinese rivals threaten survival
JLR announced 4,000 job cuts from its 30,000-strong UK workforce; broader automotive supply chain supporting 183,000 manufacturing jobs faces redundancies.