I was listening to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning, and one discussion in particular really caught my attention: could the growth of Europe’s defence industry help secure the future of its automotive sector?
It is a fascinating question and, having spent my working life recruiting talent into automotive and advanced engineering businesses, it got me thinking.
At Tiro, we work with manufacturers, suppliers and engineering organisations across the automotive sector. As head hunters, we get a slightly different window into an industry. We don’t just see production figures, vehicle sales or factory output. We see the people behind it.
Europe’s automotive industry is facing enormous challenges. Competition from China, changing consumer demand, the transition to electrification, rising costs and underused manufacturing capacity are putting pressure on manufacturers and their supply chains. At the same time, Europe’s defence industry needs to significantly increase its own manufacturing capability. Could those two challenges actually provide part of the answer to each other?
Ford is already showing us what this could look like. Ford, working alongside General Dynamics Land Systems UK and engineering consultancy Ricardo, is bidding for the UK Ministry of Defence’s Light Mobility Vehicle programme using military-adapted versions of the Ford Ranger and Ranger Super Duty. This isn’t simply a car manufacturer suddenly deciding to become a defence company. It is about taking an established commercial vehicle platform, along with the engineering, manufacturing, supply-chain and aftersales expertise that already exists around it, and adapting that capability for a completely different market.
Ford employs more than 6,000 people in the UK. The 3.0-litre V6 diesel engine used by the Ranger Super Duty is manufactured at Dagenham, while Dunton remains an important centre for commercial vehicle engineering and technical development. To me, that is a tangible example of what we mean when we talk about transferable capability.
This isn’t just about the UK. Across Europe, automotive manufacturers are exploring opportunities in defence as governments increase defence spending and the automotive industry grapples with excess capacity and international competition.
For me, the biggest opportunity is the people. I’ve spent years more than 30 years recruiting within automotive, and there is something I feel very strongly about. We cannot afford to lose the skills this industry has spent decades developing. Design Engineers, Electronics specialists, Software Engineers, Manufacturing Engineers, Quality specialists, Programme Managers and Supply chain professionals. These people understand complex products. They understand high-volume manufacturing, traceability, quality, safety, regulation and incredibly demanding production schedules. And many of those skills are highly transferable.
The European automotive industry supports around 14 million jobs and represents an enormous concentration of engineering, manufacturing and R&D capability. It isn’t simply an industry that builds cars. It is an ecosystem of knowledge and expertise that has taken generations to develop.
When we talk about protecting the future of the European car industry, perhaps we need to stop thinking solely about protecting car production. We should also be talking about protecting Europe’s engineering capability.
When an automotive programme ends, a plant reduces production or an organisation restructures, the conversation can very quickly become one about redundancy.
But what if there were another conversation? What if businesses began systematically identifying which automotive competencies could transfer into defence, aerospace, security and other advanced manufacturing environments?
Instead of asking: “Where can this automotive engineer find another automotive job?” Perhaps we should be asking: “Which industries need what this talented engineer knows how to do?“
The similarities are greater than you might think. The crossover between modern automotive and defence technology is becoming increasingly significant. Autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, connectivity, cybersecurity, battery technology, advanced materials and software-defined vehicles are all areas where automotive businesses have invested heavily and where defence requirements are growing too.
Then there are the less glamorous, but equally valuable, disciplines. Someone who has spent twenty years delivering complex automotive programmes understands what it means to deliver against cost, quality and timing. They understand suppliers. They understand what happens when one component doesn’t arrive and an entire production programme is waiting. They understand traceability, validation, problem-solving and continuous improvement. Most importantly, they understand how to turn complicated engineering into something that can be manufactured repeatedly, reliably and at scale.
I should also say that I am very fortunate, much of my own work today is within high-performance vehicles and motorsport, areas of the automotive industry that tend to be less exposed to some of the volatility affecting the wider mass-market sector. I get to work with extraordinary businesses and incredibly talented people, often at the very cutting edge of engineering and technology.
But that doesn’t make me any less passionate about the future of the wider European automotive industry. Quite the opposite. I want to see it not simply survive this period of change, but thrive.
Europe has an extraordinary automotive heritage, an exceptional engineering skills base and generations of knowledge sitting within its manufacturers and supply chains. I don’t want to see that capability gradually disappear because the industry failed to adapt quickly enough to a changing world.
This shouldn’t be about the demise of the European car industry – I’m not suggesting that defence can simply replace automotive. The volumes are different, the regulatory environments are different and the skills aren’t always directly interchangeable. But we also have to be realistic about how manufacturing is changing. The answer cannot simply be to try to preserve every job, factory and role exactly as it exists today. The better question is how we preserve the knowledge, people and industrial capability behind them. And perhaps defence will form part of that answer.
As head hunters we need to play our part in this changing landscape. Recruiters and employers can be far too obsessed with finding candidates who have already done exactly the same job in exactly the same sector. Sometimes the perfect candidate isn’t the person who has already worked in defence for ten years. It’s the talented automotive engineer with twenty years of complex manufacturing experience who has never considered that their skills could be valuable to defence. We need to get better at recruiting for capability, not simply sector history.
Europe has spent decades building an extraordinary automotive engineering and manufacturing skills base. Whatever happens to the future shape of the automotive industry, we should make absolutely sure we don’t lose it.
If defence, aerospace and other advanced engineering sectors can provide new opportunities for some of that expertise, then perhaps this isn’t simply about defence “saving” automotive.
It’s about Europe becoming much smarter at protecting, redeploying and ultimately strengthening one of its greatest assets: its people.
