A thought-provoking month this time, which had me mainly pondering on the question of our British motor industry and whether foreign ownership matters in this multinational era.

For various reasons I spent a week at the helm of the latest MG, the Magnette booted saloon version of the MG6 and although Longbridge is under Chinese control these days, the car is partly assembled in the UK and it’s a cheering sight to see loaded transporters coming out of the gate again.

I’ve written elsewhere about how every ‘car bloke’ we encountered wanted to give it the once-over and it’s fair to say that most people came away impressed.

One of the trips I took in the MG was to the current home of Rolls-Royce at Goodwood, to cover the ‘100 cars for 100 years’ celebration of the Spirit of Ecstasy’s centenary. The iconic brand has of course been under German control for some time and chatting to the marketing staff there it’s obvious that the question of ownership of a brand is very much secondary to the quality of its products – although in the case of cars like this, buyers themselves are probably as multinational as it gets.

Throw in a trip in a mate’s new Jaguar XF to the excellent Jaguar Heritage collection in Coventry – Jaguar of course being Indian controlled now – and ending the month with a visit to the BMIHT museum for the 10-year celebration of BL-centric website AROnline and you can see why I spent some time pondering the whole question of Britishness.

Did I come to any worthwhile conclusions? No, not really other than that we still have a thriving industry here despite all the brands which have disappeared over the years, as exemplified by this month’s feture on replica cars: if you want a quality replica of anything from a Lotus Seven to a Cobra, it seems as if it will most likely be made in Britain.

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For all this and much more see the September 2011 issue of Classic Car Mart.