During the 1920s, British car manufacturers began to reorganize their production methods, with the intention of building light, standardized cars in large quantities. The first make of car to complete directly with Ford in this area of the market was Morris, followed almost immediately by Austin. In spite of the appearance of new makes, the number of motor cars competitive in a commercial sense rapidly grew smaller; by 1929, Morris, Austin and Singer produced seventy-five percent of all the cars built in Great Britain. Morris and Ford were also the major manufacturers of commercial vehicles. The British car industry, as a whole, was able to produce 239,000 vehicles in 1929;but in the United States figures reached 5,380,000.
By 1931 there were only 31 makes on the British market, as opposed to 88 in 1922. The 1929 general depression in world trade hit the British car industry much less hard than it did that of other countries. In 1933 the joint production of motor cars and commercial vehicles had reached 286,000 units. Increases in production continued throughout the 1930s and by 1937 the industry was producing 379,000 motor cars and 114,000 commercial vehicles a year, making it the second largest in the world after the United States.
The progress of the British motor car industry during those years has been attributed to various factors: production levels had previously been relatively low; there had been considerable increases in per capita income; motor taxation and the price of fuel were low; and the British industry had always concentrated on engines with a high number of revs but a low fuel consumption.
There was also a relatively large increase in the number of medium-priced, medium-engined cars. In 1938 there were 20 independent manufacturers in the country, six of which accounted for ninety percent of the production. In order of importance, these were: Morris, Austin, Ford, Vauxhall, Rootes and Standard. Vauxhall, bought by General Motors in 1928, had also become the chief manufacturer of light commercial vehicles, followed by the Rootes Group.
A considerable proportion of the production was exported : 3,800 cars were exported in 1923; 25,000 in 1929; 43,000 in 1934 and 68,000 in 1938. The British motor industry thus strengthened its manufacturing base at home and enjoyed increasing success in many important markets overseas.