Joseph Lucas ~ "The prince of darkness".

 

I can only agree with the "prince of darkness' attributed to Joseph Lucas.
I sometimes have to wonder how Lucas seemed to keep the English car manufacturers under the thumb for so many decades,
In my 60+ years of motoring my family and I have had Ford, GM, Chrysler VW, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Renault, Alfa and Toyota vehicles and had very few electrical problems.
I have also had Austin, Morris and Jaguars and all had electrical problems.
I suspect Lucas, post WW2 failed to spend any serious money on R&D and got left behind by other overseas manufacturers.
About the only good thing I can say about Lucas is I believe they were responsible for introduction of the standard wiring colour code for English manufactured vehicles

 

It's worth reading John Egan's Saving Jaguar and Stanley Hooker's Not Much of an Engineer. They say a lot about Lucas and UKGov's attitude to manufacturing.