Unions and workers at the Ryton plant near Coventry are meeting today to thrash out their response to Peugeot's announcement to close their plant with the loss of 2,300 jobs.
But the economics of car making are not in their favour. Production at Ryton is understood to cost some €450 (£350) per car more than at PSA Peugeot Citroen's plant at Poissy in France and almost €1,000 (£689) above the production cost at its joint venture factory with Toyota in the Czech Republic.
Moreover, workers at Ryton must have been aware that PSA's decision to begin production of the Peugeot 207 at a plant in Slovakia later this year posed a threat.
Increasingly, the eastern and central European region has proven to be a magnet for western European, Japanese and US car giants. German car and car parts makers were the first to head east.
Skoda, the Czech manufacturer was taken over by Volkswagen as early as 1991, while its subsidiary Audi chose to have its Audi TT assembled in Hungary. VW is also active in Slovakia with VW Slovakia.
Others have followed. The French-Japanese consortium of Toyota and PSA (TCPA) built a factory in the Czech Republic for producing a compact, while PSA set up shop in Slovakia that will produce the Peugeot 207, the successor to the 206.
As reported in Property Secrets, the €1bn PSA plant in Trnava in the west of the Slovak Republic sits on a 190- hectare site. The plant will be capable of producing 55 cars an hour - with capacity reaching 60,000 cars this year, 240,000 in 2007 and 450,000 cars a year by 2010. Most cars are for export, mainly to Austria, Slovenia and Italy.
With VW and PSA converging on Slovakia it is no surprise this small state, once part of Czechoslovakia, has been nicknamed Europe's Motown, a reference to Detroit. VW, which employs 8,850 people, alone generates almost a fifth of Slovakia's exports.
While many welcome the creation of car-related jobs in Slovakia, some worry about overdependence on motor manufacturing, which now accounts for 20% of all industrial production.
"The economy shouldn't be focused on one thing," Jaroslav Míl, president of the Czech Confederation of Industry, told the Czech Business Weekly. "Look at Detroit today."
