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By Paul Greer
BBC News, Southampton
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Storage for unsold cars at Southampton Docks is in great demand
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Honda has announced plans to stop production at its plant in Swindon for two months because of a collapse in global sales.
In Southampton the impact of the downturn in the world economy on the British car industry can be clearly seen.
What should be the busy bustling hub port for the UK's vehicle industry, has quickly turned into a giant car park.
Honda alone finds itself having to park 10,000 vehicles on the dockside because there's no point shipping them across the world when demand for new cars is falling fast.
Many of the Honda's vehicles left stranded were destined for Russian and eastern European countries, but as the global economic freeze spreads, new import tariffs have made an already difficult market practically impossible to break into.
And it's not just Honda that is struggling. Five miles from the dockside Ford's Transit factory in Southampton has just pulled the plug on its night-shift.
Production has been reduced and workers have been told they'll have to take an extended break next month to avoid flooding an already depressed market with vans too few want to buy. And still the cars pile up.
Falling costs
While all this is happening, just over the horizon off the Isle of Wight, huge car transporters sit at anchor awaiting instructions.
Capable of swallowing thousands of vehicles, these vessels know their fate is inextricably linked to those of the car manufactures.
If the cars don't move, the ships don't move. It's all slowing down at an alarming rate.
Tied up in port sit two massive iron ore transporters carrying the raw material for the world's car making industry.
Only last summer these vessels would have cost you a quarter of a million dollars a day to hire. Today the same ships would cost $3,000 a day, and still there are no takers.
But Southampton's port operators, Associated British Ports (ABP), remain upbeat about the future prospects of their car terminal business.
"This investment really demonstrates our confidence in the medium to long-term," says ABP's Steven Young.
"Southampton has a lot of benefits for the exporting both on the short sea [Europe] and the deep-sea [the world] trade and we are now a European hub port for the car industry."
Honda has now announced it is to shut down production at its plant in Swindon for the months of April and May. The idea is to stop flooding the car market with vehicles no-one is buying.
It may also have the added benefit of ensuring there is somewhere to park them come the spring.
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This investment really demonstrates our confidence in the medium to long-term
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