IF Washington’s dash to rescue the titans of Detroit proves to be in vain, it will be a shattering blow for the British car industry.

General Motors and Ford have been mainstays of the European scene for nearly 100 years. They are no longer the dominant players they once were, but they retain large manufacturing and sales operations in Britain.

Ford directly employs 13,000 people in the UK, with engine plants at Dagenham, in east London, and Bridgend, Wales, a transmissions factory at Halewood on Merseyside, a van assembly unit in Southampton and a research and development centre in Essex. Another 22,000 people work at Ford’s 650 dealerships, although Ford owns only 50 of its 650 sales outlets, with the rest operated by franchisees.

GM employs 5,500 staff, split between Ellesmere Port, on Merseyside, where it makes the Astra, and Luton, where it makes the Vivaro van.

Chrysler has a proud history in Britain - it owned Rootes, which made such famous British marques as Hillman, Humber and Singer, but now has only a small presence and does not make any cars in Britain. Its UK offices employ 72 people and it has 65 dealers.

On the Continent, GM (the owner of Britain’s Vauxhall) is behind such household names as Opel and Saab. Ford owns Volvo and has only recently sold two of the most famous names in British carmaking, Jaguar and Land Rover.

“It’s hard to countenance a European automotive industry without the Americans,” said Paul Everitt, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the UK industry trade body.

Workers at the two groups’ British plants will have plenty of spare time between now and Christmas to mull the future. Thanks to sharp falls in car sales, production has slowed at nearly all UK plants, with many planning 14 idle days - equivalent to working less than a four-day week - this month and next. Even more worrying, Europe’s three big trade insurance groups have started to refuse credit insurance to Ford and GM’s suppliers, which may lead some suppliers to demand cash up front for components, putting an even greater strain on their meagre cash reserves.

The depth of the worldwide crisis was underlined on Friday when GKN, the engineering group that is one of the world’s biggest makers of drivetrain components, rushed out its second profits warning of the month, saying manufacturers’ production forecasts had again dropped sharply in the past few days.

GM and Ford’s European operations have in recent years performed better than their domestic North American businesses, which have run up multi-billion dollar losses, but their record is still patchy.

After heavy investment in restructuring, Ford of Europe is just breaking even. In the first nine months of this year it made a profit of $1.3 billion on a turnover of $31 billion, according to Ford’s latest filing with America’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In the third quarter it managed to eke out a profit of $29m from sales of $8.3 billion.

GM Europe’s trading position appears to have deteriorated sharply in the third quarter. Over the first nine months of the year (including the third quarter) it lost $908m on a turnover of $26 billion. In the third quarter alone it lost $1 billion on sales of $7.1 billion.

The nag in Detroit’s European stable, however, looks like Volvo. In the third quarter, the Ford subsidiary lost $484m on sales of $2.9 billion, according to the SEC filing.

Motor-industry executives say it is difficult to predict what might happen in the event of Ford or GM collapsing.

“It would be an enormous blow across the entire European industry,” said Professor Peter Cooke, a car-industry expert at the University of Buckingham Business School. “And, of course, it extends well beyond their direct operations to thousands of suppliers that make components and provide services.”

There are mixed views on whether these operations would easily find new owners. Private-equity companies have bought car companies in America but - thanks to the credit crisis - are now unlikely to be able to raise sufficient cash to mount any bids.

“If you look beyond financial bidders to other car companies, it’s difficult to see what the attraction is beyond the technology the companies possess,” said an executive involved in the bidding for MG Rover, the car group that collapsed in 2005.

MG Rover finally attracted two Chinese bidders. One of them, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, managed to extract most of what it wanted – car designs and other technology – before the British car group went into administration.

The second bidder, Nanjing Automotive Corporation, bought the company’s production tools and designs from the administrator for £53m.

Cooke, however, thinks GM and Ford’s European operations do have significant value and that the potential social fall-out from their demise will prove the decisive factor in deciding their future. “The market will come back at some stage, and these companies have great brands, manufacturing operations and a retail presence you can’t develop overnight.

“Governments on both sides of the Atlantic will find it very hard to let either of these companies roll over. They are just too big.”

Motor-industry leaders are stepping up their lobbying of European politicians in a search for financial aid similar to that being discussed in Washington.

European finance ministers will discuss the details of a €40 billion loan package at a meeting on December 2.

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