If anyone wonders where Britain’s missing cars have gone they need look no further than Southampton Docks.

More than 12,000 are parked in rows covering acres of the port. Most are Hondas being stored until exports pick up, but by no means all. Stacked in “multi-deck” parking facilities are Range Rovers, Land Rovers, Jaguars, Mini Coopers, BMWs and some curious Chinese cars built in Shanghai that look like 1950s limousines.

The Honda Civics and CRXs represent two weeks of output from the company’s factory in Swindon, which is on a four-month shutdown.

Had the factory carried on churning out cars there would have been no room for other cargo to move at the port – though that would not have presented much of a problem in the present economic conditions.

From his desk high above the docks, Doug Morrison, the port director for Associated British Ports, has had a panoramic view of the recession and observed the unsold cars beginning to accumulate in July. “The first half of 2008 was a little disappointing but in July and August it was almost like dropping off a cliff. The big difference [is that] when you do drop off a cliff, you expect at some point to hit the ground, and we’re still falling,” he said.

Southampton’s fortunes depend on what Mr Morrison calls the “notorious three Cs” – cars, containers and cruises. It is home to Britain’s second-largest container terminal as well as the British fleets of P&O and the Cunard Line. Container business was down by 10 per cent in 2008, most of it in the last quarter of the year, and the prospects for this year look grim.

The big cruise ships are on their round-the-world voyages and will not be returning for a month or two. Their berths are temporarily occupied by cargo ships, each paying more than £5,000 a week for a mooring. Mr Morrison is optimistic that passenger numbers will continue to increase as people escape a country in recession. He said: “There was a time when only the rich and incontinent went on cruises, but not only do you no longer have to be incontinent, you don’t have to be enormously rich either.”

Before the credit crunch Southampton was handling 42 million tonnes of cargo a year, including one million containers at the recently renamed Dubai World Port terminal.

Nearly all imports come from the Far East, from white goods to socks to computers. The collapse of major importers such as Woolworths has been “pretty disastrous” for the container terminal, Mr Morrison said.

Sitting on the dockside just off-loaded from a giant car carrier is one of 27 Olympic trains being imported from Hong Kong for London 2012. Britain once had a thriving train-building industry of its ownbut, unfortunately for the nation’s future prospects, the flow of manufactured goods is almost entirely one way.

Mr Morrison said: “To be honest, apart from the cars the biggest export from Southampton is fresh air. Fresh air and waste products.”

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