In a post on his blog last night, Salleh said: “This is the reality of the business world today. Sentiments and national pride must not get in the way of business decisions. Sometimes hard decisions need to be made for the business to remain viable”.

He said UK car sales for 2016 achieved a record figure of 2.7 million cars sold.

“That is the best year ever for the UK motor industry. Mini saw an increase in sales of 8.5%, Land Rover 19.47% and Jaguar 45.37%.

“The irony of this is that all these British brands are now foreign owned… This is the reality of the business world today,” he said.

He added that even Volvo, once the pride of Sweden, is doing much better since the Chinese took over the company when it was on the verge of closing down earlier.