Which British Car Brands Still Exist in 2025: List of Active and Defunct UK Automakers

British Car Brands Across the Old and Modern Eras

The United Kingdom is rich in motoring lore, and there have been countless British car brands over the years, selling everything from lightweight track cars to the finest luxury cars in the world, plus everything in between. But how many of these UK car brands still exist today, and how many are still under British control? Let’s look at some of the famous English car brands and give an appreciative nod to a few legends of blessed memory who are no longer with us.

Currently Active British Car Brands

If we look at all the currently active UK cars, brands that are well-known and still selling cars currently number a healthy 21; here they are:

• AC. AC Cars started back in 1901, but was liquidated and reincarnated many times over the years. It still exists in a newer format today as AC Automotive, and has started building the AC Cobra GT Roadster in 2022.

• Ariel. Founded in 1991 as Solocrest, the company became Ariel and launched its well-known Atom space-frame racer. It has since branched out to motorcycles and off-road vehicles too.

• Aston Martin. Despite many false starts and financial troubles over the years, Aston Martin is still building cutting-edge super- and hypercars such as the DBS and Valkyrie. Now owned by a consortium with Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll as Executive Chairman and an active F1 involvement, Aston Martin is still going strong.

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• Bentley. The Volkswagen Group’s 1998 acquisition of Bentley assured the marque’s future, and it still builds super-luxury cars and SUVs that are slightly more attainable than Rolls-Royces but sportier and quicker.

• Caterham. Formerly Seven Cars Limited from 1973 to 1989, Caterham today still makes lightweight sports cars modelled on the Lotus Seven Series 3.

• Gordon Murray Automotive. Gordon Murray was responsible for the original McLaren F1 road car, and started GMA in 2017, making the spiritual successor to that car under his own name, the T.50, still with a center driver’s seat and naturally aspirated V12, this time from Cosworth instead of BMW.

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• Ineos. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, billionaire founder of chemicals company Ineos, wanted to buy the tooling of the old Land Rover Defender from JLR, but when they refused, he designed his own modern interpretation of the Defender, called the Grenadier. There’s also a Quartermaster pickup version of the SUV.

• Jaguar. Jaguar’s recent rebranding was controversial, and it has stopped building cars for the moment while it reorganizes as an electric super-luxury brand. It remains to be seen if the famous British marque will survive its reinvention.

• Land Rover. A bit like a British Jeep, the original mud-plugging Land Rover became a brand in its own right and today makes luxury SUVs under the Discovery, Defender, and super-luxury Range Rover brands.

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• Lotus. It used to only make lightweight sportsters, but Lotus has had to reinvent itself under Chinese ownership for the modern era, so now it also builds the Evija quad-motor hyper EV.

• McLaren. With a long history in F1, the McLaren F1 of the ’90s was designed by Gordon Murray and had a BMW engine, but there’s now a modern lineup of McLaren sports and supercars that goes toe to toe with Ferrari.

• MG. MG was founded in 1924 and made true British cars at its Longbridge plant. The MG name was seen on sporty Rovers in the latter’s BMW-owned era, and nowadays it’s under the Chinese SAIC Motor’s control and builds a lineup of cars and EVs.

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• Mini. The classic Mini survived until 2000, but the modern generations from the 21st century were all made under BMW, which has revived the brand and now includes EVs and compact SUVs such as the Countryman.

• Morgan. The most famous British hand-built sports car of the classic era that still thrives today is Morgan, which still builds some of its car chassis from steel-clad ash wood, but also makes modern cars such as the Aero, and was responsible for some bonkers three-wheeled sports cars too.

• McMurtry. Sir David McMurtry’s McMurtry brand splashed onto the scene with the ballistic 2021 electric hypercar called the Spérling, which uses fan-assisted downforce to get to 60 mph in 1.55 seconds.

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• Noble. Founder Lee Noble might have been ousted from his own company in 2008, but Noble has gone on to introduce more sports cars, with its latest M500 launching in 2022.

• Prodrive. Most famous for the Prodrive versions of fast Subarus it developed over the years, Prodrive still exists as a multidisciplined motorsports and advanced engineering group based in the UK.

• Radical. Radical started building sports cars in 1996 and is best known for models such as the SR1, SR3, SR4, SR8, and SR10.

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• Rolls-Royce. One of the most famous British car emblems is the one with the 2 black Rs (it used to be red until Sir Henry Royce decreed in 1933 that it should be black so as not to clash with some cars’ paintwork), and today, Rolls-Royce still produces the finest hand-built luxury cars in the world, but under the leadership of BMW since 1998.

• TVR. TVR’s Blackpool-made sports cars, like the way-out Tuscan, were made famous in movies, but the company struggled and was almost saved by a Russian industrialist between 2004 and 2013. Today, it’s managed by a syndicate of British businesspeople.

• Ultima. This British Hinckley-based boutique automaker produces high-performance kit cars and track-focused supercars such as the GTR, RS, and Evolution Coupe.

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• Vauxhall. No longer a unique brand in the modern era, all that’s left of the original British Vauxhall automaker are Opels that are badged as Vauxhalls for the UK market.

• Westfield. Westfield is a maker of kit versions and factory-built lightweight sports cars.

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Notable Defunct British Brands

There are countless discontinued British car companies, so we mention only a few of the best-known ones:

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Final Thoughts

Demonstrating how rich and varied the British motoring industry was, we severely restricted the list of defunct automakers above, and we could’ve added dozens more. Many of the modern British marques are no longer under British control, but famous brands like Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin, Land Rover, McLaren, and Lotus live on and still produce cars under their brand names today.