In our interview published back in February 2000, just after your appointment as MD of BMW SA, we commented that BMW SA had gained a reputation as a stepping stone to bigger things in the organisation. You were slightly non-committal about how that would apply to you, but quite clearly it did work out extremely well for your career. Having headed up Rolls-Royce, you've now gone on to become BMW's first British Board member. What's the next step… CEO?

ROBERTSON: One thing I can say is that I've enjoyed every aspect of my career. There's always challenging times, there's always difficulties, but I think that, personally, I've grown from it, and my time here in South Africa was one of those times where not only the business was growing, but the country was expanding and was developing in a way that you don't often get the chance to experience. When I was asked to take over Rolls-Royce at the end of 2004 beginning of 2005, I left South Africa with a really heavy heart. I absolutely, thoroughly, enjoyed my time here, and I've kept close links with the country, and I've maintained close links with the CAR Conference, had the privelege to speak at the last four or five of them, and clearly I have a lot of great friends here, I have a lot of business acquaintances here as well, and therefore being in touch with what's happening here has been very special. Having said that, when I moved on to Rolls-Royce it was at a challenging time for that business, but that business is now in great shape, the new model programme is unfolding… then I got a call asking whether I would like to take up my new appointment…

As Board Member for Sales and Marketing, you play an important role in the fortunes of the company. Sales worldwide were up by some 2 per cent last year, but generally the world economy is hurting in the wake of the US sub-prime crisis. What is the outlook for the next few years?

I think the challenge of this year - and I think that we're pleased with our sales results given the circumstances, though we'd always like to sell more cars, we'd always like to see markets develop in a way in which are more optimised, but what we have in the world at the moment is a set of circumstances that have previously been seen individually, but have probably never been seen at the same time. That's quite unique, so we've had record lows on the US dollar. And it moved very quickly to the record low, even though, regularly in the last few years it has been weak. We have commodity prices that have been at all-time highs and, whether it be platinum, palladium, steel or crude oil, all of them wash through into the material cost of a car - remember, crude oil is at the heart of all the plastics and so forth. You have, on top of that, a credit crisis whose speed has surprised the world… it sort of crept up in late summer last year and now, as you know, several US banks have gone bankrupt, a number of US banks have got into trouble, and the upshot of all that is that credit has been squeezed, whether it be in the car market or property market, and, with that, what you see is confidence coming out of people's expenditure.

Now, individually, each one of those might not be a difficulty that we couldn't overcome. Bring them all together, and you almost have "the perfect storm." And, what has been affecting the car industry to a greater or lesser extent is all of those issues, particularly in the United States, and now also in some European countries as well. The good news is maybe that China, Russia and the Middle East have continued to perform well. Equally, if you look at countries like India, they are performing well but clearly off a much smaller base.

We've seen the figures for China, and BMW was up by over 40 per cent…

Yes, we will end up selling in excess of 60 000 cars there this year, where, five or six years ago we sold virtually nothing. And China's the second biggest market in the world for the automotive industry, so, from that perspective, there are some upsides. But clearly the headwinds that we've been facing in our large markets - the United States is the biggest market for us, and several European countries are second, third, fourth - have created a difficult set of circumstances.

The good news, though, is that we all know that cycles come and go, and from the end of July to the end of August the dollar strengthened substantially. The commodity markets have been reducing substantially. The price of oil has come down a lot. It's interesting that, on the news this morning, OPEC was saying that perhaps the price of oil has fallen too much, and that they should reduce output. Only a matter of weeks ago, they were saying they needed to increase output. So, those of us who have been around the industry for some time know that things do go up, and they do go down.

Now, will that continue? I'm not able to say… but I am a little more confident in the outlook than maybe over the last few months, where it's been quite challenging to say the least…

BMW is currently the world's largest premium manufacturer per se, but Audi has an eye on that position, apparently aiming to get there by 2015. Reports suggest that they are pretty much ahead of the plan right now. Are there any concerns in this for you?

All competition is healthy. I've never shied away from that. In my time here in South Africa… the market here is extremely competitive, and whether it be BMW who were leading the premium segment, or Mercedes who were just behind us, or Lexus who'd just arrived here, all of these things helped to make this industry as great as it is. From that prespective, I think competition will always be there, there will be new competitors that come along, particularly in the volume car business, and from our perspective we want to continue the growth, continue our leadership, continue to be the largest premium manufacturer in the car industry today. So, watch this space…

We're sure South Africa is still close to your heart. But what is the future of car manufacture in this country? Back in 2000 you spoke about the MIDP period as being a "window of opportunity" for the local industry. That "window" was extended to take us up to 2012. From then we'll have different rules in the shape of the AIP or APDP (depending who you're talking to). Do you think the new measures are attractive enough to encourage international conglomerates to continue manufacturing or assembling here despite disadvantages such as the distance from world markets and comparatively high labour costs?

If you look back at the development of the car industry in South Africa over the last eight or nine years, there's plenty of reason for satisfaction. You have to exclude the current downturn in the market for the moment, because that's a situation that involves other factors. Overall the car industry has been great: you only have to drive down the M1 to see that. The choice has expanded dramatically, so consumers virtually have access to every car that's available n the world, every model and every powertrain and so on. That is a direct result of the success of the MIDP.

It was a unique set of circumstances for the South African environment which stopped the manufacture of cars from moving out of a country that has an annual market of only between 500 000 and 700 000 units. Most markets of that size do not have a car manufacturing base, it's not justified. But the industry here is well ensconced, it has been growing, and I, when I was president of NAAMSA set a vision that the industry should be moving to a million cars - production and sales - by 2012. Now, it's slightly off that course at the moment because of an unusual set of circumstances that have all come together at once, so the target might be delayed a little, but I still think it's possible. I don't know the exact numbers of exports, but they have grown dramatically, so, overall I think it's a tick in the box. If you were doing a "school report" on Alec Irwin, Trevor Manuel and co, you'd have to write "Job well done".

The next step, of course, is beyond the mid-term review which takes us to 2012 and provides the players with more certainty, to the new plan, which has taken quite a while to come through, probably longer than it should have, but that's the nature of dealing with the international aspects, the WTO and those types of issues. I think the structure of the new APDP is in the right place. I'm very pleased with what I see…

There's a lot of detail to be worked out, of course, but, between the component industry and the OEMs, the structure is in place to provide surety beyond 2012 for companies needing to make investment decisions. So at BMW, where we'll be making our decision on the future of our Rosslyn factory, we have a much clearer view than we had four or five weeks ago.

I was particularly impressed when I heard the details, met with some government people, and chatted to the Gauteng premier here this morning. I think everyone has had a hand in the success of the MIDP, and it will be the same with what comes next. That gives me the confidence that South Africa will continue to have a degree of growth and strength in the industry that many other countries can only dream of.

Does the new programme conform to WTO rules?

You'll have to ask the legislators. But towards the end of my term here, I stood before a group of American senators ho were looking at whether the duty-free programme with the United States should be continued, and it was. I was asked to sit before an EU trade delegation to see whether the MIDP would work with them. And the Australians, of course, have made their own claims… Let's be clear: there are incentives for the car industry in many countries around the world. The new scheme has changed its structure from an export-driven incentive to a car-manufacturing incentive, and therefore it is more compliant than maybe it was before, but overall, the car industry in this country has seen a reduction of duties, which is what world trade is about, and at the same time there's been encouragement of more manufacture, more growth, more jobs, more structure, all with the future in mind. On balance, that's a pretty good situation.

Read the complete interview with Ian Robertson in the November 2008 issue of CAR magazine - on sale now.