WORKERS at the Vauxhall plant, at Ellesmere Port, must be feeling a mixture of anger and frustration as negotiations to sell the plant run to the eleventh hour.

Through absolutely no fault of their own, they can see the future of car- making at Ellesmere Port thrown into doubt as a consequence of the troubles at its American parent company, General Motors.

GM is desperately in need of a lifeline from somewhere, and the condition of help from the American government is that it has to raise money by selling its relatively profitable European arm.

Several carmakers appear to be interested, with Fiat of Italy seemingly in pole position.

But there are a number of spanners ready to drop into this particular Amnerican-Italian works.

Fiat is also negotiating to take over Chrysler, and there are doubts that Fiat has the financial clout or the management expertise to take both Chrysler and GM Europe on board at the same time.

And, inevitably, there will be duplications in the model range. GM Europe has invested too much in the next generation Astra for it or a new owner to pull the plug straight away, but, when that model comes to the end of its life, in a few years’ time, the temptation would be for Fiat to rationalise its model range, drop the Astra and with it Ellesmere Port.

We would hope very much that other potential buyers will emerge, whose long-term plans would include keeping GM’s British plants up and running. And the sooner they show their hands and make their positions known, the sooner the staff at Ellesmere Port will know what kind of future lies ahead of them.