Britain’s auto industry, which lost its last major homegrown manufacturer in 2005, is back among Europe’s top producers following an Asia-inspired revival led by Japan’s Nissan Motor Co and Tata Motors Ltd of India.

The UK built 1.34 million cars in 2011, a six per cent gain, ranking it fourth in Europe and narrowing the gap with France and Spain. Estimated output of 1.45 million autos this year would be more than double the total in Italy, home to Fiat SpA.

Japanese car makers, which chose Britain as a European base in the 1980s, account for 52 per cent of the total after Nissan hit record production at the country’s biggest plant in Sunderland, England. Luxury UK nameplates, which survived through foreign takeovers, are also helping an economy on the brink of recession, with Jaguar Land Rover, bought by Tata from Ford Motor Co, recruiting enough people to contemplate three shifts at its Solihull plant for the first time in 60 years.

“It’s astonishing," said Tony Walker, the deputy managing director of Toyota Motor Corp’s British unit, where he began in 1990 after working at Ford. “I could never have imagined that Japanese companies could have been making the majority of cars in the UK". Overseas car makers are filling a void left by a decline in Britain’s auto industry that followed the nation’s entry into the European Economic Community in 1973.