Long a favourite in production plants, the Herbert 2D was extensively revised during the early 1970s and is shown here in its final form, as advertised during 1978. By 1975 the writing was on the wall for the Herbert Company: it shares had dropped to just 4.75 each and its value declined to a paltry £800,000 compared to £43 million just ten years before. The whole mess was an entirely self-inflicted disaster - and if the reader would like to see how not to run a machine tool company he can discover for him, or herself, by obtaining a copy of "Alfred Herbert Ltd. and the British Machine Tool Industry " by Lloyd-Jones & M.J. Lewis. Buy it, read it - and weep.
While the British production lathe industry died,  the German and Japanese ones thrived; the former by close inter-firm co-operation and research in hand-in-hand with universities - and the latter by sheer hard work, reinvestment in R & D, a compliant labour force - and a never-give-up approach.