You might have been thinking of British Leyland, and/or BMC (British Motor Corporation), which made the MG and the Austin-Healey, among other brands.
And, yes, England had a number of local auto brands/manufacturers, some of which are still in existence, and others of which still exist as brands, though now owned by non-UK companies.
My mini was made there, it’s written as Bayerischemotorenwerke on the door 
Thanks.
I have a mouthy relative I need to hunt down and “edumacate.”
Manufacturer name continued on rear door. 
Yeah at the time that song was written Britiain had a healthy car industry with many well known marques. The ensuing decades were not kind to the british car industry.
She left her parents’ home Wednesday morning; since she’s already ‘far away’ before meeting the ‘man from the motor trade’ I think that shoots the theory that she was meeting him for transportation. She seems to have been doing fine already on that score.
I’ve always thought it could have been either (a) a lover or potential lover, or (b) someone who could offer her a job. Maybe the guy needs a new filing clerk or something.
To me, (b) seems more plausible. How could she have found out about this ‘far away’ job? Maybe the classified ads? (‘Far away’ could be London, and the London papers were surely available in many faraway towns. 
) After all, if she’s leaving home, she’ll need a means of support.
(a) is possible too, but there’s the challenge of how she, in her apparently constricted life, would have met and spent enough time with this person already to have arranged to meet him some time later in the (different) city where he lived, and have been willing to rely on this guy as her source of support.
But in the song, she’s not just getting picked up by a stranger in a flashy car. She’s traveled far to keep this appointment. Now maybe that was their initial encounter: maybe he was a stranger in a flashy car who had been through her home town some time previous and picked her up there, and promised her all sorts of good things if she could meet him in the town where he lived.
(a) or (b)? Who knows.
Tru dat. My dad had a thing for small British cars, owning first a Morris Minor, and then a Triumph TR-4. They weren’t the most reliable cars IIRC. My older sister cut her teeth as a mechanic on the Triumph which she got as a hand-me-down; she later became a civil engineer. Well, most of the time she was civil.
My contribution to the thread:
ETA: A croupier is a dealer at a casino. I had to look that up.
Sorry about quoting the entire lyrics!’ I didn’t even think about the copyright aspect of it. Mea culpa!
Since it got snipped, let me re-quote the most relevant portion of the Rolling Stone article.
in short: it was a boyfriend.
I always think of a croupier as a roulette guy. Good movie with Clive Owen.
Want to hear something even worse? Louisiana, in 1978, had a “Head and Master Law” whch stated that wives basically were beholden to their husbands in all things financial. When we got married in 1978 and my wife moved to Louisiana with me, she found that she couldn’t get a check cashing card from the grocery without my signature, though she was making most of the money.
It finally got repealed in '79, I think, though one legislator was deeply opposed because he got married under the assumption that his wife would have no rights and was offended at her getting some.
Was his name Stanley Kowalski?
Now we got here in the state of Louisiana what’s known as the Napoleonic code. You see, now according to that, what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband also, and vice versa. Now just remember what Huey Long said - that every man’s a king - and I’m the king around here, and don’t you forget it.
Stella! Hey Stella!
I’d never consciously thought about it before reading this thread, but I think I’d always assumed she’d set up a date through a lonely hearts classified ad or something. IOW, the point of her running away was to be free to, among other things, date random men. Not that she was running away to be with this particular guy. But there is a fascinating level of ambiguity in the lyrics when you really think about it.
(Heh, didn’t realize what I did there until proofreading)
Though she is a child though (this is the 1960s it was not usual for adult children to live with their parents) so that’s pretty awful exploitation not empowerment (even in the 60s when the attitude to such things was slightly different, at witnessed by like 10% of songs written by male rock stars in the 60s and 70s 
)
I always assumed the song was written meaning she was getting financial independence, and was positive message about empowerment of the youth. As I got older (and realized how spectacularly dumb and impressionable I was as a teenager) that message seemed pretty naive and the idea she wouldn’t face terrible sexual exploitation pretty unlikely. But I always assumed that was message.
Though it seems like I was wrong, based on tbe links posted above:
Well, there’s another level of ambiguity. The main character could easily be 15 or 20, and the interpretation is very different depending on what assumptions you’ve made. I’d always assumed she was old enough to be dating adult men, but the lyrics certainly leave the other possibility open.
Still, I feel the song is sufficiently empathetic with the parents to make it clear that they’re not overprotective control freaks, but normal parents who love their kid and are trying their best. So, if all that’s going on is that she’s reached adulthood, gotten a job and is moving into her own place, why would she need to sneak out without leaving a forwarding address?
I have always interpreted it very differently: the girl is underage and was raised in a loveless, upper-middle-class family, stiff upper lip and all, and got all the material things she ever wanted, but without emotional support, love or fun. So she runs away with the man from the motor trade, who I took to be a car mechanic or driver, a working class guy, who could fulfill her emotional needs, exemplified by the lyrics “She is having fun”. But that’s only one of several possible takes, as this thread shows.
Yeah as with the Sympathy for the Devil thread it’s a rare example of a rock song that is actually a fairly deep and nuanced take. Not just dumb stuff that rhymes and seems deep the first time you hear it
He didn’t get it quite right. Under that law, everything the wife had belonged to the husband, and everything the husband had also belonged to the husband. Not vice versa.
I’m not so sure about this. If it was written today it could be about an adult child still living at home. I don’t think anyone in 1967 would think this was talking about an adult. That doesn’t mean the singer is condoning the behavior of the “man in the motor trade” (the description Paul gives in the article above is clearly a bit of a scum bag). Exactly what happens in the song isn’t clear (it’s nuanced and can be interpreted a number of ways) but it’s clearly not about an adult