At first glance there was nothing out of the ordinary as the workers of Bentley Motors flooded out of the firm's Crewe plant. Yet as they dodged the traffic to cross Pyms Lane, the headlights revealed telltale flashes of wrapping paper and boxes of Roses chocolates among the green company sweatshirts, each embroidered with the worker's name.
The shouted farewells as staff reached the car park were not, "see you tomorrow" but "see you in the new year".
And last night the wood veneers used to craft dashboards and consoles were packed away in their special moisture cupboards as the last production line workers clocked off - not for the week, but for Christmas. Volkswagen-owned Bentley has extended its usual two-week shutdown to a month for the 1,500 employees who make its luxury vehicles, as it becomes the latest victim of the credit squeeze that has seen demand for new cars plunge and has forced manufacturers to mothball factories.
It has also opened a voluntary redundancy scheme which has so far approved 160 departures, and, in January, the nightshift, which carried a 16% pay premium, will end.
Workers on the extended shutdown will receive full pay and work the "banked" time free on what would normally be down-days when the market picks up. But despite not being out of pocket, they said fears for the future made for a subdued atmosphere and more frugal Christmas plans.
"Everybody's been a bit down because they don't know what's going to happen," said sewing machinist Angela Watson. "A lot of people have got mortgages and don't know about paying them. Her friend Lorraine Preston, a trimmer, added: "It's doom and gloom really. You don't know if you're going to lose your job."
Watson, 49, who has a daughter of 24 still living at home because she cannot afford to buy a house, praised Bentley's approach to the crisis. "The firm have been good, they're paying us. They're very generous that way; they're doing their best to try to keep us in jobs. It's not their fault, it's just the way the economic climate is.
One worker leaving the plant for the last time after taking voluntary redundancy said he had taken a pragmatic decision to quit. "The way the car industry's going at the moment, I don't think there's much of a future in it."
Finance to buy new cars has all but dried up, a fact driven home starkly by figures showing that sales of vehicles slumped by a record 37% in November compared with the previous year - the steepest monthly fall since 1980.
The total UK car market is down 11% this year, with manufacturers expecting to shift 2.1m units. Production in Britain fell by 25% in October, the lowest level for that month since 1991.
Super-luxury motors are usually considered less vulnerable in a downturn because their wealthy buyers are not hit so hard, but Bentley sold only 68 cars in Britain in November, down 32% on the same month in 2007. And after half a decade of dazzling success, which saw sales rise from about 1,000 a year in 2003 to 10,000 in 2007, the total figure for this year had slumped 25% to date.
Mike Hawes, Bentley's spokesman, said the long shutdown was vital in order to match production to demand. "We are a premium brand and the last thing we want to do is produce more cars than there is demand for."
"All motor manufacturers are suffering considerable difficulty. We're a strong company and we believe we can get through this."
The downturn is worrying news for Crewe, where Bentley, with a workforce of 3,800, is the biggest employer. The factory where cars costing up to a quarter of a million pounds are lovingly hand-assembled and polished, and where, until 2002, Rolls-Royces were also made, occupies a proud place in the Cheshire town's manufacturing history.
Crewe was born when the Grand Junction Railway opened a station in fields near Crewe Hall in 1837. At that time the nearest village had a population of 70; within 30 years the new town had 40,000 residents and one of the world's greatest railway workshops.
And, in 1938, it was the railway connections that attracted Rolls-Royce, of which Bentley was then part. The plant, built on potato fields on the outskirts of the town, employed 10,000 at its peak in 1943, and, in 1946, produced its first Bentley, the Mark VI. Over the years "Royces" trained thousands of local young people in skilled work.
Yet it has coped with financial difficulty before: short-time working was first introduced in 1956, when petrol rationing, caused by the Suez Crisis, hit car sales. In 1971 Rolls-Royce was forced into receivership and its car division was floated on the stock exchange. Production soared in the following years. More hard times followed in the early 1980s and in 1992.
Mark Corbett, 36, was stoical as he left the plant. "For me it's a long Christmas holiday. It's one of those things. You just weather the storm."
