The last vehicle to roll out of the Madelvic factory in Granton was before the First World War ended, one of the first casualties in the sorry saga of motor manufacturing in Scotland.

From the end of the Hillman Imp’s Linwood home in 1981 to the British Leyland truck and tractor plant in Bathgate which closed in 1986 - now only remembered as lines in a Proclaimers song - they illustrate a core weakness in the Scottish economy that, with the honourable exception of whisky, manufacturing at scale is notable for its relative absence.

Alexander Dennis is another exception, the bus manufacturer with a large plant in Larbert now owned by the Canadian-based NFI Group, and the impact of President Donald Trump’s 25 per cent tariff on all foreign motor vehicles entering the US is a serious threat to a workforce of nearly 2,000 across the UK, and an estimated supply chain employing over 6,000 people.

Maldevic, Britain’s oldest surviving purpose-built car factory, was well ahead of its time - too far, as it happened, as a producer of electric vehicles just as the rest of the car industry decided the internal combustion engine was the way to go. Now the plant will form the shell for 28 townhouses built by the Lar Housing Trust as part of the Granton regeneration scheme.

But the spirit of innovation is alive and well about a mile away at Crewe Toll where the Leonardo factory employs 1,800 highly skilled people producing defence systems for amongst others, the US........

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