Jaguar & Land Rover to be bought by Tata

[keithwalton]

Jag/Landy are at the perfect time for ford to sell them. Both have successful new models,
The freelander 2 recieved good reviews and is selling well.
The Jag XK and XKR have hughe waiting lists. To the point an early adopters of the xk auctioned a couple of their cars off when the xkr came out and they sold for significantly more than the original list price.
So they actually made money from owning an xk for a while.

The XF has also gotten good reviews across the board, not sure how well its selling yet.

The problem they've had in recent years is restricted development, engines have been tweaked to meet the ever tightening emissions regs and thats about it, the only new engines have been from ford developing them with someone else ie the 2.7 v6 twin turbo diesel which is a big compromise, Jag wanted a 3l v8, psa wanted a 2.5 v6, so they made a 2.7!

Chassis wise they've been restricted too, the XF uses the old s type chassis with a few modifications, its still a steal lump which is not what Jag wanted, they wanted to fit an all aluminium chassis as seen in the XK. However this is coming with the XFR.

I hope that TATA will invest the money required in new products, learn how to make a luxury, sporty and off-road cars and not try to immediately start squeezing profits out of them. The first thing they can do though is kill off the X type, thats been hanging on by a thread for sometime

[Nugget]

Originally Posted by Osem

Look there's no need to reduce these forums to the level of page 3!

I think you'll find that there certainly is

[Wicked_and_Crazy]

Originally Posted by Cobbydaler

Classic British marques to be sold off by Ford to an Indian company...

Link

Hope all the jobs stay here...

Ford isnt british either

---------- Post added at 12:21 ---------- Previous post was at 12:20 ----------

Originally Posted by keithwalton

Jag/Landy are at the perfect time for ford to sell them. Both have successful new models,

Jag has never made a profit since it has been owned by Ford

[keithwalton]

Jag not making a profit is a missed opportunity really. As I said before the new XK has had a large waiting list since not long after release (by long I mean well over a year to wait). Which means demand far exceeds supply, the fact that demand was so high that a used car sold for more than a new one would suggest people are willing to pay far more for the XK.

Perhaps its the X's waste of production line space that is dragging them down, ford themselves are in deep trouble, they are loosing money like there is no tomorrow and this is not going to change any time soon (pensions / welfare in usa are the biggest issue) selling off there assets is only going to buy them time.

Reading the beeb from last year, Q1'07 the PAG (was Aston, Jag, Landy and Volvo) made $400m in pre-tax profit.