Jaguar And Land Rover to India?

[crazy 989]

Ford are selling both companies Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata Motors Group,
£1bn deal for Jaguar and Land Rover - MSN News UK - news & weather

but thing is, looking at how ugly the cars roll out of Tata factories, how much worse can they make the Jaguar line of cars, and what about Land Rover, do you think this is a good decision on the companies behalf?

[pedro.malheiro]

:S i dont know... but i think its not a good idea, hope they will not do ugly cars as tata is... but it wil bee good for Tata lol...

[Johnas]

whew good thing that they didn't sell Volvo aswell

[ibeam]

i dont' really see what the issue is here. tata is far more likely to preserve the overall "britishness" than ford was. there is a lessened risk of the marks being amalgamated into the "PAG". maybe if i were a brit i'd feel differently about this but objectively i can't see the issue here beyond general (and somewhat reasonable wariness about globalization.

ibeam

[spitty3d]

they will smell like curry lol

[crazy 989]

just hope they preserve the Range Rover part of Land Rover, cos they look hot atm, maybe they could enhance Jaguar (the only good looker they ever made was the xj220 ), land rover - hmm dunno, but as long as they dont make it ugly im cool with that. @ spitty - pffft India is not only about curries

[ibeam]

agree with crazy989, there is more to india than curry. that said, i like curry

i heard that this may pave the way for building the jaguar xf at long last (it's still sexy after all these years). one further though: look at the freedom aston has found now that it isn't part of ford. the dbs was apparently not of interest to ford. i say unleash the beasts!!!

ibeam

[tom120934]

One should remind that Lotus is still under control by the malaysian company Proton.

Since Proton purchased Lotus, we've seen good and bad things : the bad is (IMHO, of course) the Europa, the good ones are all the new Elise/Exige versions (supercharged !!!)

I think the whole thing is a bit scary in terms of design, because the only creation, the Europa, is (IMHO again) terrible, while the Elise & Exige are sexy as hell.

Another example is Aston Martin : since Ford sold to Prodrive founder (and others), all the new / soon-to-be models are really interesting : Vantage N400, Vantage RS V12, DBS & DBS Volante.

I'm looking forward to see more new models from Lotus. And the same goes for Jaguar & Land Rover. And of course for Aston.

[dimaknight]

Apparently Tata has been around for give or take a 100 years (from what I've been told) yet I've never heard of them till middle of last years when they started by putting bids in for the various names. Not apart from that disastruos budget car, where my dogs asslooks better, I fell that this is a bad idea for Jag and Land Rover. Hell they were even crazy enough to buy a small percentage of Ferrari. (as if that would ever happen).

I wonder how the Britsh feel about this that the indians are not building land rover.

[DenimTiger]

In the official reports and interviews with Ratan Tata he's been very clear about all this.

The reason Ford sold Jaguar and Land Rover has to do with their own financial turmoil. In the last ten years Ford has been screwing itself because they never injected enough money into the companies they had bought, choosing rather to rehash and market cars solely to the American market. Which is why Jaguars looked like they came here in a time machine from 1953.

The sale of Jag and LR was made at a high cost because Ford will continue to provide service to the vehicles, as well as engineering advances to both for different time periods. Why? Because Ford could never invest in either company they've been using the same engines for about 8 years. The 4.2l V8 that headlines the XF, the XK and some LRs is exactly the same engine. And I mean exactly. It hasn't changed for nearly a decade.

With a wealthier owner both companies can expect a larger dosh on cash in their pockets to develop better vehicles, while the older engines and vehicles produced up until 2010 (I think) will still fall under a Ford warranty.

I'll tell you what though... After the XJ220 I lost interest in Jag because they made cars for old people who smell of cabbage and sip port in the evening while reading the Financial Times in front of a fire. That's not what I am, so they never interested me. But now, with Ian Callum on board, more cash to throw around and the XK and XF (I'd rather have an XF than a 5 or an E) in their stable I reckon they're ready for a turnaround of serious note. I can't wait to see what they come up with