The Tata deal is go
Discussion
I'm not sure if this will affect residual values since its been an open secret for months. But I wonder what will be the long term impact on spare parts. I know once the 'patent' is up (3 years?), parts are made by other companies but if they take the tooling abroad, large spares may become rare. A friend of mine says Rover 75 body parts are virtually unobtainable because of the tooling going to China for that 75 'replica' they make. This has plummeted their value and makes any collision a write off. Surely, old Jaguars will be better supported than old Rovers? 
Only time will tell, but I don't think TATA have any interest in moving the manufacturing overseas. I think they will keep everything as it is and instil some of their management at the top. Some of the JAG/LR processes will no doubt help TATA's own brand of cars, as well as this much talked about link up with Fiat to sell Alfa's alongside in the States. But as TATA has done with all of their international company purchases, all has been left alone. Tetley tea would surely be the easiest and cheapest company to move to India where the stuff comes from, but they haven't.
Jaguar and LR are no Rover. The 75 was an excellent car, but they had no other products, the 25 and 45 were absolutely ancient. Instead, Jag have the new XK, XF and XJ next year and LR already getting ready for the new Disco RR Sport and RR in 2012.
I do hope this is a seamless transition from one owner to the next and the business of turning Jaguar into an uber brand continues unabated.
Jaguar and LR are no Rover. The 75 was an excellent car, but they had no other products, the 25 and 45 were absolutely ancient. Instead, Jag have the new XK, XF and XJ next year and LR already getting ready for the new Disco RR Sport and RR in 2012.
I do hope this is a seamless transition from one owner to the next and the business of turning Jaguar into an uber brand continues unabated.
Edited by Triple7 on Wednesday 26th March 09:54
scruffy said:
Serves them right for selling it to Ford...
The alternative was GM buying Jag back then. Do you think they'd have been better for Jaguar than Ford were? All Jaguars could have ended up being built on an increasingly stretched Cavalier platform.Ford haven't been perfect, but they have given Jaguar a lot of rope and a hell of cash. Ford have improved the quality at Jaguar enormously. Trying driving a pre-Ford XJS and a Ford owned Jaguar XJS.
The big problem was that Ford ran out of cash to shower over Jaguar before they finished solving the problems. Ford were also not brave enough. The S-Type and the X-Type were too conservative at introduction. The previous XJ was just too loved, no wanted the styling buggered about with, so X350 ended up too conservative too. But they would have been panned if they'd tried to go in a new direction straight from X308, doing that would have needed extreme braveness - not a well know characteristic of big publicly owned companies.
Fingers crossed Tata will in the position to let Jaguar thrive. I hope they've arrived in time to reap the reward for all of Ford's investment.
Can't be any worse than the British Leyland years!!! My old XJS was made out of tin foil and double sided sticky tape-I am surprised it lasted as long as it did! On the other hand, I'm helping my dad strip down on old (1966)S type so he can race it,and I am amazed at how solidly it was built,no wonder it weighed 2 tons!!!
It wont work. Tata are already trying to raise $2 Billions in the short term money market plus a further $1 Billion for incidentals(to finance Jaguars purchase (and this is not a good time to raise that sort of money!). In addition they will have to inject Millions to expand the product range & upgrade the manufacturing process. As usual this transaction is driven by ego - in this case by the principle shareholder in Tata - Tata!. Indian shareholders have recognised this by marking down Tata shares by som 30%. And frankly if Ford could do nothing with Jaguar what hope has a third world company with zero experiance of an up market car manufacturer?
Myobb said:
It wont work. Tata are already trying to raise $2 Billions in the short term money market plus a further $1 Billion for incidentals(to finance Jaguars purchase (and this is not a good time to raise that sort of money!). In addition they will have to inject Millions to expand the product range & upgrade the manufacturing process. As usual this transaction is driven by ego - in this case by the principle shareholder in Tata - Tata!. Indian shareholders have recognised this by marking down Tata shares by som 30%. And frankly if Ford could do nothing with Jaguar what hope has a third world company with zero experiance of an up market car manufacturer?
:yawn: Ford f
ked it up by trying to make Jag a mass car producer. TATA know that to make Jag work they have to make a profit from each unit sold and not from trying to make money from mass production a la Ford.Another problem Tata won't have is the enormous pension bill Ford are having to carry, which has proved - especially in the US - an enormous drain on resources.
IMO the Tata deal is a good thing. It's going to be interesting to see what direction they take the company in, as I can't think on any other car manufacturer who has such a diverse range of potential customers.
On the one hand there's the more traditional buyer like me, who prefers the classic XJ shape and wants lots of chrome, wood and leather and frankly couldn't care less about the dated image, and on the other there's the more image aware, cutting edge buyer who demands a fresh approach to style, frequent new models and up to the minuite technology who would be horrified with the brand being associated with older buyers like me.
Untill enthusiasts like me for the more traditional approach have all snuffed it, Jaguar/Tata will have to keep us happy and make a product we are prepared to buy if they want to keep us as customers. Which really throws a spanner in the works, if they also - and IMO they must - attract buyers who demand cutting edge technology and a fresh approach to styling.
And the real problem here is that the cutting edge buyer already has a massive choice from several premium european and eastern manufacturers, and would probrably choose any one of them except Jaguar unless the brand undergoes a major image change. So not only has the image got to change, but it's also got to break the loyalties already estabished with other manufacturers, who may already have made customers for life by giving them exactly the car they want and the image that's associated with it.
Interesting....
IMO the Tata deal is a good thing. It's going to be interesting to see what direction they take the company in, as I can't think on any other car manufacturer who has such a diverse range of potential customers.
On the one hand there's the more traditional buyer like me, who prefers the classic XJ shape and wants lots of chrome, wood and leather and frankly couldn't care less about the dated image, and on the other there's the more image aware, cutting edge buyer who demands a fresh approach to style, frequent new models and up to the minuite technology who would be horrified with the brand being associated with older buyers like me.
Untill enthusiasts like me for the more traditional approach have all snuffed it, Jaguar/Tata will have to keep us happy and make a product we are prepared to buy if they want to keep us as customers. Which really throws a spanner in the works, if they also - and IMO they must - attract buyers who demand cutting edge technology and a fresh approach to styling.
And the real problem here is that the cutting edge buyer already has a massive choice from several premium european and eastern manufacturers, and would probrably choose any one of them except Jaguar unless the brand undergoes a major image change. So not only has the image got to change, but it's also got to break the loyalties already estabished with other manufacturers, who may already have made customers for life by giving them exactly the car they want and the image that's associated with it.
Interesting....
Triple7 said:
The horrendous US 'Gorgeous' Campaign was not the right start! 
No, exactly. WTF was that trying to say about the Jaguar brand image? Go traditional? Go modern? Go in between, or go off in a completely new direction that's all flash and overstyled? People buy premium cars with a lot of heart and not quite as much head in my view - especially considering how much it costs to run one, and more importantly what else that spare cash could be used for instead of a new car.
If the worldwide economy is going tits up, selling expensive cars is about to become very hard work indeed
I think it's possible to appeal to traditional Jaguar customer and people who want the latest and greatest thing. I love my XJ (and my XK 
) but my view of a Jaguar is that it should be svelte, perhaps modern safety legislation is our biggest enemy hear. You can't have protruding bumpers, which steals one of the traditional ways of breaking up the front of the car. You can't have the low slung bonnet, there has to be a certain safety margin between the bonnet and the top of the engine or anything hard.
I don't think it would be impossible to design a car that was both obviously an XJ and also looked very modern. There was a time when the XJ was just that car.
I think that Jaguar needs to separate itself from the other manufactures in an increasingly full and competitive market place. They need not to try and make Jaguar's a knock-off of a BMW. The newer MBs I've driven seem to have stopped being Mercs, at least they don't feel to me like them, they have changed their suspension tuning to be Beamerish, well surely not everyone want a car that feels like a BMW, I prefer the way my XJ rides, I prefer the way it corners. To my mind it does both things better, and that's also part of being a Jaguar. I remember a review of the X300 against the then current 5 and E-class, where they were comparing the bump absorption and the Jaguar drivers was say what bumps on that road?
We are never going to see a return to the situation in the fifties and early sixties where you could but a Jaguar for a small fraction of the price of a basic BMW or MB. Those economics just won't work now, half of Jaguar's problems are probably that they didn't work then either.
Fingers crossed that they'll find a viable way forward.
And fingers crossed that they can stay being Jaguars.
) but my view of a Jaguar is that it should be svelte, perhaps modern safety legislation is our biggest enemy hear. You can't have protruding bumpers, which steals one of the traditional ways of breaking up the front of the car. You can't have the low slung bonnet, there has to be a certain safety margin between the bonnet and the top of the engine or anything hard. I don't think it would be impossible to design a car that was both obviously an XJ and also looked very modern. There was a time when the XJ was just that car.
I think that Jaguar needs to separate itself from the other manufactures in an increasingly full and competitive market place. They need not to try and make Jaguar's a knock-off of a BMW. The newer MBs I've driven seem to have stopped being Mercs, at least they don't feel to me like them, they have changed their suspension tuning to be Beamerish, well surely not everyone want a car that feels like a BMW, I prefer the way my XJ rides, I prefer the way it corners. To my mind it does both things better, and that's also part of being a Jaguar. I remember a review of the X300 against the then current 5 and E-class, where they were comparing the bump absorption and the Jaguar drivers was say what bumps on that road?
We are never going to see a return to the situation in the fifties and early sixties where you could but a Jaguar for a small fraction of the price of a basic BMW or MB. Those economics just won't work now, half of Jaguar's problems are probably that they didn't work then either.
Fingers crossed that they'll find a viable way forward.
And fingers crossed that they can stay being Jaguars.
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