If the question is Ford Making a loss on selling Jag Land Rover, then i would say no as Jaguar has been consistently posting a loss in the past few years and except for the New XF all other cars are considered boring and not sought after in comparison to the other car makers.
Considering that the Premier Auto Group of which J-LR is a party the biggest money earner is Volvo followed by Land Rover. I am not sure if the profit earned by Aston Martin before it was sold to the Prodrive and kuwait fund consortium is considered. The profit may also contain the money Ford earned by selling the AM brand to Prodrive. So until you get to the nitty gritty part of the deal the profit figure might not be what it seems.
Now is the part of J-LR deal going to be a bad one for TATA, it could turn out to be bad on the Jag front if the new designs are boring like the old ones are but could turn out to be equally profitable if the new designs become a hit like the XF sedan.
Pro's for Tata
1. It can consolidate its UK based development centre with the J-LR centre and create a nice development centre
2. It has a premium brand and gets an image make over as a global car maker
3. In Land Rover it gets access to good and proven off road technology. The now famous hill decsent control was developed by Land rover and BMW got to use it as they owned LR then
4. They have an existing dealer network in Europe and other parts of the world where TATA does not have a presense .
There are cons also
1. Jag is still considered an english patient like Rover was for BMW
2. The credit rating of TATA has taken a small hit over this deal
3. TATA has too many things on its plate with the NANO on one end of the spectrum and J-LR on the other
As always it will be a few years before we know who got the better end of the deal. |