Tata Motors fancying Jaguar, Land Rover?

[Thad E Ginathom]

Rover passed from alliance with Honda (my Rover was a british Accord) to BMW to oblivion.

If anything spoilt their chances with the Rover and MG cars they were manufacturing in the latter days, it was the customer's worry that the company simply would not be around for the life of the warranty, let alone as a supplier of service and parts into the future. It was a pity; I really liked those later cars, and the MG* models were, I think, pretty hot.

It is a tainted brand, from which Landrover was successfully disassociated. If association with Honda or BMW couldn't save it, association with Tata certainly won't resurrect it.

I'd guess that the 'average' Brit, if he can imagine an Indian vehicle at all, will think of brightly painted trucks, auto-rickshaws and maybe the Ambassador. That is, he'll think of stuff that he regards as fifty years out of date.

I still think, anyway, that the Rover name now belongs to some guys in China. iraghava appears to agree on this, ajmat thinks it belongs to Ford.

*afterthought: as far as UK is concerned, MG would probably be a better brand for resurrection. Who owns that: the chinese?

[ajmat]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

.

I still think, anyway, that the Rover name now belongs to some guys in China. iraghava appears to agree on this, ajmat thinks it belongs to Ford.
?

Nope - check out what auntie beeb has to say:
BBC NEWS | Business | Rover brand name passes to Ford

MG and Rover infrastructure belongs to Nanjing Automotive
Rover - belongs to Ford, the IP designs to the Rover 75 belong to Shanghai auto, if they owned the Rover name, why have they called their car "Roewe" ?

[Mpower]

Yup, Nanjing got hoodwinked just like VW did when they bought the outdated Rolce Royce factory but BMW got the rights to the name. I hope TATAs are reading the fine print.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Ajmat, thanks for the clarification on that.

So Ford bought it in to protect Landrover; I can see the point of that.

But I still think it has very little marketing value.

Even though I owned a Rover 620, even though I thought the 75 was a really nice car --- I still tend to associate Rover with the company my grandfather worked for, and the car he drove, fifty years ago!

But I associate MG with youth and natty sports cars.

[Tstag]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

Ajmat, thanks for the clarification on that.

So Ford bought it in to protect Landrover; I can see the point of that.

But I still think it has very little marketing value.

Even though I owned a Rover 620, even though I thought the 75 was a really nice car --- I still tend to associate Rover with the company my grandfather worked for, and the car he drove, fifty years ago!

But I associate MG with youth and natty sports cars.

Rover does have an old person's image, but if Jag can overcome that with the XF then it will be just as easy for Rover. Basically TATA has 3 choices when marketing cars in Europe:

1: Use the Tata brand - a big no no because it sounds like Tatty and Tata's have a bad reputation for making cars in the UK. This would be the worst possible choice in my view.

2: Create a new brand: This may work but plenty of evidence suggests this willl take at least 10 years to make an impact in Europe. See Smart (loss making), Lexus (Jag outsells it, with cars it's getting rid of) and Ssangyong (UK Importer just went bust), Proton (who?), Kia (good cars, but it's taken 15 years to persuade the Europeans)....

3: Use the tarnished Rover brand - needs good, exciting cars to work but will make an imediate impact. Lot's of press = marketing dream. As an example it took Ssangyong years to establish hust 22 dealers in the UK. MG is relaunching with 0 dealers but 150 dealers have already registered an interest, despite the fact they only have 1 model (a low volume sportscar)!

Given the choices I think Rover is the lesser of all evils and may even be able to leverage sales off Land Rover if the product is of sufficent quality.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Ssangyong ---Who?

Very conservative, us Brits, when it comes to car brands.

[Steeroid]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

Ssangyong ---Who?

Very conservative, us Brits, when it comes to car brands.

Perhaps this is why you have no car industry left to speak of while the Koreans are thriving?

[khanak]

Originally Posted by prasadee

They could also focus on China, Brazil, South Africa and other emerging markets. I'd say screw the US market, and focus on the markets where you can sell.

The US market is too big to be ignored by Jag/LR. Also its not like BRIC nations are less concious about where there cars are built. Im sure a lot of us would look at Russian built TVRs in a different way.

[himanshugoswami]

this deal is making even more sense for Tata's- they can really drive down the cost of production since many suppliers are Tata companies:
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Ford's naming of Tata Motors as the preferred bidder for Jaguar Land Rover doesn't come as a surprise for industry watchers familiar with the Tata group.

But what most are not aware is that there's already a little bit of Tata in both of them.

For one - Tata-owned steel company Corus is a major supplier of automotive steel to Ford - the owner of the two marquee brands. Both Land Rover and Jaguar use Corus' products like rear door panels, body side panels, drive shafts and radiators, besides others.

Land Rover's legendary rugged capabilities couldn't have been possible without a strong chassis - built with Corus' tubular steel frames. And as it faces new challenges of meeting strict emission norms and be more fuel efficient, Corus is helping it do so by supplying lighter steel.

Declining to comment on JLR, Tata Steel MD, B Muthuraman said, “Corus is a major supplier of steel to Ford in europe. It's one of the top automotive steel suppliers.”

But Tata’s influence does not end there.

Tata's automotive components company Tata Autocomp Systems or TACo supplies auto components to Land Rover and Jaguar out of Pune, through its joint venture with Spanish auto component major Ficosa.

Tata has pervaded JLR further for Tata Technologies, Tata’s automotive and aerospace engineering and design services arm, has been providing services to Jaguar and Land Rover through its UK-based arm Incat since four years. In fact, 60 of Incat's engineers have been helping Jaguar and Land Rover design software for their portfolio.

It doesn't come as a surprise, then, that Ford is in detailed negotiations with Tata Motors.

Source:

Jaguar, Land Rover run on Tata components

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by Steeroid

Perhaps this is why you have no car industry left to speak of while the Koreans are thriving?

That is a long story, and one that many BHPians, even if they have never visited my country, probably know bettter than I do, but I'd say that the key reasons are:

1. Totally screwed up labour relations with bad management and the unions in an absurdly powerful position (and my politics are left-of-centre, and I do believe in trade unions!).

2. A really dreadful product. My parents' Fords used to be rusting in a couple of years. Brits took it for granted that cars didn't start on cold, wet mornings --- in a cold wet country HaHa!

I don't know about European imports at the time, but I think it was the Japanese who brought us reliable cars that started in January as well as june, and hey! They had warranties that covered the bodies for several years!

[spawnofsatan]

If tata does end up buying jaguar and land rover, do you think they would set up a dealership in India? and if that would happen, would they sell them cheaper (minus the ridiculous 181% import duty). Its sad that all the imports are selling at ridiculously high prices in India due to the government, will the import duty ever come down?

[akshay1234]

they probably will get jag and lr to india. but i guess it would sell with the import duty.

[Tstag]

OK so maybe that's going a bit far but JLR looks very profitable now, Ford not so:

The Associated Press: Ford Offers Buyouts As Losses Narrow

[sreedotk]

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.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Asset striping means buying a company and selling off everything of value in the name of short-term profit. As Tata is not buying Ford (Errr.... yet!?*) this does not apply.

And this deal, about which an announcement wasexpected 'in the new year' has still not actually happened.

* They seem to be cash-rich; buying a main-stream manufacturer might make a lot of sense for them