http://www.autoblog.com/2008/03/25/breaking-ford-sells-jaguar-land-rover-for-2-billion-to-tata/ Autoblog Comments for http://www.autoblog.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.autoblog.com en-us Copyright 2008 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.autoblog.com/2008/03/25/breaking-ford-sells-jaguar-land-rover-for-2-billion-to-tata/http://www.autoblog.com/2008/03/25/breaking-ford-sells-jaguar-land-rover-for-2-billion-to-tata/The US$ 1 Billion nail in the coffin X350 (XJ) can be attributed to Jag's inbred Brit/Midland culture as in "We make cars for our dwindling/aging base of customers. Damn the rest. We know better."

Tata will probably hang on to Jaguar for PR reasons but will "lease" it to Alfa and any other manufacturer looking for technology / platform, etc...

Most of the Rover (Leyland) top guys are already working for Cherry, NAC, etc... I predict that some of the Top Jag guys will ultimately get top jobs in China, Turkey or India (Marutti, Koch, Tofas, etc..).

Land Rover? Land Rover made plenty of cash for Ford. However, the LR brand as we knew it is dead (b*lls out Camel Trophy replaced by Metrosexual G4).
Let's from now on talk solely about RR. That is where the money is and will be.
Luxury good are pretty impervious to market conditions. Only hurdle is to get the CAFE/EU CO2 numbers down in the future. That could be achieved by selling more small engines in the US, EU OR merging with a high volume low CO2 Manufacturer hence the potential tie up with Alfa, Fiat, and Tata combined speculations in the press.
Hybrid, Aluminum, start/stop technology will help.
Land Rover might disappear with Defender. LR2 and LR3 are not proper LR nor are they proper Range Rovers. They are mutants in between LR and RR.

The Range Rover, RR Sport, RR Mini, RR LRX Tart whatever will live on and make money for Tata.
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