Tata Buys Jaguar & Land Rover For $1.15billion

Originally Posted by BBC News

Car giant Ford has sold its luxury UK-based car brands Jaguar and Land Rover to Indian company Tata.

Tata, India's biggest vehicle maker, is paying $2.3bn (£1.15bn) for the British brands after months of negotiations over price and supply relationships.

The negotiations started last June when Ford announced its intention to sell the companies as a package.

Jaguar and Land Rover employ about 16,000 staff at UK plants in the West Midlands and Merseyside.

Although Land Rover remains profitable, Ford has never managed to make money from its investment in Jaguar.

Let's hope the job's over in Halewood remain secure.

This should herald the eventual relaunch of the Rover brand (in the UK and Europe at least) in 2009 or 2010 if widespread reports from India are to be believed...

Nice to see an end to this saga, the deal has been in the works for months now.

BBC News Report

Think there's confusion over the 'rover' badging, as I think BMW still own the name. I can't remember but it's strange (which is why the Chinese can't brand the cars as 'Rover' even though they bought the company - they're called 'Roewe' now!!).

Originally Posted by Station

Think there's confusion over the 'rover' badging, as I think BMW still own the name. I can't remember but it's strange (which is why the Chinese can't brand the cars as 'Rover' even though they bought the company - they're called 'Roewe' now!!).

Nope... NAC wanted to buy the brand as part of the MG Rover deal, but due to a contractual agreement made when BMW sold Land Rover to Ford, it meant Ford had first refusal on the brand should the Rover brand ever go bust to protect the Land Rover brand.

Ford took up this option and paid £6million for the Rover brand via their PAG division, which meant that it was part of the Land Rover brand, albeit defunct, and Ford never had any plan's to use it again.

Due to the sale of PAG to Tata, it mean's they now take control of the Rover brand alongside Land Rover and Jaguar. And for the past 6 months or so, the news in India has been that Tata are planning to relaunch the brand in the UK and Europe sometime in 2009 or 2010 as an alternative to using the Tata brand, to help them gain market share.

The new Rover brand will sit nicely below Land Rover and Jaguar as a more mainstream brand.

Also, the big problem Tata have with it, will be if they just rebadge shite Tata car's as Rover, the public arnt stupid and won't buy it. But they are pretty clever and I doubt they will be stupid enough to land themselves in the same situation as Rover did when they rebranded the £3000 Tata Indica and tried to sell it as a £7000 car.

The future possibility of a strategic collaboration between SAIC/NAC and Tata is also not completely off the cards; It would be clever for them to use the Rover brand as opposed to Roewe or SsangYong for any future launch of the 250, 450 or 750 in Europe.

Of course, any deal between SAIC/NAC and Tata would most likely be very complicated and take ages for them to work out, so it's more likely that Tata will just use the brand to their sole advantage and launch their own car's under it instead.

For some reason people say im sad when i like there 4x4 they say its shit.. most prob is but i dunno i like it for some reason ?

What one do you mean? The Safari?

yer

i dunno it just looks evil haha..

lol i think it looks a bit lame

LOL ive just read What Cars verdict on it. Well looks nice but its what under the cover that counts i guess its SUCKS!! haha.. Maybe buy it and mod it to the max (New engine, New everything haha) oh well i need to get out more

haha yes you do lmao!!

Tata Escalade anyone