What hope with ú6 Billion loss

[cris_408518]

I've seen a few romours about Aston Martin, Jaguar and even Land Rover being sold off by Ford.

Land Rover have taken a knocking this week over poor relaibility and £500 average repair bills and have been said not to be Ford bosses favourite baby.

Ford reckon they will be back in profit by 2009, but at what cost to Britain and some of our historic marques.

Rover has gone and how do you stand now buying a Ford, Jag or LR when you take into account the Anti Motorist stance of Government, red Ken and others.

 

[CliveV]

Certainly Ford has a problem but it is mainly linked to the US operation where for years the concept of car development was to stick with old designs and just add leather and other gizmos.

Interestingly this has had the advantage in that these older style cars like the Jeep (I know it is not a Ford before anyone leaps up to correct me!) have been cheaper to produce, more easily recycled and therefore "greener" according to surveys than cars like the Pious that have high technology materials and toxic batteries.

Land Rover is the "profit" star in Fords PAG. But for the move of the Freelander 2 production to a Jaguar assembly line, I believe that Jaguar would be no more. Or at least would have been sold off.

However, as Volvo, Jag and Land Rover, together with other PAG members, all share resources and technology, I do see that Ford will be able to work its way out of this problem.

Again it is a personal view, but to me the Ford brand name is suitable for the "mass market" - including the fleet buyer. the others are other distinct market segments.

If they all share a certain commonality then so much the better.

 

[cris_408518]

I seem to remeber about 5 years back that it was predicted that one of the big name motoring marques would fold by about 2010.

Jaguar seem to be trying to fight in the BMW / Audi / Merc market but don't quite seem to be getting there and Aston to some extent are also doing the same but turnig out far pricier performance cars.

Without getting into a LR fight,there are issues and with a new range of cars that are not expensive to some but pretty pricy to others and with the marques reliability taking a hammering in the press again I think Ford will have a rocky problem as LR needs the export market and other cars sell much cheaper else where and have the reliability record that they are still striving to achieve.

 

[Guest]

I agree that there have been 'stars' and 'duds' in Ford's PAG group and hope like Clive that the interaction, but definitely not integration, will give some benefits. According to data I saw some time back rhe main profit marque was Volvo and Jaguar along with Aston Martin were losing money. AM is such a niche market that that part does not really surprise me, and LR also operates in a limited area of the marketplace compared to mainstream manufacturers. However, Jaguar definitely needs to do something as it is severely limted by its model range. The X type was a start but hopefully the new model will tickle the customer's fancy a bit more.

I just don't want a return to the BMC philosophy of badge engineering and they are all the same underneath.

 

[CliveV]

Well LR sales were reasonably healthy in 2006:-

4% up world wide

3.5% up in the USA (80% growth in the RR Sport)

54% up in Middle East

43% up in North Africa

In the UK:-

RR Sport up 52%

RR up 12.5%

The Freelander 2 only went on sale in mid Dec but managed nearly 900 sales.

In contrast it looks like Jaguar sales were down some 30% in 2006. Not Good!

And I mean not good for the PAG group as a whole because as Scotch Lad indicates the whole idea of the PAG is to utilise common components as far as is possible.

So the fear is that if one goes down there could be a kind of domino effect. However, the rumour I heard was that if Ford sells Jaguar, the LR2 (Freelander) and the LR1 (Future Three door Freelander and another mooted vehicle rumoured to be a 2WD version (spit!)) would simply take over that production line.

Even the new 4x4 Volvo could be built at Halewood as it shares the same floorpan and some of the drivetrain components as the LR2.

It is all rumour of course.

Personally I really hope the Jaguar team makes it work. It deserves to.

 

[cris_408518]

BMW sales last year up 5% !

I'm looking for a drive in a new Jaguar (http://www.apexmotorsport.co.uk/ for anyone with blood in their veinsa nd a love of fast cars) GT3 built by Richard Lloyds Apex team that developed the LeMans winning Bentley for VW/Audi.

To me there seems to be some conflict having an AM and a Jag race program running at the same time, it could be a sign that there will be a parting at some point.

Land Rover seems to lack a racing profile, Dakar rallye raid would give it a profile with somebody such as Prodrive operating a slick assault on the sands of Africa.