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Jaguar and Land Rover Angle For Production In China
First time accepted submitter ourlovecanlastforeve writes "Those of you still hanging on to Jaguar and Land Rover as the last vestiges of the truly British automobile in the States may find yourselves grasping at straws as Chery announces a nearly two billion dollar joint effort with the auto brand to move production to Changsu in China." Anyone still hanging on to that idea might also be interested to learn that Jaguar and Land Rover are subsidiaries of India's Tata, maker of the low-priced Nano.
My opinion,this is how it breaks down:
Jaguar - the name means high maintainence! Or Land Rover, the name means shit fuel economy!
Really it'll be great.
Owned by Indians, built by Chinese, bought by Americans and marketed as British.
This must be the epitome of globalization.
Give 'em a few years and they'll be out of China, looking for cheaper labour in Africa or somesuch.
As long as they stick some imitation wood-grain on the dash the snobs will still buy them1
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
What does "last vestiges of the truly British automobile in the States" mean? Does it mean something different than "last vestiges of the truly British automobile in the world." Or does this stupid sentence mean something else stupid?
Their they're doing there hair.
I've certainly heard of people who seek cars made in a certain country, but does anyone actually value this more than whether their car is a piece of shit?
In any event, reducing the auto industry in certain countries may help to discourage auto-friendly subsidies and allow competing industries to emerge.
I, for one, am ready for my self-driving vehicle (and I don't care where it's made).
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
For some reason, it still blows my mind that it can be cheaper to manufacture a vehicle and then transport it halfway across the world than it could be to manufacture the vehicle locally.
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The linked blog article reports roughly 20% of the full story. In actual fact, the UK factories are maxed out and employing more and more people, and only production destined for the Chinese market is being moved to China as part of this joint venture.
http://www.toomanycars.info/CarRelationship/Auto%20Family%20Tree%202008-Layout2.png
^This graphic is many years out of date, but it'll give you an idea of the complicated relationships that car manufacturers have.
When it comes down to it, the car companies that aren't partially owned by one another are all cross licensing technology and sharing engines or chassises with one another.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
For some reason, it still blows my mind that it can be cheaper to manufacture a vehicle and then transport it halfway across the world than it could be to manufacture the vehicle locally.
I'd tend to agree with you, but then we would overestimate the real-world cost of transportation. If transport halfway across the globe is feasible for oil, bananas & cheap plastic toys, why would it not be feasible for high-tech products like electronics, cars etc?
Labor cost is what counts. Relative to that, transport is cheap.
Tata Motors is a subsidiary of the Tata group. The latter is worth at least USD100B which makes it larger than BMW. The former and its subsidiaries also make everything from lorries, buses, and heavy lifting equipment to a number of other road cars besides the Nano. The Nano is in many ways considered a relative failure in India and it's their other cars which are more popular.
While export might be a possibility, the article clearly mentions that the Chinese domestic market alone demands 40000 imported JLR models which will very likely increase dramatically when they are produced locally and sold with cheaper price tags. A little googling would have also revealed that China is fast becoming the company's largest market and that JLR is expanding its factories in England and hiring more people.
If anybody needed an example of FUD, the OP would be an apt candidate.
Quillem : An India-centric mishmash of things.
Given that Jaguar and Land Rover are no more British than Ford is American - they're all global brands, these days, and even figuring out who owns what is a pain.
However, you can still get a British car in the States; there are a couple of importers selling Morgans here.
(I have no idea if you'd WANT a Morgan, but I admit they're neat lookin'.)
makes sense to service markets in China, Japan and India (etc), where particular models are in high demand.
Landrovers in the sense of the Defender line have been manufactured under licence worldwide for some time now.
Although owned by Tata, Jaguar Landrover is still headquartered in the UK and design and manufacture is UK based too, with plants in the West Midlands (Solihull, West Bromwich) and on Merseyside (Halewood). Halewood currently produces Jaguar cars (don't know which particular models!), the LandRover Freelander and the RangeRover Evoque.
SO
As someone above proposed an advertising strapline, here's a fairer summary.
Jaguar Landrover. Owned by Indians, Designed in Britain, Built in Britain, Marketed as British, Sold to anyone who wants one. Worldwide.
Do the Brits have any cars left made in England ??
This might become one example where the Chinese made product is more reliable than original.
The libertarians will say that this is just the free market in action.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Welcome to the 21st century. Annoy China and you'll all be riding horses. It's ironic enough that your national car companies are owned by a former colony. How far the empire has fallen.
Sad to see many posters trotting out old reliability myths.
Jaguar have topped JD Power Satisfaction rankings, and many other rankings, on and off for years now. The unreliable ones you're talking about were made in the 70s and 80s by, effectively, British Leyland.
Things looked up in the early 90s when Ford took over. They started bringing modernised toolsets to the construction process, and as a result reliability started climbing. It has continued climbing until it is now well ahead of <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=mercedes%20reliability&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8">Mercedes</a>, for example, which is trotted out often as some form of reliability paragon.
It takes a long time to change reputation, that's the problem. That reputation didn't match reality as of about 1995 onwards (possibly slightly earlier) with the dumping of the XJ40 and the move to the X300 design (still marketed as XJ6/XJ8), but people still trot out what they once heard in a bar or from their dad. It's annoying - drop it. Jaguars are as reliable, if not more so, as anything else in their class.
Personally I've owned XJ40 and X300-type XJ6 cars (one a Sovereign, one an XJR). I've owned an X-Type and an S-Type, and am currently contemplating an older XF. During the same time period a friend of mine has owned BMWs and Audis - we've spent about the same on garage bills (an RS8 being a notable exception - bills dwarfed anything I'd seen on the Jags). The X and the S were fine, the XJ40 electrically temperamental, the X300 (XJR) was just superb.
Cheers,
Ian
JLR is actually doing rather well at the moment. The vehicles are UK designed, and JLR is taking on large numbers of staff in the UK to do more design work. I know several ex-colleagues who went to work there.
It is because of the growing Chinese market, that some assembly of vehicles will be added in China, not due to the costs in the UK.
Now that British/American style management has been removed from JLR, there is much better long term planning, and much stronger investment in the product line.
If I was working for JLR, I'd much happily work under Indian management, rather than the mediocre bean-counting 'business degree' incompetents, who ran all of the indigineous British car industry into the ground.
Of course, matters are even worse in the United States. The US car companies still have this type of management, and are completely bankrupt hulks, with terrible product lines. I am shocked, on every visit to the United States, just how bad their vehicles are.
I was shopping for a car last night, and while reading stickers was struck that the Honda Pilot actually has more domestic parts than the Dodge Durango, and not by a little bit. I knew that this was at least potentially true, but was really struck when I saw it on the label.
I don't really care who owns the company, because they're just fat cats (and can starve for all I care.) I care who actually gets the middle class jobs involved in auto manufacturing.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
In actual fact, the really rich Chinese would probably still import the vehicles because there is a brand image and greater snobbishness for European built as opposed to China-built.
As for JLR as a company.. they've been doing really well and Jaguar have revitalised the brand with complete new lineup that isn't a throwback to the 70s but much more modern and sleek. I can't wait for the F-Type to come out!
Good luck going to war against China.
Deleted
I would be interested in a neutral, credible, source to support your trolls.
Oh come on now. Tata is mainly a staffing company. Tata specializes in replacing US, and European IT workers with cheaper Indian workers.
The car companies are a side-line, at best.
I'm sure that the unions will love this move. Remember when Boeing first tried to create a "new production site" in South Carolina. [/sarcasm]
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I have a '93 XJS convertible. It has been utterly reliable- in the time that I have owned it, it has never spent a day in the shop. There are a couple of problems- the cigarette lighter doesn't work, and it may never have worked- it and the ashtrays are spotless, and have been since Day One. And as to the Air Conditioning: the British concept of Air Conditioning has always been so... quaint.
Gas mileage- not so hot. 14mpg around my quite hilly town. Double that on the Freeway.
Ford did an excellent job with fixing Jaguar. It's a shame that they failed so badly with their own cars back then.
My first car was a beat up 1965 Rover 2000SC. It and a Redwood tree had a very bad argument one day- I walked away unscratched. My next car was a beat up 1966 Mustang fastback, with the 271 HP V8, the one with the solid valve lifters. It was a real pig of a car. It couldn't steer straight, brake straight, or accelerate straight. And anything involving going around corners... well, what could one expect for $375?
My most reliable car? A Mercedes 300SD. I never had a problem- until a Elm tree fell on it. (Northern California- trees happen.) My most unreliable car? A Mercedes 300D, which in the course of two months, went through two fanbelts, a water pump, an alternator, a starter, a battery, a glow plug, a glow plug relay... and the cigarette lighter and Air Conditioning didn't work.
Maybe I've just been lucky with my XJS.
You wouldn't be caught dead in Landrover, well unless you're a poser. Now, get a fully loaded Toyota Land CRUISER, then we're talking.
Funny how the Chinese use tariffs to protect their industries and their economy is booming while our leadership bleats "unfettered trade, no taxes!" and our economy is declining and our government going bankrupt. Surely the communist Chinese are adhereing to the lenin axiom "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." Our pie-eyed leadership is so focused on short term greed that they cannot see the long term threat.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
So f@ck you all
mostly because the gov't is forcing them too. The increased fuel economy and safety requirements raised the price of cars so much it wasn't worth making junk. Read consumer reports and you'll find they US and Japanese cars are pretty close, if not identical.
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My vote goes to Morgan Motor Company:
The Morgan Motor Company is a British motor car manufacturer. The company was founded in 1910 by Harry Frederick Stanley Morgan, generally known as "HFS" and was run by him until he died, aged 77, in 1959.[1] Peter Morgan, son of H.F.S., ran the company until a few years before his death in 2003. The company is currently run by Charles Morgan, the son of Peter Morgan.
Morgan is based in Malvern Link, an area of Malvern, Worcestershire and employs 163 people. Morgan produced 640 cars in 2007. All the cars are assembled by hand. The waiting list for a car is approximately one to two years, although it has been as high as ten years in the past.
There is also Bristol, although it sounds like they aren't building cars at the moment:
Bristol Cars is a manufacturer of hand-built luxury cars headquartered in Patchway, near Bristol, United Kingdom. Bristol have always been a low-volume manufacturer; the most recent published official production figures were for 1982, which stated that 104 cars were produced in that year. While no official figures have been produced since then it is believed[by whom?] that in recent years production has been around 20 cars per annum.
Unlike most speciality automakers, Bristol does not court publicity and has only one showroom, located on Kensington High Street in London. Nevertheless the company maintains an enthusiastic and loyal clientele.
The company suspended manufacturing in March 2011, when administrators were appointed and 22 staff were made redundant. In April 2011, the company was purchased by the Kamkorp Group.
TVR was very British up until they stopped production... Jaguar and Land Rover rank a lot lower on the British scale to this car guy.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Mercedes is worthy of it's reputation for reliability... provided you own one made before 1994, which is when their build quality started to nosedive.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
Some of you idiots need to uncork your heads out of your anus's.
99.99% of you whiners about dodgy Chinese quality control, have your apartments full of possessions that are made in China.
Trash talk is only cool if you're not a fucking hypocrite.
There are A LOT of people who would pay more for a car made in Japan, than the same model made in the USA.
This doesn't mean that everything the American make is inferior to the Japanese counterpart.
By snapping up Jaguar and Land Rover, TATA of India may have thought they've landed a good deal
Thing is, Jaguar and Land Rover are no longer the _in_ thing
By spending $2 Billion for a factory producing Jaguar and Land Rover in Changsu, Chery of China may think that they are smart
Thing is, only stupid people buy the Jaguar and Land Rovers
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
http://noblecars.com/
Not cheap though...
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.