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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.
Owned by Indians, built by Chinese, bought by Americans and marketed as British.
This must be the epitome of globalization.
Have you ever driven an American car?
You get the high maintenance *and* the shit fuel economy - but not only that, you get poor braking and handling, lacklustre performance *and* poor ergonomics and aesthetics!
Now how's that for a package?
LOL probably literally. American cars are shit.
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 believe the China factory will be producing for the Chinese market. The Solihull factory is still making LRs.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
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.
Think about it. Just like American women. Just like American women.
As for me, I'll import thank you (without tariff please!).
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^This graphic is many years out of date, but it'll give you an idea of the complicated relationships that car manufacturers have.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!
It's interesting that you picked Mercedes. In the last Consumer Reports, in terms of over all brand quality, they placed Mercedes below Ford!
The other German cars makers are pretty much in the middle of the pack and after all their troubles, the Japanese still take just about all the tops spots - and Toyota is still there.
Buy smart; buy Japanese.
And as far as parts are concerned, there's only a handful of big parts suppliers in the World: Bosch, VDO, Walbro, and a couple of others that I can't remember their names. It may seem that they're are more, but they are more than likely owned by the big guys.
And ALL of them are under HUGE pressure to reduce costs (i.e make things cheaper - more plastic).
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.
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
It's an industrial revolution - it was no different in UK during ours. It's just easier to document in the 21st century. China is gradually creating a middle class, and will work itself out of the current boom. Regulations will come in, wages will increase, pollution will become more of an issue.
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.
In a sort of way, I did buy my car based on the nationality of its brand.
I like Italian cars a lot, from the high-end ridiculous supercars and in particular all the way down to their basic, characterful people's cars, like the original Fiat 500. But we have owned a number of Fiats in my family and I know all to well about the reliability and rust problems that have always plagued them.
So when I saw they had started building cars in Poland, I took notice. Contrary to popular belief, Poland is a proud, hard-working, honest and straight-forward nation with a history of solid (if unsophisticated) engineering. It was only during WW2 and the Cold War that Poland took a serious nosedive, but they've certainly been doing everything they can to get themselves out of the shadow of combined Nazi+Soviet oppression.
I have been driving my Polish-built Fiat for nearly 5 years now and I have not had a single problem with it. Mechanically, electrically etc. it has been completely flawless.
So yes, I bought my Italian car because it was built in Poland.
Eat the rich.
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?
I've owned two American cars in my life. A 1988 Pontiac Firefly, which was basic transportation, and very good on gas. I was driving it in high school, and for my limited means at the time, it made sense. It's also a car that can't be made any more, because it would never pass modern safety standards. Those same safety standards would add a significant amount of weight to the car, and it would never get the mileage that it used to, even if they were to remake it.
The second American car I owned was a 2007 Chev Aveo. That was complete unadulterated shit. It was a terrible ride, it was not as good on gas as they advertised, it was uncomfortable, it handled like you were driving through a lake, in all, it was a terrible car. For the time that I owned it, it was in for several major repairs, including one where I was without car for 2 weeks... the dealer fixed me up with a Pontiac Grand Prix as a loaner for that 2 week period. That car had a better interior, but it was still low quality/plasticky, it still handled like you were driving through a lake, and it was even worse on gas.
Contrast that with the numerous Japanese cars I have owned... I have never had a major repair on any of the Subarus I have owned, despite having more than a million km's between them. My 2011 Impreza is immensely better in ride quality and handling than any American car I've ever driven, and it actually gets the gas mileage that they advertised for the Aveo, even though it's got all-wheel drive and I'm not even trying to drive it efficiently. And it's not just Subaru that I can say that about... in my family, we have owned Honda and Toyota cars that we can say the same about.
While there are certainly European brands that I would buy if I could get them here, I would never consider buying an American car until the Americans figure out how to make a car that goes around corners. In the mean time, I have never had a bad experience with a Japanese car, and would definitely recommend them to anybody looking for a car. It's not that individual American cars which are good don't exist, it's that most of the "good" American cars are actually European or Japanese designed/built and just rebadged.