DNA?! Inbreeding leads to genetic defects.

Today, Land Rover owes its profitability to the Germans. L322 (New Range Rover) is a BMW product. The Germans reinvented the Brand away from Range Rover P38., NOT the Brits. Yes, BMW did rip off off-road technology in the process.

Jaguar is nearly dead today because for years it was mainly staffed by Brits who sold cars designed solely by and for the Midlands, in North-America, mainly to their aging customer base. The nail in the coffin for Jag was spending a cool $1 Billion on X350 (New XJ) and making it look exactly like X300 (Old XJ) in order not to upset its British/WASP Customer base.

As for Jaguar Brand DNA one word would suffice to illustrate my point: “Gorgeous.”
Incest has given Jaguar enough recessive genes for the next 50 generations.

One thing I gotta add is that investors/VCs always have a “say,” and they’ll use it if the figures don’t add up on the balance sheet. Whether they publicly admit that is irrelevant.

And I would be careful about using that as a metric for what country owns what. Because GM and Ford are traded on the stock market which means, by your logic, GM and Ford aren’t American but owned by many countries.

According to Carlos Ghosn’s book, Nissan is 44.4% owned by Renault (who subsequently own 15% of Renault), 6% by japanese companies and the rest are private pension firms. So, therefore, pension firms can make good cars…..

Culture, point of view and national flavor do indeed matter. Jaguar and Land Rover need to be owned and staffed by Brits in order for there to be real “brand DNA”.

Volvo likewise should be an actual honest to goodness Swedish company and should offer the market an honest to goodness Swedish interpretation of the automobile.

The notion that anyone can own anything and still maintain the philosophical integrity of the brand is rubbish. Look what happened when the Germans tried to run Chrysler!

Contrary to popular opinion, Mazda is not thriving under Ford ownership but is simply continuing to exist.

Jaguar can no more be managed by Indians (or Americans) than VW could be managed by Brazilians … and VW has a long history of manufacturing in Brazil.

Now with global financial markets in near meltdown I wonder if any of the UK groups who were bidding for Jag/LR can still get the money together? If a new auction is held today the price is almost certain to come down from the Ford-Tata deal as the auto business and world economy have deteriorated even more since that deal was made.

Everyone would have won. Ford gets shot of Jaguar and keeps cash cow Land Rover, Jagaur gets a owner who can give the one thing Jaguar has been lacking (passion) and the UK would no longer have to be subject to the jokes of not having a car industry*!

* = Not strictly true, we’ve got Aston Martin back! :O)