Jaguar Land Rover, now a Tata Motors owned company, is planning to shift gears at the Frankfurt Motor show. Each brand is planning to bring something new at the motorshow. More so, each company will put these models in production in the near future.
Let’s start with Jaguar. Jaguar is expected to reveal a new sports car in concept. Rumor has it that it will be a small sport car below the XK. It will be the show stopper from Jaguar and will directly compete against the Porsche Boxter.
The car could be potentially named the XE and will be powered by V6 petrol engines, boosted by turbochargers. However, there could also be a XF station wagon that the market is waiting for since a long time. Only time will tell what is this secret leaping cat.
Let’s move on to Land Rover. This brand is even more ambitious than its sister. Land Rover is planning to display a concept that will be the modern day Defender.
The current Defender dates to 1983 and is a direct descendant of the original 1948 Land Rover Series. So you can imagine how desperately the brand needs to rejig the Defender. The new Defender could be based in the LR3 chassis. The company wants the new defender to score a bigger slice of the utility market.
Back home, there are good chances that the XE will be launched considering its bigger sister XK is already in the market. However, Tata Motors is mum about bring the Defender brand in India.
Way back in 2008, Tata Motors bought the iconic British marquee Jaguar-LandRover for 2.3 billion dollars and then managed to turn things around in less than three years. The Indo-Brit partnership is now ready to take things on the next level. In the company’s 66th annual report, 2010-11, Mr Ratan Tata announced that Tata Motors Ltd and Jaguar Land Rover will jointly develop engines in the future.
The idea of this co development program is to optimize the synergetic strengths between JLR and Tata Motors in India and United Kingdom. As JLR currently gets their engines from Ford, this will be the next step of back-end integration for it and the Indian owner. It will help in cutting costs on manufacturing the vehicles and making them cheaper for price-sensitive markets such as India.
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Jaguar Land Rover today opened the first assembly plant in India at Pune. Assembling vehicles imported from UK, the first vehicle to come off the assembly line is the Land Rover Freelander 2 shipped from the Halewood facility in Liverpool. The facility can assemble other cars, details of which are not clear. Both Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles are expected to be assembled at this plant.
JLR is planning an onslaught of models of the next four years to reach the top be on top in the luxury car market. Currently it sells Jaguar XJ, XF,and XK, the Land Rover Freelander 2, Discovery 4, Range Rover Sport and Range Rover in India.
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Thanks to Jeremy Clarkson, we all know how to pronounce ‘The Jag’. Actually, now that we are on the topic, let’s say it one more time – ‘The Jaaaag’. Although Jaguar-Landrover is now out of the red zone, the carmaker’s design philosophy is still questioned by a lot of people with remarks such as ‘They just borrow it from Aston Martin.’ All of these remarks have caught the eye of [ Read More ]
Jaguar-Land Rover is looking at expanding its operations in China. The company now wants to locally manufacture its products in the highly lucrative Chinese market in order to bring the costs down and subsequently increase volume.
JLR is very much in a hurry to get this work started. In order to build cars locally in China you need to have a local partner. And JLR is looking for just that. Chery Automobiles and Beijing Auto seem to be the ones at the forefront among many others.
Chinese automakers are not experts at luxury cars and a joint venture with JLR could really help the company to learn a thing or two about high end cars from the UK based company.
Stefen Berger has been assigned by JLR to strike a deal with the Chinese Auto Companies. UK Prime Minister David Cameroon is also visiting China next week and he is expected to further talk to the Chinese Government about this joint venture and to speed up this process.
JLR is looking at investing more than 100 Million Pounds on this plant which will begin with an initial capacity of 50, 000 units per annum.
Initiatives have been taken on joint development programmes for engines, vehicles and platforms, which would leverage skills of the company (Tata Motors) and JLR, resulting in synergies in operations of the company and its subsidiary. These would yield substantial savings in the operations of the company and its subsidiaries.
Tata Motors has been quoted saying to PTI regarding the synergies between JLR and Tata Motors.
I could hardly believe what I was reading. I thought this was a joke on DNA Newspaper, but as I progressed through the article, I found details and company official quotes that makes for a valid claim.
Tata Motors and Jaguar Land Rover are jointly developing a concept car, which if at all sees a production line, might be priced between 20 and 30 lakh rupees, reports DNA.
The vehicle is at DR0 stage, the first of the five stages in the life cycle of a new vehicle. DR5 is the stage when the product is ready for a showroom floor. DR2 is when the company decides if it has to go ahead with the project.
Tata has expressed on several occasions that it is looking to merge synergies for the benefit of both companies. This project could be the first time both teams are coming together.
The car’s platform will be developed in India. The interiors could be put together by JLR, which will ooze quality.
PM Telang, Managing Director, Tata Motors -
We are trying to combine the synergies of both the companies. We have certain strengths in understanding the requirements of emerging markets and we also have cost competency. JLR, on the other hand, has the strength in product innovation and developing new-generation vehicles.
The concept car could be a sedan since the source mentions it will not fall under the price bracket that consists of Jaguar cars. Jaguar only makes luxury sedans, don’t they? Perhaps the platform could be utilized to design vehicles of different body styles.
Tata Motors acquired JLR some time back but only today did they formally introduce the JLR brand in India at a lavish brunch event at The President.
The function was presided over by the chairman of Tata Sons and Tata Motors Mr Ratan Tata, Mr Ravi Kant Vice Chairman Tata Motors, Mr P.M.Telang MD Tata Motors, Mr David Smith CEO Jaguar Land Rover, Mr Phil Popham MD Land Rover, Mr Mike O Dricoll MD Jaguar and Mr Ravi Dube President Passenger Cars Tata Motors.
The event was attended by a large number of people, every big media company had its representative there.
