Bamford/JCB to save Jaguar?

Sounds like Bamford is serious - I agree that it is massively more preferable than Hyundai getting their hands on Jaguar.

Not much in the way of synergies between Jaguar and JCB I wouldn't have thought though - can Jaguar really survive without another car company to share costs and gain economies of scale? Although it would appear that Bamford is hinting towards a rejuvenation of the Jaguar brand along the lines that Porsche did in the 90's - niche product/low supply/high profit margin/low standard spec/extra profits from optional equipment(apparently new XKs are leaving the facotry with an average of £6K of options). Maybe it could work...

 

Great article, thanks for posting it.

I agree, this would be a much prefered solution. I like everything about it including
the people he has in mind to get involved.
I think if Aston and Lotus can be made to be profitable there must be a formula
to make Jaguar the same.

What is it about tractors and exotics that brings them together.
Reminds me of Lamborghini.

I like this quote:
""Jaguar needs downsizing. The little car [X-Type] needs to go. The S-Type is critical and the XJ is a very good car but it needs a reskin," Bamford said. He also criticized Ford's decision to cancel plans for a Porsche Boxster-rivaling F-type roadster and suggested that Jaguar should return to the racetrack."

Although personally, I think racing is expensive and optional.

 

Sounds like a great idea. I'm not too familiar with JCB though. Hopefully putting the company back into the hands of the British (who seem to have modernised over the past 20 years) is a good idea. It sounds like lack of red tape is the plan more than synergies.
I get the sense that Callum had his hands tied trying to please everyone while doing the new XK. I suspect that he could have done a lot more if there weren't as many people stirring the pot. He's said that the reason the Aston Martin DB7 turned out so well while he was at TRW was because no one really paid much attention to what he was doing.
There's an interesting column about the state of the auto biz at autoextremist.com - he makes a good point about how Bill Ford had trouble getting the state of things through all of Ford's bureaucracy. I think they probably incorporated it into Jaguars organization too.
http://www.autoextremist.com/page2.shtml

 

Bamford seems to be the only one who has a clear idea about what to do with Jaguar, among the prospective buyers.
- Hyundai would probably cheapen the brand with some sort of badge engineering to see the cat logo on their Korean built cars. Don't know how much they want to invest to restructure the range.
- The Russian GAS car/truck company is a big unknown, but they work with ex-Ford management when dealing abroad. It would be some sort of management buy-out with Russian capital. GAS has huge financial back-up.
- Bamford owns a family firm (no shareholders here!) and seems to understand what's to be done: stop the X-type (it's a 4 x 4 Mondeo that irritates the Jaguar purists), keep the S-type, restyle the XK saloon which has just been re-engineered, develop the coupe and convertible. Problem is Bamford is already near 70, and won't be at the helm for long...

JCB will probably have to borrow money for the purchase, and his intention of 'down-sizing' Jaguar won't look too attractive as a business plan to lend him the cash.
Participation in racing? Well, not F1, I hope!
In GT, Jaguar would have to compete against Aston, Chevrolet, etc... and it would be a very slow return.
That leaves Prototypes, Le Mans, ALMS which requires a lot of investment, but there may be an opportunity there.

 

In this article, he doesn't sound so clear on his plans: http://www.autocar.co.uk/News_Article.asp?NA_ID=221989

Instead of racing, JCB has a far cheaper and easier way of gaining worldwide publicity - the Dieselmax land speed record holder. In Europe, I think something like over 50% of prestige cars are now sold with deisel engines, and Jag's V6 diesel already has a very good reputation for refinement (and the Jag/Land Rover V8 diesel should be even better and is rumoured tobe going into the XK). I'd bet that if Bamford does buy Jaguar, he'll repaint the Dieselmax in Jaguar livery and find a way to eek out an extra few MPH so that Jaguar get the record. After all, does holding a land speed record sell diggers? Doubtful. Could it help revive the tarnished reputation of one of the world's most revered car manufacturers - I'd have thought so!

Anyone heard anything about what kind of figure Ford are wanting for Jaguar? It seems to be the one major fact missing from all the articles that keep appearing about Ford selling Jag...

Also, does anyone know much about the platform that underpins the XJ/XK - I'm wondering if that could be turned into something along the lines of Aston's VH platform, or the system used by Lotus

 

IMHO Ford were always too open about this - the S-Type has a better reputation and is only a Lincoln under neath, and the Audi TT is just a VW Golf in a party frock, and it never did it any harm.

 

Are you sure about this? (S-type & Lincoln) I read somewhere, that the S-type was the last Jag designed by Jaguar itself, where the X-type is badge-engineering, the XK was engineered by Ford, and the coupe/convertible shared a lot of the design/structure with the Aston Martin DB9.
The V8 engines are definitely Ford design.
Apparently Ford was not too pleased with the lines of the S-type (too retro), but the design was too advanced to stop it and delay production: the tooling was already in place. Since the launch, Ford has tried to alter the look at every opportunity.

With Jaguar models having so many components from other manufacturers (Ford, Peugeot), it makes you womder if they can be independant ever again!

 

Beautiful cars....bottom basement quality and service.

My father-in-law, who takes his one of two newer Jag's in for service every other week was talking to the sales manager and he said sales have been slipping all year.(well at least at that dealer) He seems to think Jag has their cars priced too high. He said..."you can't sell just on looks alone"

I hope someone does something with the brand.

 

Yes, I believe this is correct too.

Personally I thought the idea of the X and S types made sense. Get some volume out there and fill out the model range much like BMW. So personally I have no problem with either of those two cars.

I just wonder about having a small group own the brand. It took a lot of money and investment to modernize Jaguar, will any more be needed? Will they have THAT kind of cash? Or, will it again slip back into the "unique" car company it was before Ford bought it.

But I think one would have to be pretty dilusional to expect Jaguar to make a car where every component is exclusively Jaguar.
That's just unrealistic.

 

Well, F1Ace, I shall take your word for it. I didn't know that!

For my part, I hope (and many loyal Jag buyers here in UK do too), that the future of Jaguar is in down-sizing and retrieve that 'uniqueness' they had at one time. Now, they are too 'cheap' and too common to attract the 'connaisseur'. If I go back in the 60s (does that show my age, sorry), owning a Jag was something special. The decline started there when Lyons merged its company with BMC (Morris, Austin, MG, etc...) and lost interest in it. The quality suffered even more when BMHLtd was nationalised.
The management buy-out was a step in the right direction, until they ran out of money and Ford snatched it at bargain price, trying to turn it into a mass-market brand.

No Jag model should try to compete against 3-series BMW or E-series Mercedes. They original bracket is the S-series Merc or 5-series BMW MINIMUM. Jaguar used to be luxury car, with a special 'cache', not two year-old cars that you see advertised second-hand at £10,000! It's NOT supposed to be an easily affordable car. This constant emphasis about increasing production, lowering prices is against the traditional values of Jaguar. Jaguars were all about comfort, class, opulence, tradition, respectability, etc... Not any more.

Just like ALFA-Romeo are now badge-engineered FIAT, AUDI VW-clones, Jaguars have lost their 'flair'.

I know several previous Jaguar buyers who have deserted because of that. The CEO of a leading printing firm in UK, who used to have Jaguar company cars for the last 40 years, declined one on renewal, saying that there were too many on the company car park: "Even my sales reps get them now!" and asked for a Maserati Quadroporte instead.

 

A fair comment......on the one hand.

But to be totally fair, that also could be said about Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, and the list goes on. Look what he had to buy, quite an exotic car from a company which is, in it's current iteration, pretty young, so there's not many of their product out there. The older an exotic car company gets the easier it is to own one of their cars. Does that make them less exotic? Kinda.

As do others, I own a Ferrari that's practically 20 years old. For the price of an SUV anyone can. Are Ferraris not exotic now? Depends on where you live I suppose, but a 308 can be had for so little that yes, and employee can upstage the boss for very little money.

Remaining an iconic exotic for decades is tough. Too many of your cars get made...eventually.

 

I dunno, i had never heard of them before they went Salt Flats racing.

 

I agree with you, but a Ferrari will never be 'cheap' in my view, as long as it keeps the necessary ingredients: original design, home-built/designed engine, quality components, etc... There would be a different perception from present Ferrari owners if for instance Ferrari suddenly wanted to enter the entry-level convertible market to compete against the Mazda Miata and offered a $25,000 spider with Fiat Punto engine, platform from an Alfa 154, wheels borrowed from a Lancia and so on, and called it A Ferrari. This is the kind of things Ford has done to Jaguar. The new converts may only be interested by the badge on the car, but for the older, mature owners, this is some kind of perversion!

I remember when Enzo Ferrari launched the first Dino (he didn't dare to badge it a Ferrari at first) with an engine shared with FIAT - but designed at Maranello. There was a furore among Ferrari owners at the time! What, a Ferrari with a V6 engine? Ferrari MUST have a V12! The car was even sold in 2.0L version to escape the punitive road tax in Italy - a Ferrari for the masses! As it turned out, later version of the Dino became accepted as Ferrari, and appreciated as such. His previous 'design' for a small car was swiftly sold to someone else before the critics set to work: the Ferrarina became the ASA.

 

The news from Bloomberg today is that Jacques Nasser (remember he was CEO of Ford until 2001) heading JPM Equity Partners is looking to buy Jaguar and Land Rover.

 

Meanwhile, Ford's probably still denying they're for sale.

 

JCB might make a better owner than Ford, but without a vision they're only rearranging the deck chairs. Ford saved Aston by allowing them to use the parts bin and the engineers to build their cars, but given the new investment in the Gaydon plant and all the money they've poured in over the years, I'd doubt that Ford's broken even on the deal.