Who will want to buy Jaguar and Land Rover now?
Source:Editor's Blog
No wonder Ford has decided to offload two struggling subsidiaries as part of its massive restructuring. It has to do something, having lost close to three million dollars in the first three months of this year alone.
No wonder either that the unions are alarmed – the two firms employ nearly 20,000 people bang in the country’s automotive heartland. There’s bound to be plenty of interest from private equity, existing management and others in these companies, with their powerful brands, years of knowledge accretion and tremendous design and technology assets. Is there any reason why these should not be retained in UK hands?
Plainly we can’t continue to do production manufacturing here any more, but the plant can be moved to Brazil, China, India or wherever makes most sense at the time. New models can continue to be developed and prototyped in Coventry where they are so good at it - along the Rover model but under British ownership and control this time. The unions won’t like it but they will accept it.
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