Piech Wins Again: Finally, Volkswagen Buys Porsche

This just in from Wolfsburg: Volkswagen’s supervisory board has met in an “extraordinary meeting to create an integrated automotive group with Porsche…” From Porsche’s first sports car, the 356 in 1948 through the original air-cooled 911, the VW-Porsche 914, the 924 meant for Audi, and right on up to the Cayenne-Touareg, the two companies have been closely intertwined.

Ferdinand Piech, the big winner in this deal, is a grandson of Ferdinand Porsche. He has been playing corporate games with his cousin, Porsche chairman Wolfgang Porsche, at least since the sports carmaker’s holding company started buying up shares of VW.

The story goes something like this: Porsche SE has been buying up VW AG shares for the past couple of years. Porsche needed to expand its corporate lineup in order to meet future European CO2 regulations, which are figured similar to the United States’ Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. Buying a company that sells diesel Polos and Golfs means Porsche wouldn’t have to build its own small, fuel-efficient cars. What’s more, Porsche Chairman Wendelin Wiedeking thought he could do a better job of running a Porsche-VW than VW Chairman Martin Winterkorn.

By this year, Porsche had accumulated 51 percent of VW AG’s shares. Problem is the state of Lower Saxony’s unusual shareholder interest in VW. It’s not unlike the Ford family’s special stock ownership in Ford Motor Company, which gives that family shareholder control without owning a majority of common stock. For VW, it prevented Porsche from taking control. Meanwhile, Porsche has run up 10 billion euro in debt ($12.8 billion) as it has been buying up shares.

A large portion of that debt came due this summer, allowing VW to turn the tables on Porsche. Thursday morning, Porsche’s supervisory board announced what had been expected for weeks; it dismissed Wiedeking and his finance chief, Holger P. Haerter. VW will take care of some of the Porsche debt in the merger, and Porsche is charging ahead with an injection of Qatari capital.

Considering how Piech has run VW, expanding the Porsche lineup might seem likely. The first two would be a small, midengine four-cylinder Porsche sports car based on the coming VW BlueSport and the so-called Roxster, a smaller-than-Cayenne crossover based on the Audi Q5.

On the other hand, Wiedeking’s successor, named Thursday morning, is Michael Macht, an engineer whom Wiedeking often credited for driving the project to get the 996 and original Boxster to share platforms and production lines, to cut costs and to improve quality. Macht, 48, recently told Motor Trend’s Paul Horrell that Porsche would fight for its independence and would remain a low-volume, high-priced brand. “Never a car cheaper than the Boxster,” he said, and no fifth model line like the “Roxster.”

“He laughed at the prospect of Porsche doing a version of the VW BlueSport.”

The big question now is, what does Ferdinand Piech think?

Source : blogs.motortrend.com/6534574/corporate/piech-wins-again-finally-volkswagen-buys-porsche/index.html

Healthiest Patient in ICU: Ford Posts $424-million Operating Loss

DEARBORN, MICHIGAN – It’s not party time, yet, at Ford Motor Company’s World Headquarters. Ford’s $2.3-billion in net income for the second quarter of ’09 is the result of “special items,” those bookkeeping procedures that in past years have reversed the fortunes of the Detroit Three, especially General Motors. Probably the most important line item is this: Ford has cut automotive structural costs by $1.8 billion, of which $1.2 billion came from North American savings.

Cost reduction is the New GM’s key goal, of course, and both Ford and GM are quickly slashing costs in order to transform themselves into companies that can make profits even when no more than 10 million cars and trucks are sold each year in the United States. Thursday’s Q2 results for Ford proves the automaker is on-track with what it used to call The Way Forward Plan.

Ford still plans to “get back to profitability and positive cash flow in 2011,” says Alan Mulally, president and CEO. And it won’t happen any earlier, considering the current economic climate and predictions that any recovery will be slow in 2010. Mulally says Ford is heading for profitability thanks to improvements it has made in customer satisfaction, revenue and margins. Some of Ford’s numbers:

Pre-tax loss of $424 million; net income of $2.3 billion in the second quarter, equal to 69-cents per share.
Special items totaled $2.8 billion, and Ford reduced its debt by $3.4 billion.
Issued 345 million new shares of common stock, which raised $1.6 billion. “Completed actions” to cut automotive debt by $10.1 billion.
Pre-tax profit of $646 million compares with a pre-tax loss of $294 million for the second quarter of ’08.

*Market share is up significantly. In the U.S., Ford/Lincoln/Mercury have 16.4-percent market share, up two points. So FoMoCo is on solid ground to remain one of the Big Three in North America. We’ve been heading, for some time, to the European model, in which three automakers lead that market with about 18-percent share each. In the U.S., the new Big Three are GM, Ford and Toyota. And yes, Ford is nipping at the New GM’s heels.

*European market share is up a half-point, to 9.0 percent, highest second-quarter level in 10 years. In South America, share is up one point, to 10.4 percent.

Mulally deserves a lot of credit for, first, changing the business culture in Dearborn, and perhaps foremost, for having the insight or the luck to hock the entire company up to and including the Blue Oval emblem in exchange for some $23 billion in credit, before the credit market collapsed. It seemed like a foolhardy idea at the time, and frankly, Ford isn’t in the clear. It’s the proverbial healthiest patient in intensive care. Any downward blips in the global or U.S. economy, and/or in the North American automotive market could prove fatal.

Mulally figures Ford has gained some consumer equity by not taking taxpayer money, although he stresses that Ford has been on-record in supporting the government’s restructuring of the U.S. auto industry.

Another factor is gasoline prices. When the economy finally improves, that will put pressure on oil supplies, sending gasoline prices higher. And Ford is well poised with Mulally’s One Ford plan to rationalize most car and truck lines for the world. Whether gas is $2.25 or $4.50 a gallon, the Fiesta and an all-new global Focus arrive in U.S. showrooms next year. Ford’s margins are up, especially in Europe, and our midsize car, the Fusion, is selling well here with higher levels of content. Ford dealers here sell Sync-equipped cars three-times more quickly than non-Sync cars, says Lewis Booth, executive vice president and chief financial officer.

Still, here’s the problem: the Fiesta can typically sell for $25,000 or more in Europe, at current exchange rates. That gives Ford of Europe good margins on a car with a wealth of features and a nice interior. The margins will be razor thin for the U.S.-market Fiesta, even with it being built in Mexico. And Ford will have to be careful with how it prices the new Fiesta against the next-generation Focus when they both arrive here.

Ford’s success in the car line rides on the Fusion, which for now is different than Europe’s midsize Mondeo. Can Ford take enough cost out of the Fusion’s replacement, when it converges with the Mondeo for the 2013 model year? Even when higher fuel economy standards kick in, the heart of the U.S. car market will remain the four-cylinder midsize sedan. Ford is starting to dig into the Camry/Accord’s sales with its Fusion. Save for the hybrid model though, a $30,000+ Fusion — the price range for the European Mondeo — is very much a stretch.

Mulally says Ford can sell European models at U.S. prices by using its innovation and global scale. He also believes Americans are more willing to pay more for high-quality, high-content small cars. Every new b-segment car is not a Mini, however. I believe that if Ford wants to be the healthiest athlete in the gym when the Great Recession finally ends, it’s going to have to revert to its Model T-era roots and figure out how to keep car prices from rising too quickly. Another car company that posted better than expected second quarter results Thursday, Hyundai, will see to it.

Source : blogs.motortrend.com/6561444/earnings/healthiest-patient-in-icu-ford-posts-424-million-operating-loss/index.html

The New GM … the Next Hyundai-Kia?

DETROIT – Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson was explaining to a gathering of reporters that customers are the new top priority at the New General Motors just as I was flying back from the Kia Forte Koup first drive in Seoul, South Korea. “At the new GM, we’re making the customer the center of everything we do,” he told the press corps. Had I made Henderson’s press conference, I might have asked what GM’s priority was for its first 100 years. The answer, I’m sure, is “profits,” and there’s nothing wrong with that. The same can be said for Toyota Motor Company and Ford Motor Company, the two automakers that will fight GM for primacy in the North American market. Each of the three will hover around 16- to 18-percent market share in the coming decade, assuming GM doesn’t give way to upstarts like, well, Hyundai-Kia.

The story of those two automakers, which have been producing cars only for the past 35 or 40 years, offer a good lesson for GM. Hyundai picked up Kia during the Asian financial crisis of a decade ago and set lofty goals for itself. On my third visit to South Korea, to drive the Hyundai Tucson in spring of ’04, the Hyundai-Kia combo was the ninth-largest automaker in the world, quickly moving in on the No. 8 spot. Its goal back then was to be among the top five by the end of the decade.

Henderson (pictured above with Company Chairman Edward E. Whitacre, Jr.) has said that he’s not concerned about his automaker’s size. Still, if he takes care of customers as promised, GM should remain the world’s second-largest automaker, if it doesn’t retake the lead. (The difference between first- and second-place probably depends on whether GM can hold on to control of Opel.)

Being South Korean (like being Japanese, or like most Western European countries), Hyundai-Kia enjoys a much easier relationship with its government and with other local companies than any U.S. automaker has. If you buy what Bob Lutz (who has just pulled a more-effective Brett Favre by signing on with Henderson’s GM) said in another of my recent posts, President Obama’s automotive task force could lead to the best automaker-government relations that the Detroit Three have enjoyed in half a century.

While Hyundai-Kia’s market share leveled off in 2007, long before the global financial crisis hit everybody, it is the world’s fifth-largest automaker, behind Toyota, GM, Volkswagen AG and Ford Motor Company. It has a solid foothold in North America, especially with Hyundai, and has made some inroads in Europe, even if “brand consideration” and conquest sales remain relatively low. Kia has spiffed up the lower end of its product lineup, first with the Scion/Cube-fighting Soul and now with the new Civic-fighting Forte/Forte Koup.

Many early ’00s models under the new Hyundai-Kia combo were badge-engineered. They’d do Chevy-Pontiac-Olds-Buick proud. There’s more separation, now, and while the automaker’s management uses the same kind of marketspeak as all the other automakers to define the brands, to me, it’s Kia vs. Honda and Scion; Hyundai vs. Toyota and Lexus. When the 2012 Kia Amanti replacement launches, it will probably be a smaller, sportier sedan on the Hyundai Genesis sedan platform.

What has this got to do with GM? First, as I mentioned above, aggressive Hyundai-Kia will be taking market share from somebody in the North American market. The South Koreans are targeting successful Japanese automakers, true. If GM isn’t effective in making customers number one, it won’t even be in the game for the Toyota-Hyundai/Honda-Kia fight. It will be the ultimate loser.

Henderson has made it clear Chevrolet is New GM’s Big Dog, one of those statements that would seem all too obvious from any company other than GM. The new Camaro, off to a successful launch, so far, is proof GM doesn’t need Pontiac. Chevy needs some mainstream successes, though, to complement its growing scuderia of “halo” cars, Corvette, Camaro and next year, Volt. Malibu is a start, but it hasn’t moved up the sales charts to challenge the Toyota Camry/Honda Accord the way Ford Fusion is. Good as it is, the Malibu, new for ’08, will soon need a moderate refresh, or it will lose sales to an all-new ’11 Hyundai Sonata.

The ’11 Chevy Cruze needs to be a better car than the European model Paul Horrell reviewed. With its new, fuel-efficient 1.4-liter turbo gas direct injection four, it has a chance. The Buick version should be a few thousand dollars more costly, probably based on the ’10 Opel Astra that Horrell just reviewed.

I agree with Editor-In-Chief MacKenzie’s recent post that Chevy probably doesn’t need a new Impala. The Ford Taurus moved up a size when Alan Mulally revived the name to replace the Five Hundred. With the new, more luxurious ’10 Taurus, GM’s direct competitor is the ’10 Buick LaCrosse, which has a base price in the same general range as the popular Taurus trim level. If you want to make the four core brands distinctive, Fritz, reconsider the need for a new Impala. Yes, it’s still a very popular car, but most of its buyers would migrate to the Malibu.

I’ll say it one more time: if you need future full-size models, rear-drive remains the way to go (and the way to distinguish fullsize cars from large-midsize FWD models like the Malibu and LaCrosse). Hyundai-Kia has figured out that a lineup of sub-luxury vehicles should be mostly FWD for the mainstream, with some affordable, but special RWD halo models.

The Holden-based Zeta platform is too heavy without using expensive high-strength steel, but high-strength steel may be the way to go to maintain RWD for a small, but significant segment.

As GM, Ford and Chrysler have discovered, reviving RWD is costlier than updating platforms. A few posts ago, I wrote about why GM’s Kappa platform failed in the shadow of the Mazda Miata’s success. To expand on the points I tried to make in that post; while Old GM was quick at identifying such mistakes and removing them from the market, New GM must identify such mistakes, but understand that in the case of cars like the Kappas, it had a good basic premise. New GM should keep what’s worthwhile from that platform and develop a new, small RWD platform. A next-generation Camaro, which should be smaller even than the Genesis coupe, depends on it.

Source : blogs.motortrend.com/6530866/editorial/the-new-gm-the-next-hyundai-kia/index.html

Robert McNamara: Before Vietnam, There Was Ford

“He wore granny glasses, and he put out a granny car.” That’s how one auto writer, quoted in Robert Lacey’s excellent 1986 book, Ford, summed up Robert S. McNamara’s tenure at Ford Motor Company, during which he launched the plain-jane Ford Falcon compact to compete with Chevy’s Corvair and Chrysler’s Valiant. As is so often the case with McNamara, who died Monday in Washington, aged 93, it was a neat soundbite, but nowhere near the whole story.

McNamara was of course best known as a controversial Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, where he oversaw the escalation of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. But before Vietnam, there was the Ford Motor Company.

McNamara was one of a group of young officers from the U.S. Army Air Force’s Office of Statistical Control hired by 28 year old Henry Ford II in 1946 to help rescue the ailing automaker. The “Whiz Kids” helped install fiscal and process discipline at Ford, the management of which had become ever more ad hoc as aging founder Henry Ford’s dementia grew more apparent. By 1948 McNamara had assumed the role of leader of the Whiz Kids, and was clearly on a trajectory to the top. By 1955, he was general manager of Ford Division.

McNamara was never the archetypal Detroit auto executive. While most of the Motown elite chose to live in leafy, mansion-filled suburbs like Grosse Pointe, McNamara preferred the more relaxed campus-town atmosphere of Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan. And he had difficulty in regarding the automobile as anything more than mere transport. He was most certainly not a car guy.

McNamara showed his iconoclastic product streak early by authorizing a four-seat Thunderbird, much to the horror of purists who saw the original two-seat T-bird as a potential rival to Chevrolet’s Corvette. He was implacably opposed to the Edsel program, arguing from the outset that if Ford needed to move into the mid-price market, it would be better to simply upgrade the top-of-the-line Ford than waste money creating a new car, a new division, and a new dealer network.

McNamara was right in both cases. First year sales of the four seat Thunderbird exceeded total sales of the two-seater since launch. And Edsel, part of an ambitious plan to tackle GM’s Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac divisions that involved building three basic bodies — small, medium and large — across five divisions — Ford, Edsel, Mercury, Lincoln, and Continental — foundered in the teeth of the Eisenhower recession. With a little help from politically adroit McNamara.

Sources inside Ford insist McNamara effectively killed the Edsel before the first car had even been sold, deliberately letting slip at its launch the car would be discontinued. The day after the first Edsel went on sale in 1957, McNamara was made a group vice-president responsible for all FoMoCo cars and trucks, and sure enough he began hacking away the division’s budget almost immediately. Within months he had reduced Edsel’s future product plans to little more than a different grille for 1960 Fords.

Conceived in the late 50s, the Falcon was McNamara’s sort of automobile: Inexpensive family transportation. But the Falcon would prove to be one of the single most important Ford cars ever made, for without the Falcon’s cheap, light, simple platform there may never have been a Mustang.

Former Ford boss Lee Iaccoca claims market research had identified an emerging youth market for which the Mustang was created. But that’s not how product planner Don Frey saw it. “Most of the market research stuff was done after the fact,” Frey told our sister publication, Mustang Monthly, way back in May 1983. “They made it all up afterwards – somebody did – in order to sanctify the whole thing. The market research that you read is a bunch of bull…”

In fact, Ford design chief Gene Bordinat and his head of advanced design Don DeLaRossa had come up with the idea of putting Ford’s new 289 cubic inch V-8 into the engine bay of a Falcon, and designing sporty new sheet metal around it, to create a rival to the hot new Chevy Monza in 1961. Market research was used to sell the idea of the Mustang to Henry Ford II the following year. That the car could be built using a lot of existing hardware created for the Falcon helped the business case enormously.

So you can draw a direct line from McNamara’s Falcon to today’s Mustang. And there’s barely six degrees of separation between that Falcon and the new Camaro.

How so? Well, Ford Australia starting building the original 1960 Falcon as a rival to GM’s hot-selling Holden. In a nice piece of reverse engineering, Ford Australia’s engineers popped the Mustang’s 289 V-8 and four speed manual transmission into the 1966 Falcon sedan to create the first Falcon GT. The Falcon GT’s prowess inspired GM to counter with the Holden Monaro GTS 327 coupe in 1968, igniting a performance car war that would ebb and flow between the two Aussie subsidiaries for the next 40 years. One outcome of that rivalry was the 1998 Holden Monaro coupe, which begat the Pontiac GTO, which led to the idea of a new Camaro being done off Holden’s Zeta platform.

Robert S. McNamara was made president of Ford Motor Company on November 9, 1960, the day John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon to the White House. Barely eight weeks later, on January 3, 1961, he resigned to become Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense, reportedly forfeiting over $1 million in stock option profits in the process.

The Falcon nameplate might have disappeared from the U.S. market in 1970, but it’s still Ford Australia’s core vehicle. McNamara wouldn’t have recognized it, and he certainly wouldn’t have approved of cars like the 422 hp Falcon GT-P. But 50 years on, Falcon is still very much a part of the Ford family, the company’s second-oldest nameplate after the F-Series. Not bad for a granny car.

Source : blogs.motortrend.com/6529402/editorial/robert-mcnamara-before-vietnam-there-was-ford/index.html

Henderson Writes: Corvette Safe, Buick Turbo is Back, No Chevy G8

DETROIT – Even after bankruptcy and government ownership, General Motors won’t abandon the rear-wheel-drive, V-8-powered Corvette. “My wonderful baby is my 2005 Corvette coupe,” CEO Fritz Henderson wrote in his first online chat after filing Chapter 11. “We have more in store for the future and this iconic brand will retain its powerful place within the new GM.” Of course, online, that was all in lower-case letters.

Henderson also confirmed plans for a turbo-four-powered Buick LaCrosse. The 2010 LaCrosse goes on sale with a standard, 255-horsepower 3.0-liter gas direct-injection V-6 and optional 280-horse 3.6-liter GDI engine.

GM has “plans for a performance four-cylinder Ecotec” LaCrosse some time after the start of production. The LaCrosse’s exterior styling is based on the 2006 Shanghai motor show Buick Invicta coupe concept, which was built with a 255-horsepower, 2.0-liter gas direct-injection turbo four. Even its torque is impressive enough for a large midsize like the LaCrosse. At 220 pound-feet, it would be between the 3.0’s 211 and the 3.6’s 261 pound-feet.

If GM can get a turbo Buick to market quickly, it will trump resurgent Ford Motor Company. Ford’s gas direct-injected, turbocharged EcoBoost priority has been on V-6s as V-8 alternatives. GM has no production V-6 turbos ready, but it has the jump on gas direct-injection turbo fours. A 1.4-liter turbo four in the 2011 Chevy Cruze replaces the 2.2-liter naturally aspirated four in the (non-SS) Cobalt, and that engine could become a pillar of GM’s fuel economy strategy.

Ford’s bright spot these last few dismal months for the industry has been the midsize Fusion, and four-cylinder take-rates on the Fusion and Chevy Malibu have been growing to Camry/Accord levels since last year’s $4-per-gallon gas. Can a heart-of-the-market midsize car get compact-car fuel mileage and V-6 performance with a GDI turbo four? Looks like GM will find out before Ford does.

Henderson also gave a one word answer to the question of whether the Pontiac G8 GXP could live on as a Chevy or an entry-level Cadillac. “No.” If the question had added Buick, the answer would still be the same.

The GM CEO took questions from the public, employees and journalists, and Henderson promised future chats. An employee identified as Jane asked, “how can we focus on growing the new GM with more job losses hanging over our heads?

“My simple answer is to get the pain behind us as we go through bankruptcy and 363 … we must spend time on our new products, customers and building brands. It has been my experience that managing problems and restructuring consumes time, actually oversubscribes time.”

So get back to work, Jane.

Source : blogs.motortrend.com/6546840/car-news/henderson-writes-corvette-safe-buick-turbo-is-back-no-chevy-g8/index.html

Koenigsegg Is the Right Size to Own Saab

DETROIT – “GM’s reinvention achieves another milestone,” reads the press release announcing the automaker’s sale of Saab Automobile AB (a redundant name, given the “ab” in Saab) to Koenigsegg Group AB. And so one tiny, proud Swedish automaker will own another tiny, but somewhat larger Swedish automaker. Good match. And good deal for Koenigsegg. The “reinvention” of GM includes selling off unwanted divisions, including Hummer and Saturn, for just about nothing.

Like Fiat picking up 20 percent of Chrysler with no cash down, there’s no indication so far that Koenigsegg will pay GM anything for 100 percent of Saab. Meanwhile, the European Investment Bank now is willing to kick in $600 million to keep Saab’s expensive factory in Trollhattan running under Koenigsegg ownership. That’s operating capital that GM was unable to procure for Saab. And yet, those true blue-and-white Saabs will run on GM underpinnings for some time to come.

Trollhattan will build the all-new 2011 9-5 beginning next year. It’s based on the Epsilon II platform (Opel Insignia, ’10 Buick LaCrosse). That factory also will continue to build the 9-3, which is on the Epsilon I platform (Chevy Malibu, etc.). And all indications are that GM will go forward with 9-4x production in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico, alongside the new Cadillac SRX.

The 9-4x has all the makings of becoming what the 9-7x could never be — a real Saab, and not just by its ignition location. The production 9-4x is said to be very close in interior and exterior design to the concept, making it perhaps the most handsome midsize crossover in the segment. It’s critical to maintaining a Saab presence, no matter how small, in North America. And that segment is important in Europe (BMW X3/Audi Q5/Mercedes GLK, etc.) too.

But there lies the problem GM has had in owning Saab. It bought 50-percent of the Swedish company after it lost Jaguar to Ford Motor Company in the late ’80s, then bought the remaining 50 percent a decade later. GM tried to turn a small, quirky automaker that had a small, quirky and loyal following into a kind of mainstream entry-level luxury manufacturer.

Saab and Volvo operate two of the most expensive manufacturing facilities in the world, in southern Sweden. This explains why of all Ford’s foreign brands, selling Volvo is the toughest proposition.

It will be tough for Koenigsegg to keep costs, and prices down. At least to the low-volume exoticar manufacturer, Saab already is far more mainstream and high-volume. If Koenigsegg can be satisfied with small margins and can keep the volume 9-3 model in the upper $20s to $30s in current U.S. dollars, Saab will have a future, once again, as a small-volume maker of interesting, quirky automobiles for people who don’t want to see their cars coming and going.

Source : blogs.motortrend.com/6521869/corporate/koenigsegg-is-the-right-size-to-own-saab/index.html

Scoop! Jaguar Extended-Range Hybrid Sports Car in the Works

Timing on Jaguar’s XE two-seat roadster may slip past its planned 2011 Geneva show introduction thanks to lean resources resulting from the global economic crisis. However, Motor Trend has learned that whenever it first appears, the sports car will get a 21st Century, green-economy boost in the form of a Chevrolet Volt-like powerplant. An electric motor with an extended-range three-cylinder gas engine is being engineered for the new-age E-Type, in addition (we hope) to Jaguar’s conventional 5.0-liter and supercharged 5.0-liter V-8s. Whether the extended-range XE will make it beyond the concept stage is uncertain.

It’s also unclear whether the electric XE would be in addition to an extended-range electric XJ rumored to be scheduled for introduction in late 2011, a year after the conventional XJ’s release.

Ratan Tata, whose company bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Company, is said to support the XE’s development. His father once owned a Jaguar XK120, and Tata told Autocar earlier this year, “We need to emerge with something shiny and new, which is why we are reprioritizing the roadster right now.”

The 5.0-liter, 385-horsepower AJ V-8 and 510-horsepower, supercharged 5.0 are obvious choices for the XE. While an extended-range electric XJ would be designed to take on the Fisker Karma, an extended-range electric XE could be a competitor for the all-electric Tesla Roadster.

Land Rover

Land Rover is an all-terrain vehicle and Multi Purpose Vehicle (MPV) manufacturer, based in Solihull, England, now operated as part of the Jaguar Land Rover business owned by Tata Motors.

Originally the term Land Rover referred to one specific vehicle (see Land Rover Series), a pioneering civilian all-terrain utility vehicle launched on April 30, 1948, at the Amsterdam Motor Show, but was later used as a brand for several distinct models, all capable of four-wheel drive.

Starting out as a model in the Rover Company’s product range, the Land Rover brand developed, first as a marque, then as a separate company, developing a range of four-wheel drive capable vehicles under a succession of owners, including British Leyland, British Aerospace and BMW. In 2000, the company was sold by BMW to the Ford Motor Company, becoming part of their Premier Automotive Group. In June 2008 Ford sold its Jaguar Land Rover operations to Tata Motors.

Land Rover is one of the longest lived Four-wheel drive (4WD) brands, coming in close second to Jeep.

Type
Subsidiary

Founded
1948 as a marque of the Rover Company.
1978 Land Rover Limited company established.

Founder
Rover Company

Headquarters
Gaydon, England, UK

Key people
Ratan Tata, Chairman
David Smith, CEO
Phil Popham, Managing Director

Industry
Automotive

Products
Automobiles

Employees
13,000

Parent
Tata Motors

Website
landrover.com

Jaguar History

Founded as the Swallow Sidecar Company in 1922, by two motorcycle enthusiasts, William Lyons and William Walmsley, the SS Jaguar name first appeared on a 2.5 litre saloon in 1935. The Jaguar name was given to the entire company in 1945 when the SS was dropped due to lack of popularity from WWII.

The distinctive “leaping Jaguar” mascot

Jaguar made its name in the 1950s with a series of elegantly-styled sports cars and luxury saloons. The company bought the Daimler Motor Company (not to be confused with Daimler-Benz), in 1960 from Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA). From the late 1960s, Daimler was used as a brand name for Jaguar’s most luxurious saloons.

Mergers and nationalization
Jaguar merged with the British Motor Corporation (BMC), the Austin-Morris combine, to form British Motor Holdings (BMH) in 1966. After merging with Leyland, which had already taken over Rover and Standard Triumph, the resultant company then became the British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC) in 1968. Financial difficulties and the publication of the Ryder Report led to effective nationalisation in 1975 and the company became British Leyland Ltd (later simply BL plc).

In the 1970s the Jaguar and Daimler marques formed part of BL’s specialist car division or Jaguar Rover Triumph Ltd until a restructure in the early 1980s saw most of the BL volume car manufacturing side becoming the Austin Rover Group within which Jaguar was not included.

Privatisation
In 1984, Jaguar was floated off as a separate company on the stock market ? one of the Thatcher government’s many privatisations.

Purchase by Ford
The Ford Motor Company made an offer to purchase the company in September 1989 which was accepted at an Extraordinary General Meeting in January 1990 and Jaguar was removed from the London Stock Exchange listings on 28 February 1990. In 1999 it became part of Ford’s new Premier Automotive Group along with Aston Martin, Volvo Cars and, from 2000, Land Rover; Aston Martin was subsequently sold off in 2007. Between Ford purchasing Jaguar in 1989 and selling it in 2008 it did not earn any profit for the Dearborn-based auto manufacturer.

Since Land Rover’s 2002 purchase by Ford, it has been closely associated with Jaguar. In many countries they share a common sales and distribution network (including shared dealerships), and some models now share components, although the only shared production facility is Halewood, for the X-Type and the Freelander 2. However operationally the two companies were effectively integrated under a common management structure within Ford’s PAG.

Sale by Ford
On 11 June 2007, Ford announced that it planned to sell Jaguar, along with Land Rover and retained the services of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and HSBC to advise it on the deal. The sale was initially expected to be announced by September 2007, but was delayed until March 2008. Private equity firms such as Alchemy Partners of the UK, TPG Capital, Ripplewood Holdings (which hired former Ford Europe executive Sir Nick Scheele to head its bid), Cerberus Capital Management and One Equity Partners (owned by JP Morgan Chase and managed by former Ford executive Jacques Nasser) of the US, Tata Motors of India and a consortium comprising Mahindra and Mahindra (an auto manufacturer from India) and Apollo Management all initially expressed interest in purchasing the marques from the Ford Motor Company.

Before the sale was announced, Anthony Bamford, chairman of British excavators manufacturer JCB had expressed interest in purchasing the company in August 2006, but backed out when told the sale would also involve Land Rover, which he did not wish to buy. On Christmas Eve of 2007, Mahindra and Mahindra backed out of the race for both brands, citing complexities in the deal.

On 1 January 2008, Ford made a formal announcement which declared Tata as the preferred bidder.Tata Motors also received endorsements from the Transport And General Worker’s Union (TGWU)-Amicus combine as well as from Ford. According to the rules of the auction process, this announcement would not automatically disqualify any other potential suitor. However, Ford (as well as representatives of Unite) would now be able to enter into more focused and detailed discussions with Tata to iron out issues ranging from labour concerns (job security and pensions), technology (IT systems and engine production) and intellectual property, as well as the final sale price. Ford would also open its books for a more comprehensive due diligence by Tata. On 18 March 2008, Reuters reported that American bankers Citigroup and JP Morgan shall be underwriting a loan of USD 3 billion in order to finance the deal.

Purchase by Tata Motors
On 26 March 2008, Ford announced that it had agreed to sell its Jaguar and Land Rover operations to Tata Motors of India, and that the sale was expected to be completed by the end of the second quarter of 2008. Included in the deal were the rights to three other British brands, Jaguar’s own Daimler, as well as two dormant brands Lanchester and Rover. On 2 June 2008 the sale to Tata was completed by both partie.

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Hyundai History

Chung Ju-Yung founded the Hyundai Engineering and Construction Company in 1947. Hyundai Motor Company was later established in 1967. The company?s first model, the Cortina, was released in cooperation with Ford Motor Company in 1968. In 1975, the Pony, the first Korean car, was released, with styling by Giorgio Giugiaro of ItalDesign and powertrain technology provided by Japan?s Mitsubishi Motors. Exports began in the following year to Ecuador and soon thereafter to the Benelux countries. In 1991, the company succeeded in developing its first proprietary gasoline engine, the four-cylinder Alpha, and transmission, thus paving the way for technological independence.

In 1986, Hyundai began to sell cars in the United States, and the Excel was nominated “Best Product #10” by Fortune magazine, largely because of its affordability. The company began to produce models with its own technology in 1988, beginning with the midsize Sonata.

In 1996, Hyundai Motors India Limited was established with a production plant in Irrungattukatoi near Chennai, India.

In 1998, Hyundai began to overhaul its image in an attempt to establish itself as a world-class brand. Chung Ju Yung transferred leadership of Hyundai Motor to his son, Chung Mong Koo, in 1999. Hyundai?s parent company, Hyundai Motor Group, invested heavily in the quality, design, manufacturing, and long-term research of its vehicles. It added a 10-year or 100,000-mile (160,000?km) warranty to cars sold in the United States and launched an aggressive marketing campaign.

In 2004, Hyundai was ranked second in “initial quality” in a survey/study by J.D. Power and Associates. Hyundai is now one of the top 100 most valuable brands worldwide. Since 2002, Hyundai has also been one of the worldwide official sponsors of the FIFA World Cup.

In 2006, the South Korean government initiated an investigation of Chung Mong Koo?s practices as head of Hyundai, suspecting him of corruption. On April 28, 2006, Chung was arrested, and charged for embezzlement of 100 billion won (US$106 million), with Hyundai Vice Chairman and CEO, Kim Dong-jin taking over as head of the company.

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