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So there’s some rumours knocking around that the PSA group of France (Peugeot, Citroen and Vauxhall/Opel) might be in talks to partner up with or even buy out Jaguar Land Rover:

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/analysis-how-jaguar-land-rover-and-psa-could-work-together

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/jaguar-land-rover-boss-plays-down-psa-sale-report-doesnt-deny-it

JLR deny it, but there’s no smoke without fire. Think it’s true? And if so, would it help out the beleaguered JLR?

And regardless, what can JLR do to turn itself around? Besides improving their dismal reliability issues?

We'll having somebody else pumping in cash would help (assuming they've actually got cash to pump in and it's not a buy out/merger built on loans and stock manipulation)

but Jaguars real problem is the went heavily into diesel and the world wide market for them crashed (and I doubt it will come back given that it seems all of the brands that fiddled the pollution tests still don't seem to have provided appropriate compensation)

and selling cars built over here in china just isn't really cost competitive especially as china's internal car industry gets stronger

Electric cars may save them but I fear Tata will get fed up long before the research and dev on them really starts paying out

The diesel issue is a major problem. Especially since so many of their sales are diesel. In short, they backed a losing horse. It’s like...they went with HD DVDs (remember those?) instead of Blue-rays. And now they’re suffering for it. They seem to be trying to move in the right direction (the I-Pace) but they need to do more.

I can think of three other big problems they’re facing:

China. Declining sales, rumoured to be from a mixture of poor dealer networks and problem number two, which is;

Poor reliability. Sadly it seems that the descendent of BL still can’t put a car together properly. And that is a major issue. I see so many complaints about their reliability. And in new markets like China, that’ll kill the brand dead.

And finally, for a company of its size, it could be argued that JLR makes too many models. And I’m not the only one saying that:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2018/08/06/as-jlr-stumbles-some-jaguar-models-could-face-the-axe/#220c7cc035a0

First, I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about cars, but the Land Rover range confuses the hell out of me. They seem to be trying to pitch ‘land rovers’ and ‘range rovers’ as separate marques, but they share the same badge and sit in the same line ups. And there’s a lot of models jostling for the same market position. For example, as far as I can tell, the Land Rover Discovery Sport, the Range Rover Evoque and the Jaguar E Pace are all pretty much the same car, sitting in roughly the same price bracket give or take a couple of thousand. And then there’s the Range Rover Sport and Range Rover Velar...again, they seem to be pretty much the same car. Now I might be wrong, but that’s usually not a good idea, to effectively compete with yourself.

Then there’s jag, my favourite car marque (maybe alongside Alfa Romeo). Their XE saloon is tanking, because it’s just not good enough to compete against the king of its class, the BMW 3 series. I would love for them to improve it and make it a real contender, but that’s going to be a long up hill battle. And I hear that the XF and XJ saloons aren’t doing too well either. Only the SUVs are holding up. Maybe the F type is doing well too. I’m not sure.

It might be because of the reliability issues, but I often wonder why Jags don’t get more fleet sales. Specifically, as police cars.

I want to say for the record too, that I hate SUVs. Hate hate hate them. But they’re just the way the wind is blowing these days so I have to suck it up I guess.

It used to be that Land Rovers were for farmers and soldiers and were marketed for their function and Range Rovers were for showing off and marketed on style. After they ditched the Defender, that distinction sort of vanished. I don't know what cars are being sold to rural workers in the Highlands, Yorkshire and the Welsh Valleys now. Land Cruisers, probably.

Jaguar just weren't cheap enough, and last time round a lot of the UK police forces grouped together to get a bulk deal with even cheaper discount

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11804048/Ministers-under-fire-for-allowing-half-of-Britains-police-forces-to-order-3000-foreign-made-vehicles.html

although you have to ignore the strong odour of 'British Made Cars for British Police' from the telegraph story

(oh how it must have rankled for them to say British Made not British, but since almost all the car makers in the UK are foreign owned they didn't have much choice)

I also suspect (with little evidence except for watching some documentaries dealing with police procurement) that JLR is less willing than some other manufacturers to customise their cars for the police (as while the police do a lot of modification themselves, having a car closer to their needs than the basic saloon is helpful)

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
We'll having somebody else pumping in cash would help (assuming they've actually got cash to pump in and it's not a buy out/merger built on loans and stock manipulation)

but Jaguars real problem is the went heavily into diesel and the world wide market for them crashed (and I doubt it will come back given that it seems all of the brands that fiddled the pollution tests still don't seem to have provided appropriate compensation)

and selling cars built over here in china just isn't really cost competitive especially as china's internal car industry gets stronger

Definitely think the decline of diesel is a factor, as the vast majority of their cars ran on them.

Price-wise, if you ignore the ludicrously expensive Evoque/discovery sports etc., even something like the XF is quite high in the price bracket. Similar class to a 4-series or A5 but you can get those cars cheaper, and quite often with more options included. When those other cars are more reliable then it means you have to really like to look of the Jag to want to pay the extra (personally only car in their range which I think is anything like special is the F-Type, which actually looks more like a Ferrari than a Jag!)

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Jaguar just weren't cheap enough, and last time round a lot of the UK police forces grouped together to get a bulk deal with even cheaper discount

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11804048/Ministers-under-fire-for-allowing-half-of-Britains-police-forces-to-order-3000-foreign-made-vehicles.html

although you have to ignore the strong odour of 'British Made Cars for British Police' from the telegraph story

(oh how it must have rankled for them to say British Made not British, but since almost all the car makers in the UK are foreign owned they didn't have much choice)

I also suspect (with little evidence except for watching some documentaries dealing with police procurement) that JLR is less willing than some other manufacturers to customise their cars for the police (as while the police do a lot of modification themselves, having a car closer to their needs than the basic saloon is helpful)

Since Morgan was sold are there any car manufacturers in the UK which are British owned? Caterham Cars, maybe and they are highly niche.

McLaren, and also Williams and Racing Point, I think. The latter two only build two cars a year, though.

I think Aston Martin is still sort of British owned, but there’s a lot of Middle Eastern money behind it.

It also just occurs to me that if a merger or buy out between JLR and PSA goes ahead, Jaguar and Vauxhall will now be under one roof. Meanwhile, jag saloons aren’t selling too well but vauxhall’s Astra and Insignia get decent numbers out I think. I guess what I’m driving at is, if Jaguar give it’s XE and XF saloons to Vauxhall, who applied their aesthetics and reliability to them, and slapped their badge on them, might they live on? My thinking is, nobody seems prepared to pay premium saloon money for an XE or XF, but would they pay mass market money for them?

Eh, I’m probably rambling.

There is lots of small British manufacturers, especially in motorsport. The question of where the money comes from is a strange thing to worry about anyway to me. Pretty much any company over a certain size is owned by investors from all over the world.