Jaguar-land Rover To Get An India Made Heart

The Jaguar-Land Rover (JLR) is all set to get an Indian heart built by owner Tata Motors

. The Indian auto company that took over the British luxury car maker would produce engines for the carmaker to cut costs. JLR was acquired by Tata Motors in 2008.

Jaguar-Land Rover and Tata Motor will form a management team and merge the expertise of both sides. This move will end up seeing the engineering part going to the Tata experts and the design part to JLR executives. According to a JLR executive, With the company making country-specific models of Jaguar and Land Rover for certain markets like China and Russia, common parts will reduce expenses.

There is no doubt that the move has been undertaken to save on the cost. But it is also surprising as Tata Motors and JLR are strikingly different from one another. Both the brand target completely different set of buyers. So, the move comes in order to cut costs for the JLR models as the brand goes on an expanding spree in newer and emerging markets like China and Russia. The JLR has to focus on India, China and Russia for the future as the car market in these companies is growing. This move is orchestrated by the new leadership team at Tata Motors under Carl-Peter Forster. JLR sources engines from Ford Motor Co with capacity of more than 4.2 litres and has a five-year contract running to 2013. We are looking at 2-litre engines that can power the new Land Rover model, LRX, Mr Forster said recently. Ford currently does not have such capacity size and is talking to Peugeot-Citroen, he said.

This would not be a unique move as many car manufacturers prefer India as their production hub due to the countrys expertise in reducing cost. According to a Tata Motors spokesman, As India is a preferred source of production, well source the engines here with the design left for the JLR team.

First it would be only Land Rover that would be subjected to this experiment and later on even Jaguar would be incorporated into this. There is some resistance form the JLR executives especially after Tata Motors posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 2,571 crore for the full year to March-end against a loss of Rs 2,505 crore a year ago for the brand JLR.

It is also being thought that of developing the Jaguar and Land Rover separately. The plan is that Range Rover being the flagship brand, JLR is looking to turn it into a brand of its own. As a result the Defender and Discovery models go under Land Rover while Range Rover drops the Land Rover logo and new launches like the LRX will be part of a separate portfolio.

by: cardekho

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