"The media likes to call it the empire striking back. But I think there's more to it than that. There's a lot of evidence in international business research that companies will go to countries that are close to their own countries, close being defined broadly either in cultural terms or historical terms," said Ravi Ramamurti, director of the Center for Emerging Markets at Northeastern University in Boston.
In 1989, British car enthusiasts saw Ford's purchase of Jaguar as a lifesaver that averted the brand's near-certain extinction under British ownership. The latest top-end models executed under Ford management have been widely celebrated: The new XF was named Car of the Year 2008 in Britain's What Car? awards.
The critical successes came on the tail end of years of lackluster financial performance and Ford's ill-fated experimentation with its X-type introductory level luxury car - an endeavor that produced the unlikely specter of a Jaguar station wagon.
Peter Cooke, KPMG professor of automotive management at the University of Buckingham, said that Ford "damaged the brand."
Land Rover prospered under Ford, with worldwide sales rising 18 percent last year as Jaguar's shrank by a similar proportion, but cash-hungry Ford wants to sell both. The automaker lost $2.67 billion in 2007 and $12.6 billion in 2006, and it recently unloaded Aston Martin, another premier British automobile brand, to a Kuwaiti investor group for $848 million, keeping a $77 million stake.
Under the complex ownership-sharing agreements being hashed out, Ford is expected to continue supplying engines - a provision that guarantees, over the next few years at least, not only the jobs of 16,500 workers at Ford plants but up to 40,000 others in the companies that provide components.
Tata would maintain British management teams and three existing production plants in Birmingham and Liverpool, as well as two engineering and design studios. And both Jaguar and Land Rover could wind up a lot more classically British than they ever did under Ford.
"What attracted us was the fact that these are two iconic brands, global in nature and highly respected for their products," Ratan Tata said in an interview with Autocar magazine. "We believe it is the duty of whoever owns them to nurture the image, to retain their touch and feel, and not to tinker with them. They are British brands - and they should remain British."
Kim Murphy and Henry Chu write for the Los Angeles Times.
