Time To Buy a Jaguar?

Today, the UK government has agreed to a sort of bail-out package for the car industry. Of course, we have no details of how it will work and who will decide who gets what. Fundamentally, we will guarantee loans. Who is going to provide the loans - banks, I suppose? I hope Jaguar Land Rover [JLR] can get through the coming months. As a company they have suffered for some years from the consequences of a number of half-hearted owners. I think Ford wanted to make JLR a success but became so weighed down by problems in the USA that JLR had to be sold off to release some cash. Jaguar is starting to look like a serious car company again. The XJ may have been around for donkey's years but it is still a bloody good car. It will be replaced by a new model next year - all environmentally friendly, it is said. It is going to have to be something special to match the current model. The XF is a terrific car and new high performance versions will be on sale this year. The XK is still good and is there going to be an XJ220 fantasy car? I own a more modest X-Type - slagged off by Jaguar purists, but still there are a lot of X-Types on the roads. Diesel versions have been selling quite well recently and probably contributed greatly to Jaguar only losing 7% of sales in 2008. Ultimately, Jaguar will have to build a new small car to generate high sales to keep the business going. You cannot run a company selling a hand-full of cars at £40,000 or £50,000 each. You can do it at the £250,000 level; that's another planet.

That's it! End of advert. Good luck to all UK manufacturers. It's up to you. We can never again rely on spivs in the City to keep us going. We have to make things that people in the world want to buy.