Is Jaguar destined to follow Rover to the scrapheap
Jan 11 2007 By John Duckers, Birmingham Post
The Detroit Motor Show continues but all the big players have departed. And how much the wiser are we?
It is an odd sort of event. I've been there on a couple of occasions - it's held at a venue called the Cobo Centre. Not a patch on the NEC, and the NEC couldn't even manage to hold on to the second string British Motor Show.
No surprise then that t here were no real announcements, even if some interesting trends seem to be emerging.
Ford is prevaricating horribly over the future of Jaguar. According to chief executive Alan Mulally it was "not for sale at this time". So, it might be for sale t oday, but it wasn't yesterday.
But he was talking it up. "We really like the progress Jaguar is making, both on the product side and on their quality and productivity."
Despite Jaguar's 2006 sales being down 16 per cent to just over 75,000 cars, managing director Bibiana Boerio said the decline was "part of the plan to focus on the premium end of the business, focus on the quality of our sales and driving better profitability".
I think the last time I heard something similar was in the early death throes of Rover.
A cycnic would say that Ford is hedging its bets - trying to hike up the price while seeking to defend the brand if there are no takers.
Let's hope there is a future for the sake of every-one at Castle Bromwich.
Yet Ford has mortgaged its assets to borrow up to $23.4 billion (£12.1 million) to fund its massive restruc-turing plan and cover billions in losses expected until 2009.
The company, which lost $7 billion in the first nine months of last year, expects to burn up $17 billion in cash during the next two.
About 38,000 blue-collar workers are going, plants are being closed.
How long can it afford to carry a luxury loss-maker in Jaguar? Still, stranger things happen in the motor industry.
Japan's car manufacturers enter 2007 on what looks to be a march to world dominance, almost apologising to the US for selling so many cars there.
They are trying to stay humble, wary that their main obstacles may be governments rather than competitors.
Fears of a Japan-bashing backlash, as seen in the 1980s, still linger, although analysts say Japan's plants and jobs in the US have now taken the edge off this "foreign" competition.
At the end of 2006, the share of the US car market held by Japanese companies was 35 per cent, up from 20 per cent in 1986.
The share held by Detroit's Big Three - General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler's Chrysler Group - was about 53 per cent, down from 74 per cent 20 years ago.
Last year, GM's sales in America fell about nine per cent, Ford's eight per cent and Chrysler's seven per cent.
Toyota sales jumped 13 per cent, while Honda's rose four per cent. But just whisper it, and don't mention Pearl Harbour.
