Tata Motors ready to pitch Daimler back in the race
Times
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Daimler Super V8 will be replaced in style...
Tata Motors, the new owner of Jaguar and Land Rover, is looking
to revive Daimler, the luxury car marque favoured by the Queen and her mother.
Ratan Tata, head of the Indian conglomerate that bought the marque as part of
its $2.3 billion purchase of Ford's luxury brands, told investors that he was
deciding whether to resurrect the Daimler brand.
Tata has earmarked £1bn to develop new models at its British-based
manufacturers and it is suggested that the company wants to transform Daimler
into a super-luxury marque to compete directly with Bentley and Rolls-Royce.
It wants to develop cars for wealthy buyers in Britain, as well as targeting
rich buyers in Asia, Russia and the Middle East.
This strategy would be in contrast with its Indian plan, where
the company has developed the Nano, costing about £1,250, in an attempt
to create a mass market for cars in the home market.
David Smith, chief executive of Land Rover and Jaguar, suggested
recently that both Jaguar and Land Rover would be taken further upmarket to
the £100,000-plus price bracket. A Tata spokesman said that it was too
early to say whether Daimler would be part of those plans. Analysts believe
that a new generation of Daimlers could find ready buyers. Garel Rhys, of Cardiff
University, said: “Tata could make a very good job of this, especially
if they target the space between where the top of Jaguar's current range ends
and where manufacturers such as Bentley kick in. Daimler has a fantastic heritage.”
The Coventry-based Daimler Motor Company was formed in 1896 after
Fredrick Simms signed an agreement to sell engines developed by Gottlieb Daimler,
the pioneering German engineer, in Britain. The first British-built Daimlers
appeared a year later and proved hugely popular. In 1899 John Scott-Montagu
ran a four-cylinder Daimler in the Paris-Ostend road race with Charles Rolls,
his co-driver, becoming the first British drivers to enter a renowned long-distance
race.
Montagu introduced King Edward VII to the brand, which has maintained
its Royal associations since. Daimler Motor Company became a subsidiary of the
Birmingham Small Arms Company in 1910. It was acquired by Jaguar in 1960 and
remained with the company through its merger with British Leyland and its takeover
by Ford in 1989. Jaguar shares the rights to the Daimler name with Daimler AG,
the German car manufacturer created last year when DaimlerChrysler was split
up and its American operations were bought by Cerberus Capital Management, the
private equity firm.
Jaguar agreed terms late last year which allow the German company
to use the Daimler brand as the title of a trading company, a trade name or
a corporate name - rights that it did not hold previously. The renegotiated
terms did not affect Jaguar's rights to build Daimler cars. A spokesman for
Jaguar said: “The extended usage agreement does not affect either company's
existing right to use the Daimler name for a product.”
At present the Daimler badge is restricted to the most expensive
Jaguar model - the Daimler Super Eight, which has a list price of £80,000.
The model was released in 2005. Jaguar has bounced back in terms of sales of
late after the launch of a new mid-sized saloon, the XF. The brand sold 3,836
units in Western Europe last month, up 31 per cent on the same month a year
earlier.
By contrast, sales at Land Rover - widely seen as, by far, the
healthier company - have fallen dramatically in its biggest market, the United
States. June sales in the US fell more than 40 per cent to 2200 units in June
from the previous year. Western Europeab sales dropped 36 per cent during the
same period. Mr Tata has already expressed a desire to press on with the creation
of a new Jaguar, the F-type.
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