In the 1970s, The Ford Motor Company had acres of open storage filled with made-in-England cars that they could not sell. The culture was to keep factories open albeit below capacity. Now they, and other manufacturers, are facing the same dilemma. Ford says it's not going to make the same mistake again.
Having failed in its initial bid to gain support from the British government via Peter Mandelson, TATA is now playing hard-ball with the UK's Labour Party in its bid to get its purchase of Jaguar Land Rover underwritten by the UK taxpayer. It's getting dangerously close to a foreign company playing power broker in UK politics.
It might sound ridiculous but when Ford announced today that it had lost "only" USD 1,400 million people were happy. For they had expected it to lose more.
It is expected that Ford, which had already said that Tata of India was its preferred bidder, will shortly announce that Jaguar and Range Rover will be sold to TATA for USD2 milliard.
Ford sold Aston Martin to an investment company and then put Jaguar and Range Rover up to sale, recently declaring TATA of India to be the preferred bidder. It's yet another faux pas in the recent history where, so far as the company's accounts are concerned, it's any colour you want so long as it's red.
