Sales of Jaguar Land Rover are rising, just as the Indian-owned British-based car manufacturer has been given a new boss.
Tata Motors, Jaguar Land Rover’s owner, appointed Carl-Peter Forster yesterday as its worldwide chief executive, given special responsibility for rehabilitating the great British car marques.
David Smith, the chief executive who had overseen Jaguar Land Rover during its $2.3 billion acquisition by Tata from Ford in 2008, left last month. The arrival of Mr Forster, the German former head of General Motors’ European operations, including Vauxhall, comes as Jaguar Land Rover’s fortunes appear to be turning. Tata reported that global sales of Range Rovers and Land Rovers had more than tripled in January from the same month last year to 13,295. Sales of Jaguar cars more than doubled to 2,974 over the same period. There are also high hopes for the introduction of new models, including the Jaguar XJ and the Range Rover LRX.
Much of those sales went to the export market. In Britain in January, sales from the Land Rover half of the business were 66 per cent higher at 2,518, while Jaguar sales were down marginally at 1,041.
The rises come after an awful 2009 for the car industry, when sales plummeted, especially in the early months. Even after a stronger last few months, Land Rover sales are down 16 per cent in Tata’s current financial year and Jaguar sales are off 30 per cent.
In the UK last year Land Rover and Range Rover sales fell by 10 per cent to 29,185 while Jaguar sales were down 10 per cent at 18,234.
Mr Forster, 55, quit GM last November after the company decided to retain its Opel/Vauxhall operations, rejecting his call for a sale to Magna, the Canadian automotive group. The one-time McKinsey management consultant had been with GM for eight years. Before that, he had spent 13 years with BMW, where his roles included management board responsibilities for manufacturing and a stint running BMW South Africa.
Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Motors, said that Mr Forster’s arrival would help Tata to reach its ambition of “being a truly international company”.
Lord Bhattacharyya, Professor of Manufacturing at Warwick University and founder of the Warwick Manufacturing Group, said that Mr Forster’s international expertise would be vital to the future of Jaguar Land Rover and Tata Motors. “He has very good international experience and Tata Motors are very lucky to get hold of him,” he said. “The majority of Jaguar Land Rover sales are overseas and his experience of overseas markets is what it and Tata needs.”
Lord Bhattacharyya also believes that the arrival of Mr Forster will hasten the integration of Jaguar Land Rover into Tata Motors. The question mark hanging over Jaguar Land Rover is whether its Indian owners want to take production out of Britain to India — a suggestion that Tata Motors has always denied. However, the immediate tough decisions facing Mr Forster include the restructuring of Jaguar Land Rover’s operations in the Midlands, where workers — who are in dispute with the company over changes to terms and conditions — have been told that either the Solihull plant that makes the Range Rover or the Jaguar plant in Castle Bromwich is to close.
Source : The Times
