Further brands for Jaguar Land Rover?

[Gompo]

Personally if they can sell the Cygnet, I'd prefer them to do that to ignorant WAGS and the like (and people who can afford an over-priced city car), rather than devaluing the whole brand by putting lesser engines in their 'proper' Astons. I'm sure eventually the engines will get less and less traditionally 'AM' in the future but it'd be nice to delay it for a while. The DB7 did ok with the S6 to be fair though.

[Guest EccentricRichard]

talking about deliberately cheapening Skodas

 

It's got to the point now that the Skoda Superb is cheaper than a Passat or an A4, but much more accomplished than both... and Skoda still faces much unjustified prejudice from the badge snobs, thereby making it a favourite of the 'cognoscenti'...

[Guest EccentricRichard]

Personally if they can sell the Cygnet, I'd prefer them to do that to ignorant WAGS and the like (and people who can afford an over-priced city car), rather than devaluing the whole brand by putting lesser engines in their 'proper' Astons. I'm sure eventually the engines will get less and less traditionally 'AM' in the future but it'd be nice to delay it for a while. The DB7 did ok with the S6 to be fair though.

 

I'd rather they didn't sell to the WAGs at all... remember, the first Astons had small four-cylinder engines. I'm sure a 300hp six would be quite adequate... after all, for much of the David Brown years, Astons were powered by 'sixes', as was the Jaguar XK120/40/50, the C-type, the D-type, the E-type...

[Pete-M]

talking about deliberately cheapening Skodas

 

It's got to the point now that the Skoda Superb is cheaper than a Passat or an A4, but much more accomplished than both... and Skoda still faces much unjustified prejudice from the badge snobs, thereby making it a favourite of the 'cognoscenti'...

 

I drive about 1000 miles a week in various new Superbs. All poverty spec, 105 bhp 1.9 TDi ones. They're bloody good. Better ride quality than the XJR, a lot more space inside too. I drove one back to Liverpool from Cardiff the other day, came across the Brecons and along the A roads all the way. Handling is pretty bloody good on 'em, it averaged over 50 mpg and I did the whole 190 miles in around 3 3/4 hours which wasn't bad going. Stereo is pretty good in 'em too. I'd like a go in the mental 3.6 4x4 one, in fact, I may just buy one in a few years when they're cheap.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Whats your point exactly ER, beyond machine-gunning us with your vast knowledge of the entire history of everything and what every motor manufacturer in the world should quite obviously be doing yet is somehow not.

[Gompo]

Is having 300hp six going to lower their emissions enough to meet the future 'average emissions' directive then?

 

I know this topic was about JLR anyway so I'll leave it after this, but with regards to AM; I dont want them to sell more cars or expand, they're popular enough as it is. I dont want to see them fold but having them doing stuff like the One-77 and the Cygnet is more interesting to me than loads of S6 turbo powered cars.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Why have more brands? Why bring back 'dead' ones? Why not just build a decent car with the brand you've got, let the same people design and build it as have designed and built your other models, and you will get the 'company DNA' free of charge. Farting about with brand names is a mugs game, just ask GM.

 

Because some brands just can't be stretched that far... it would be ridiculous for Aston Martin to build a small city car. Oh, wait...

 

Jaguar shouldn't try building a supermini either - which is why the Swallow brand would be useful for that. Jaguar shouldn't build a big barge to take on Rolls, either, as they need to make their brand image more youthful. That's where Daimler/Lanchester comes in. It's also why BMW bought Rolls-Royce, Volkswagen bought Bentley and Lamborghini, etc...

 

I understand your point about badge engineering entirely - GM learned that one the hard way, as did BMC/British Leyland, and now it's getting stupid at Volkswagen, where they're talking about deliberately cheapening Skodas to prevent them overtaking the core brand, which sounds like a very British Leyland way of doing things. However, what I'm talking about is NOT badge-engineering: it's about a more subtle marketing strategy. Like it or not (I suspect that, this being Autoshite, we all agree on disliking it), marketing is necessary.

 

Fannying around with brand names is the mark of a car company with no direction and one that is heading for obllivion. The only successful cases of it that I can think of, is the Mini and Rolls-royce. The VW group highlights this point very well. VW, Audi, Bentley, Lambo all are fundamentally stand-alone operations that design and manufacture their own cars. Their VAG group influence is in their operating procedures and supply chains, and use of mega-expensive technical resources like wind tunnles, crash test facilities and so on. Skoda makes more use of VW group 'hardware' and everyone knows an Octavia is a slightly cheaper Golf/A3 thats a USP in itself. SEAT has no particular USP and churns out pointless vehicles of very little interest, its a great example of making use of a 'brand' without there being anything worthwhile behind it and shows that even the mighty VW group can get it wrong.

 

A Jag supermini called a Lanchester is the worst idea I have ever heard.

[Guest EccentricRichard]

Fannying around with brand names is the mark of a car company with no direction and one that is heading for obllivion. The only successful cases of it that I can think of, is the Mini and Rolls-royce. The VW group highlights this point very well. VW, Audi, Bentley, Lambo all are fundamentally stand-alone operations that design and manufacture their own cars. Their VAG group influence is in their operating procedures and supply chains, and use of mega-expensive technical resources like wind tunnles, crash test facilities and so on. Skoda makes more use of VW group 'hardware' and everyone knows an Octavia is a slightly cheaper Golf/A3 thats a USP in itself. SEAT has no particular USP and churns out pointless vehicles of very little interest, its a great example of making use of a 'brand' without there being anything worthwhile behind it and shows that even the mighty VW group can get it wrong.

 

A Jag supermini called a Lanchester is the worst idea I have ever heard.

 

Oh, quite - SEAT is badly lost at the moment, even VAG realises that. Also, I never suggested the Lanchester name for a Jag supermini (perish the thought!) - more for taking on Bentley, Rolls, S-classes, etc. Use Swallow for the supermini is what I said...

[Guest EccentricRichard]

Is having 300hp six going to lower their emissions enough to meet the future 'average emissions' directive then?

 

I know this topic was about JLR anyway so I'll leave it after this, but with regards to AM; I dont want them to sell more cars or expand, they're popular enough as it is. I dont want to see them fold but having them doing stuff like the One-77 and the Cygnet is more interesting to me than loads of S6 turbo powered cars.

 

It'd make a surprising difference - particularly with the sales boost it'd provide.

[fiatdaft]

swallow mmmm i think somebody should have .

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Oh, quite - SEAT is badly lost at the moment, even VAG realises that. Also, I never suggested the Lanchester name for a Jag supermini (perish the thought!) - more for taking on Bentley, Rolls, S-classes, etc. Use Swallow for the supermini is what I said...

 

Ah! I didnt realise the Jag supermini shlould be called 'Swallow', thats a great idea, i'm sure theres any amount of folk who'd like to drive round in a car called a 'swallow' nowadays.

[Vin]

The whole 'ER' thing I find bizarre.

 

Mr B. has put me in LOLZATRON mood. I spat out my Whyte & McKay (ovbiously not good, but worth it...)

[Jozza]

Not surprisingly the BL brands with any real potential in them have all been kept by BMW (MINI, Triumph, Riley, Metro). The ones which carry only a slim hope of ever being revived have been nabbed by the Chinese (Austin, Morris, Woseley [at the discretion of the Plumb Center people, apparently], Standard). PACCAR has Leyland for trucks (do Volvo have it for buses?).

 

That leaves JLR with, well, Jaguar and Land Rover, which are doing very nicely, and then Daimler, a brand that hasn't really been an independent force for decades and is currently dormant. Lanchester is even less of an entity than Daimler, has been dead for yonks and has no awareness of what it is, what it made and what it stood for amongst 99.9% of the population baring the fact that a ropey one appeared on Top Gear a while back and it was a bit shit.

 

As for Rover people have a lot of idea what they reckon that stands for and very little of it is good, regardless of how justified that is or not.

 

Bringing back Daimler in some form or another is the only one that makes the tiniest sliver of sense as a top-rank brand to sit above Jaguar and Range Rover, more in Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Maybach territory.

 

Lanchester is such a dead brand that there would be no point in bringing it back. Doing a range of 'proper' Lanchesters would just compete with what they already make and for anything else you might as well make up a name from scratch. The only reason for ressurecting a dead brand is if it still has some resonance with people that makes it worthwhile and Lanchester has none of it.

 

I would dearly love Tata/JLR to bring back 'proper' Rovers in the P4/P6/SD1 mould- innovative to the point of being slightly radical, hairy-chested waft-mobiles with lots of power but no real 'sportiness', just plenty of luxury. However that's so close to what Jaguar is that you end up in the same situation that BL was in. You can try and say that Jaguar is the British BMW whilst Rover is the British Mercedes but how do you really quantify that in real and marketing terms without making one brand the inferior relation to the other- 'A Jaguar is a less luxurious Rover whilst a Rover is a less sporty Jaguar'? You can't without doing an Austin-Rover and putting the Rover badge on things that it shouldn't be on.

 

JLR should stick with what they've got and if they ever need to spread out do what manufacturers did in the old days and generate an all-new badge that can stand on its own merits, not be reliant on a load of marketing nonsense to try and sell it to people on the basis of a load of fake history.

[Albert Ross]

Has anyone else noticed the lack of typos and grammatical errors in ER's posts? Possibly due the the fact it's been proof-read and a few sub editors have scanned over it, then the "copy and paste" function helps?

 

Or is it just me?

[garethj]

standard limited-slip diffs across the range (also at Jaguar)

A friend of mine works there and he gave me a lift down to Goodwood in his XJR. Maybe it wasn't called that, but it was a 2+2 cabrio with a 5 litre V8, I get lost with anything after 1978.

 

The diff isn't limited slip, it electronically controls the speed and torque to either wheel so it can aid stability too - when turning left it'll make the right wheel turn a little faster to help it around, they tested the same thing on the Range Rovers and they're now much less likely to fall over - it's that good.

 

Hoofing the power down, this sports cabrio is a lot more stable than I expected, although it does have tyres specially developed for it. You can take huge chances with accelerating over bumps and off camber corners and it just goes without drama. Places where I wouldn't accelerate hard with my measly 2 litre Pinto and this thing rockets off without a worry. Very impressive.

[eddyramrod]

Has anyone else noticed the lack of typos and grammatical errors in ER's posts? Possibly due the the fact it's been proof-read and a few sub editors have scanned over it, then the "copy and paste" function helps?

 

Or is it just me?

 

Springing to the lad's defence is really going to hurt here, given that he has wilfully nicked my initials for a blatant BMW publicity blast (and in another thread I've just had a go at him for it)... but it IS actually possible to type correctly, even on an internet forum. Or have I missed something, some ruling that says the internet has different rules of English? Surely if we've grown up speaking it, and been educated in it to at least completion-of-primary-level, every one of us should be capable of a clean, more-or-less-correct posting? It isn't that hard.

 

Not that I want to sound like a swot....

[Albert Ross]

Agreed, er, but I have seen only one spelling error (I refuse to call it a mistake) and that was in his own addition/expression of disbelief, not in the drivel that's been painstakingly copied from someone else's head. I am watching now for deliberate "added" typos in the text. Not suspicious or owt. Not me. never. No. Well. A bit like.

 

Jaguars are only Mongdeos or Mustangs these days anyway. What were they thinking with a FWD Diesel Jag Estate? Honestly, I can't think of a worse combination..... I had a Diesel Astra Estate........... cheaper, better to drive, easier to park without worry, a proper box of crap. V8? That's for a Daimler. Jaguar are STRAIGHT 6 or V12. Jaguar should have stayed with premium luxury saloons and coupes. They lost the thread years ago, better to kill it now before it becomes a millstone. What about keeping the V8 for a Daimler (or indeed Lanchester) Limousine, and a supercharged Straight 6 for the other Saloons/Coupes, and a V12 for the hooning option on them all.

[Guest Leonard Hatred]

You've got it bang on there AR; young ER's a prototype motoring journalist robot.

[Justin Case]

JLR do not have brands, they have MARQUES. Lesser companies who make breakfast cereals and other such downmarket products have brands. 'Branding' is just the ephemeral marketing candy-floss; calling marques 'brands' devalues the marque.

[Cavcraft]

I'd like to see a certain luxury car manafacturer bring out a budget model. It'd be called the the Bukaki Daygone, have a K-sealies engine and it'd drink and spit out fluids out fluids all over the shop.

[Mr Lobster]

Surely they could market that as an alternative to the 'Swallow' and call it the 'Spit'.

[eddyramrod]

Not suspicious or owt. Not me. never. No. Well. A bit like.

 

Of course not, perish the thought...

[Pete-M]

Jaguars are only Mongdeos or Mustangs these days anyway. What were they thinking with a FWD Diesel Jag Estate? Honestly, I can't think of a worse combination..... I had a Diesel Astra Estate........... cheaper, better to drive, easier to park without worry, a proper box of crap. V8? That's for a Daimler. Jaguar are STRAIGHT 6 or V12. Jaguar should have stayed with premium luxury saloons and coupes. They lost the thread years ago, better to kill it now before it becomes a millstone. What about keeping the V8 for a Daimler (or indeed Lanchester) Limousine, and a supercharged Straight 6 for the other Saloons/Coupes, and a V12 for the hooning option on them all.

 

The only thing I don't like about my XJR is that it's a straight six, I'd be much, much happier with a V8 one.

 

I agree that they should never have made a FWD, diesel estate based vaguely on Mondeo bits. Then again, as far as I'm concerned there shouldn't be any FWD or diesel cars made by anyone.

[garethj]

Jaguar shouldn't build a big barge to take on Rolls, either, as they need to make their brand image more youthful. That's where Daimler/Lanchester comes in.

Buying on heritage rarely works because most car buyers don't give two hoots what a marque stood for 80 years ago.

 

1. Does it have more airbags / NCAP stars than anything else?

2. How long is the warranty

3. Will I look a complete tool, or is there a chance that pretty young thing in Accounts will smile at me when she sees me getting out of it.

 

That's it. Really. Anyone who does a Google search on Lanchester will come up with pictures of Edwardian gentlemen and sideburns don't sell cars.

[Tayne]

.

[Louise2cv]

E-R, I know elsewhere you've said you don't have a licence, but do you drive "off the public highway"?

 

I'm just getting confused with statements like this:

 

that the XJ is becoming lower, sportier, harder-riding (I don't have a problem with that, personally)

 

the HP Citroen C5 rides and handles bloody well

 

...is there something you're not telling us? Interesting motoring-based day job or something... I'm not taking the piss, I genuinely intrigued. You type these opinions and they come across with such conviction even though many on here have said "tell us about driving when you can drive" ...are you having the last laugh? Have I missed the joke?

 

Nope, just secondhand info, I'm afraid

 

Well ok, what cars have you driven? Dad's beemers? Any off road (public highway) driving? Again not a pisstake, just looking for some background, you seem to know a lot about the characteristics of engines/gearboxes/suspension etc...

[Guest EccentricRichard]

The whole 'ER' thing I find bizarre.

 

Mr B. has put me in LOLZATRON mood. I spat out my Whyte & McKay (ovbiously not good, but worth it...)

 

White and Mackay? Don't they sponsor the Force India F1 team?

[Guest EccentricRichard]

Not surprisingly the BL brands with any real potential in them have all been kept by BMW (MINI, Triumph, Riley, Metro). The ones which carry only a slim hope of ever being revived have been nabbed by the Chinese (Austin, Morris, Woseley [at the discretion of the Plumb Center people, apparently], Standard). PACCAR has Leyland for trucks (do Volvo have it for buses?).

 

That leaves JLR with, well, Jaguar and Land Rover, which are doing very nicely, and then Daimler, a brand that hasn't really been an independent force for decades and is currently dormant. Lanchester is even less of an entity than Daimler, has been dead for yonks and has no awareness of what it is, what it made and what it stood for amongst 99.9% of the population baring the fact that a ropey one appeared on Top Gear a while back and it was a bit shit.

 

As for Rover people have a lot of idea what they reckon that stands for and very little of it is good, regardless of how justified that is or not.

 

Bringing back Daimler in some form or another is the only one that makes the tiniest sliver of sense as a top-rank brand to sit above Jaguar and Range Rover, more in Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Maybach territory.

 

Lanchester is such a dead brand that there would be no point in bringing it back. Doing a range of 'proper' Lanchesters would just compete with what they already make and for anything else you might as well make up a name from scratch. The only reason for ressurecting a dead brand is if it still has some resonance with people that makes it worthwhile and Lanchester has none of it.

 

I would dearly love Tata/JLR to bring back 'proper' Rovers in the P4/P6/SD1 mould- innovative to the point of being slightly radical, hairy-chested waft-mobiles with lots of power but no real 'sportiness', just plenty of luxury. However that's so close to what Jaguar is that you end up in the same situation that BL was in. You can try and say that Jaguar is the British BMW whilst Rover is the British Mercedes but how do you really quantify that in real and marketing terms without making one brand the inferior relation to the other- 'A Jaguar is a less luxurious Rover whilst a Rover is a less sporty Jaguar'? You can't without doing an Austin-Rover and putting the Rover badge on things that it shouldn't be on.

 

JLR should stick with what they've got and if they ever need to spread out do what manufacturers did in the old days and generate an all-new badge that can stand on its own merits, not be reliant on a load of marketing nonsense to try and sell it to people on the basis of a load of fake history.

 

Erm, Daimler were around until quite recently (all generations of XJ have had Daimler versions, except the new one). Won't argue with the rest, though - I may not agree with it all, but I certainly can't be arsed to pick it apart.

[Guest EccentricRichard]

Agreed, er, but I have seen only one spelling error (I refuse to call it a mistake) and that was in his own addition/expression of disbelief, not in the drivel that's been painstakingly copied from someone else's head. I am watching now for deliberate "added" typos in the text. Not suspicious or owt. Not me. never. No. Well. A bit like.

 

Jaguars are only Mongdeos or Mustangs these days anyway. What were they thinking with a FWD Diesel Jag Estate? Honestly, I can't think of a worse combination..... I had a Diesel Astra Estate........... cheaper, better to drive, easier to park without worry, a proper box of crap. V8? That's for a Daimler. Jaguar are STRAIGHT 6 or V12. Jaguar should have stayed with premium luxury saloons and coupes. They lost the thread years ago, better to kill it now before it becomes a millstone. What about keeping the V8 for a Daimler (or indeed Lanchester) Limousine, and a supercharged Straight 6 for the other Saloons/Coupes, and a V12 for the hooning option on them all.

 

Huh? Jags only Mondeos or Mustangs these days? OK, so the XF is VERY distantly related to the Mustang, but the X-type (which was a hugely re-engineered Mondeo) is dead, the XK and XJ use exclusive-to-themselves all-aluminium platforms, the V8 engine isn't used by anyone except Jaguar (well, there's a modified version in the Aston V8 Vantage, so what I just said isn't strictly true), but there's nothing like as much in common with common-or-garden Frauds these days as you might believe. Also, it's a bloody good V8 engine, and the diesel V6 is pretty unbelievable... if not quite the equal of BMW's 300bhp twin-turbo all-alloy straight six. Mind you, I do agree that Jaguar need to get back to straight sixes, and even they agree (if the rumours coming out of Gaydon are to be believed).

 

Also, Jaguar couldn't stick to doing what they were doing (which is what you seem to want them to do), as their sales were plummeting. The new (well, not so new now) XK perked things up a bit, the XF sent sales rocketing and the new XJ has just overtaken the A8, the 7-series, the S-class, the LS, the Panamera and the Quattroporte to become the best-selling luxury saloon in the UK. So, a millstone? Not really.

[Guest EccentricRichard]

Well ok, what cars have you driven? Dad's beemers? Any off road (public highway) driving? Again not a pisstake, just looking for some background, you seem to know a lot about the characteristics of engines/gearboxes/suspension etc...

 

I'm afraid I'm too broke to have driven, I just do a lot of reading... not just on cars, either. I could probably answer any question you liked on the 19th Century Gothic Revival, for instance... or steam locomotives... or old planes... or medieval engineering/architecture (thinking especially of the cathedrals of the time) blah blah blah...