Buy two and get one for free

My money is on a buy-out of PAG backed by private equity and hedge funds. Who knows, maybe some big automotive suppliers might be part of such a deal. None of the automobile manufacturers is a likely buyer, either because of their own problems, or because Volvo/Jaguar/Land Rover would not be compatible and easily integrated.

The arguments which speak for Porsche are valid for the three brands on their own…

My surprise candidate, if it weren’t for…

VW. I mean Porsche, of course, buying all three: Volvo, Land Rover and Jaguar. Outlandish? Less so than the surprise deal with VW at the time.

Think about it. If you forget the VW deal for a moment, Porsche is a surprisingly good candidate. Porsche has the money. Porsche with Land-Rover, Jaguar and Volvo could be very interesting and complementary. Much more so then VW. All three are relatively small brands, very characteristic, very known, very individualistic, very dedicated and loyal customers and potentially very high margin. Sounds like a description of Porsche, doesn’t it?

Marriage potential, but still unlikely

So here we go through options which are more likely than the previous bunch. But, nay, they ain’t great candidates either.

Renault-Nissan – Land-Rover, Jaguar and Volvo look good for Renault on paper. Profitable luxury brands where Renault isn’t strong. But hey, there is Nissan and Infinity. Nissan is good with quality cars and SUVs. Infinity is rear wheel drive and could be developed for the European market. So there go Land-Rover and Jaguar. Volvo is more attractive – until you look at the efforts Renault has undertaken to become the brand for “5-star safety”. And then Volvo and Renault had a fling before Ford stepped in. They didn’t like to go through with it then, so why should they do so now?

PSA – again, on the surface such a deal looks appealing until you digg deeper. PSA is not without problems, their car range has become unattractive with the notable exception of Citroen. Ok, so Volvo / Land-Rover / Jaguar could open the US market for PSA. But would they try to sell Citroens and Peugeots over there? Even with the distribution in place, that seems unlikely anytime soon. PSA seems good in collaborating with others on engines (BMW, Ford), vans and minivans (FIAT), small cars (Toyota) and more recently SUVs (Mitsubishi). None of the three bands would add much to the PSA portfolio. So we think PSA won’t buy any of them.

FIAT – again great on paper, Volvo, Land-Rover and Jaguar opening the US-market for FIAT. But look at FIAT, they are just getting out of a long struggle which nearly destroyed the concern. And hey, FIAT is not very good at managing acquisitions. Lancia is not really selling outside of Italy. Alfa Romeo has a great potential, but recent models like the fat Brera and Spyder disappoint the enthousiasts and are not attractive enough for the executive buyers. Alfa as a company car? Alfa fleet sales? Yeah, exactly. The only successful joint-ventures were with PSA (vans, minivans), so FIAT might be trying more of those cooperations like they just did with Suzuki.

technorati tags:Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover, PSA, FIAT, Renault-Nissan

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No deal with those

So let’s present the not-really-candidates to buy either Jaguar, Volvo and Land-Rover or all of them together!

The unlikeliest are:

DaimlerChrysler – well, Daimler has decided to loose the Chrysler name, so why on earth should Daimler make another marriage when they just divorced their 10-year long partner? Also Mercedes is far to close to the three brands, Land Rover, Volvo or Jaguar.

BMW – some seem to like such a deal, I tend to differ. Land Rover or Jaguar are not interesting to BMW, remember Rover? And btw, BMW already owned Land Rover and seemed quite happy to get rid of them. After all, they could have kept Land-Rover just like Mini.  Volvo? They are front wheel drive cars, so what platform or component advantage would such a deal have for the BMW? Although some analysts speculate that Volvo and BMW customers are different, in our increasingly heterogenic world, who knows. So such a deal is not going to happen.

Volkswagen – Skoda and Audi are the Volvos of VW. So why adding the real thing, when Skoda and Audi are selling nicely? And VW has other problems to think about, the shareholding structure and Porsche, productivity and cost efficiency as well as the reshaping of the VW make.  How aboutLand Rover and Jaguar? Land Rover is a niche player and in combination with Bentley might be an interesting luxury option for VW. Jaguar is loosing money, rear wheel drive and therefore difficult to swallow. So, a VW deal is unlikely.

GM- oh please !

Japanese – Honda and Toyota don’t seem to wish to buy in general and show that brands can be developed from scratch quickly and successfully. So why on earth should they buy problems when they don’t have any?

technorati tags:Ford, Jaguar, Volvo, Land-Rover, BMW, Mercedes, Daimler, Toyota, Honda, Porsche, Skoda, Audi, Automobile Industry, buyers

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Let’s have some fun with Volvo, Land Rover and Jaguar

OK, so now we know officially that Fords wants to sell it’s silver. Everybody has known that for quite some time and if somebody had made Ford an interesting offer they would have sold those three long ago. But nobody seems to make an offer interesting enough. Why?

Industry “insiders” play games and publicly try to marry especially Volvo to some other car firm, like Renault-Nissan, PSA or BMW. For whatever reason, the big Japanese are not in the game. Maybe because Japanese firms have never really bought any big rival, considering those actions and the consequences too messy. And as they have shown, it’s easier to create brands like Acura or Lexus from scratch.

So let’s have some fun and explore some options over the next days. I have my favourite solution which I will present at the end of this “series” and I sincerely hope that Ford doesn’t make a deal before we finish our speculations. That would indeed spoil the fun

technorati tags:Jaguar, Land-Rover, Volvo, Ford, Automobile Industry

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