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?

Jaguar has made an incrediable progress regarding reliability and customer satisfaction. Jaguar is now in Lexus territory. The only real problem is the “conservative” design, which is about to change. So a turnaround of Jaguar might be easier then most assume, because Ford has done the har work.

With Porsche process and productivity know-how, I would bet that all three could become quite profitable, quicker then VW will be turned around. Much less complicated then VW structural problems. All three would benefit from Porsche-branded engineering, engines, chassis, processes without harming Porsche’s core business. Each of them would have it’s own identity and could do something for the others.

Development and production processes could be much more flexible and faster then any cooperation with VW. Neither Land Rover, nor Jaguar or Volvo are direct competitors to Porsche. Jaguar’s two seaters are more GT than sportscars and Landies are no threat to the Cayennes. Ford has already sold the only real competitor to Porsches: Aston-Martin that is.

If it weren’t for the VW committment, my money would be on Porsche. This potential gold mine of the four brands for Porsche makes the VW deal look quite risky in comparison.

What a shame, what a waste.

Photo c2007 by 117355

technorati tags:Jaguar, Aston-Martin, Land Rover, Porsche, Automobile Industry, automotive, VW, Volvo

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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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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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The latest news from the VW Group in the last month or so are quite worrying. It almost looks like much of what was gained over the last 20 years will be reverted or endangered… in only a few months. Sales were up this year and results in general were improving. In the last years, Pischetrieder’s team and project had gained the credibility from all. Still a lot of work to be done to be where the company should be, but things were on track.

Suddenly, and sadly, Piech is back in the picture and… who knows what will happen in the end, but it seems that, for a start, the groups of brands will be reorganised by ‘volume’ and ‘prestige’. The new CEO, Martin Winterkorn seems to be planning to revert many of the positive decisions that Bernd Pischetsrieder took. The latest rumours are that even SEAT is not in Winterkorn’s future plans, and could be up for sale. Apparently Wolfgang Bernhard is opposed to this. But then again, he may soon leave VW (to go back to DCX). Bernhard has demonstrated to be not just an effective cost cutter, but also to have a very fine sense for products and marketing (Chrysler 300C, new VW Scirocco, VW Tiguan…).

If Bernhard leaves VW, SEAT is sold out of the group, and other news of late are confirmed, the future for the VW group has a much worse prospect to recover as a leading company. For the last 20 years (since about the time when SEAT was bought by VW) the Group is the leader automotive group in Europe; the VW that Winterkorn (Piech?) seems to be designing would not take long to lose this position and become number two –or less- in Europe. And these are rumours even before Winterkorn starts his job as the new CEO. As an fan of the company, let’s hope these rumours prove to be wrong and things start getting back of track.