The Jaguar brand stretches its roots back to 1922 when the company was founded in Blackpool, England by William Lyon and William Walmsley. A short time after that, S.S. Cars Limited changed its name. In 1935 an open-top two-passenger sports automobile was produced in conjunction with the SS Jaguar 100, the Sports Saloon type (a.k.a. a sports sedan). A few times, the ownership has changed, but presently it belongs to the Indian company called Tata Motors. Jaguar Land Rover is now a division of Tata Motors Limited. Jaguar Land Rover Limited’s major operation is to design, develop, manufacture and sell the Jaguar and Land Rover brands. The Jaguar, back into the 1930s, and Land Rover in the 1940s, both brands have a long and complex history. First, they started in 1968, as a member of the conglomerate of British Leyland, then became independent. It was followed by being the subsidiary companies of BMW (in Land Rover) and Ford Motor Company (Jaguar). After the breakdown of the erstwhile Rover Group, which remained effectively the UK Leyland vehicle manufacturing enterprises, Ford purchased Land Rover over BMW in the year 2000.
Since it was created as a holding company for Jaguar, from the Land Rover’s purchase by Ford, in 2008, Jaguar Land Rover was sold to Tata Motors as a subsidiary brand for US $3 billion. Jaguar Land Rover Limited was created as a completely owned subsidiary by Tata Group on 18 January 2008. On 1 January 2013, the Group went through a fundamental restructuring. The whole Jaguar Tata group became an integrated structure, which operated as two separate companies (Jaguar Cars Limited and Land Rover). The parent company, Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC, has been renamed Jaguar Land Rover Limited and has transferred Land Rover assets (which does not include certain Chinese holdings) into the firm. This resulted in Jaguar Land Rover Limited becoming, in the United Kingdom, responsible for design, production, and commercialization of both products of Jaguar and Land Rover. JLR also owns rights to the erstwhile Daimler, Lanchester, and Rover, as well as the marks of the Jaguar and Land Rover. TML Holdings Pvt Ltd or the ultimate parent company/controller is Tata Motors Limited. Or the immediate parent of Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC. The Tata group’s president Ratan Tata was its chairman and chief executive officer of Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC from 2008 to December 2012.
Tata Motors and its British affiliate, Jaguar Land Rover or Jaguar Tata, are close to completing a joint initiative. It is being done in order to produce a luxury sport utility vehicle, which can cost between Rs 20-25 lakh, and compete against the likes of Toyota Fortuner, Ford Endeavor, and Hyundai Santa Fe. The project, code-named Q5, was developed by a team of 45 technicians headed by Karl Heinz Servos, which would shortly lead to the rollout of a 7-seater SUV in India. Many years after the acquisition of the British premium brands Jaguar and Land Rover, Tata Motors is developing a product for India. The SUV will be built on the Land Rover Platform from the current Freelander 2 generation, based on the premium procedures for JLR. It will be considerably modified to suit the Indian market conditions if the project satisfies tech-commercial viability standards. In addition to that, local compact SUVs like the Nexon are also heavily inspired by the JLR design philosophy. With all the electrification of cars going on, it would be interesting to see what they have planned for India in the future.
