Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Two foreigners in forbidden city, Jaguar & Land Rover
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
In 2008, Ford started to sell everything under its brand. Land Rover and Jaguar were one of the toughest sales at that time. As the Land Rover was very profitable, Jaguar was losing blood all the time and no body was looking forward to buy Jaguar! However, Ford packages them together as a promotion and whoever buys Land Rover was going to have Jaguar free!At the same time, Tata was looking for automotive brands to expands its automotive division. However they were reluctant to buy Jaguar as you can imagine the reason! Tata decided to buy Jaguar and Land Rover after they see the potential demand on Jaguar XF model which was introduced before the deal.
Now, Tata decided to move Land Rover and Jaguar production plants to China. And it will be the second foreign brand to be built in China after Volvo. However, unlike in any other business product of origin play significant role in luxury automotive industry. And mainly Land Rover was using this as an important asset to compete with Germans. After this decision, Land Rover and Jaguar's reputation might be adversely affected. Also in Chinese market, it may not receive the same demand as the brands are produced in China!It is a very complicated decision to make. And I can see why Tata is trying to move it production plant outside of UK, but they should focus on East European countries to minimize the damage on product of origin. Producing Land Rover and Jaguar in China and selling to China may not have the same impact as exporting from UK.
Pictures are taken from;
Land Rover, Jaguar Websites
Porsche Panamera V6 in China
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Couple of years ago, car manufacturers were revealing their new cars in Geneva or Frankfurt Motor Shows. However world has changed and car companies also changed! European market turned into a place where nobody wants to buy car or they are taking so much time for purchase decision, the car is being replaced :)On the other hand; emerging markets like China is looking for new cars and they are ready to buy without asking too much questions :) Therefore, car companies started to produce cars which are targeted for Asian markets. Porsche Panamera, Aston Martin Rapide are very good examples.
Let's go back to Porsche. As I told in earlier articles, Porsche loves to introduce Turbo S in the end of product life-cycle and loves to introduce V6 model after couple of months in new vehicles. This only happened with Cayenne! And now Porsche Panamera, my second best Porsche after 911, is not offered with V6 engine. Unlike Cayenne's insufficient engine, this one produced 300 horsepower from 3,6lt V6 engine.
Unfortunately, this engine is not my favourite but it is good chance to own Panamera with better price ;)
Pictures are from;
Porsche Website
Wikipedia
New Volvo S60 Coming Soon from China!
Saturday, January 2, 2010Volvo is bought by Chinese company Geely in recent weeks. And Volvo released the pictures of new S60 model. I could say, this is one of the best looking car on market now! I am really looking forward to see the real one. I never felt like this for a Volvo.
I don't know what to say! Ford, why did you wait so long for this car? You could have introduced new S60 before everything turned into chaos.
We could see that, Volvo still has potential and Ford could have benefited from this. As they ignored to revise Volvo's range for long time, Volvo could not have enough money to survive.
Chinese Volvo S60 will be very popular car and like Jaguar XF, there will be more demand than expected. I think Ford is very good at selling brands which have high potentials hidden. An advise to Geely, try to introduce new S80, as soon as possible! Like, Geneva Motor Show on march ;)
SAAB Again!!!
Friday, December 25, 2009GM sold the technology of 9-3 and 9-5 models and nothing has left for Spyker! BAIC is going to reveal a based on these models technology and probably it will look very similar to SAAB.
I wonder, while making this decision what GM was thinking? I can sell both the company and its technology seperately and make more money ? Probably!
What Spyker would do with this condition? If VW has bought the SAAB brand, consequences would be different but Spyker does not have that much of capital and R&D. SAAB was making very safe cars but customers are looking for both safe and features technologies to proof that safety. And those technology are mostly avaiable in German brand as usual.
Good Luck Spyker
Volvo 中国商品 (Made in China)
Wednesday, December 23, 2009Todya Ford announced their plan to sell Volvo to Chineese car manufacturer Geely. This news was expecting to be announced for long time. For nearly three years, Ford was willing to sell Volvo but always denied this fact. As the financial pressure increased this strategy started to rise. As expected a Chineese manufacturer would buy the Volvo, this business deal between Ford and Geely is a milestone for Chinese automotive industry. By this way, Chinese jumped to luxury car maket with Volvo brand. Even though, Volvo is suffering serious problem in competition and could not keep up with Germans, Geely's motivation to enter luxury market will play significant role in following years.
However; there is a very important fact, does Geely has enough know-how to compete with Germans? This is one of the main reason why Volvo lost its competition power as the Germans revealed much better cars with same safety features. Therefore, Geely should also find very intelligent engineers to increase the competition power Volvo brand.
As everyone is concerning, what will happen to platform sharing with Ford? Ford Focus and Volvo S40 are basically same cars and this means, Geely also bought the some of the Ford's know-how!!!
Volvo promises future and right decisions would help to go back to good old days :)
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