Chat & Social > The Bar - General Chat
LR & Jag Struggling
hobbit:
Wouldn't be surprised if Tata, rape and pillage what they can out of LR/Jag then toss it aside, seems to be the done thing nowadays
Range Rover Blues:
I'd not be surprised if they start making the Defender in India rather than bring out a new model. As for the rest, time will tell. There's a lot of knowledge and ingenuity with LR Jag that they can't just cut out and keep, but I guess most of all it's the bottom line.
MrTFWitt:
--- Quote from: Range Rover Blues on December 20, 2008, 19:26:00 ---I'd not be surprised if they start making the Defender in India rather than bring out a new model. As for the rest, time will tell. There's a lot of knowledge and ingenuity with LR Jag that they can't just cut out and keep, but I guess most of all it's the bottom line.
--- End quote ---
Wonder if it would be marketed as a Tata Ghurka II, theres a shining example of build quality.
I know a cheap labour force could be trained to the same standard but they would have the same staff retention issues as the Indian IT industry, trained staff can move for better money and trapping them with contract clauses causes job dissatisfaction.
With the shift in exchange rates since the Tata purchase the UK staff must be costing less run now as well.
Looks as though Mandelson will reign it all in.
A really sceptical view would be the money is needed to prop up Tata motors after it was forced to abandon the Singur plant after protests from farmers who owned the land it was building the Tata Nano plant on.
SteveGoodz:
A bit off topic, but related to the OP:
It was interesting to hear one of the directors at MAN say he expected Germany to suffer less than the UK during this recession because they have a larger industrial base than we do ... having closed down pretty much all of our big manufacturing plants and industries over the past 20 years or so. In the same time successive Governments have encouraged the transition to a more high-tech service oriented economy but a reality of the modern world is that service industries do not create wealth in the country that provides the service. In the 1950's the UKs manufacturing sector accounted for almost 50% of our GDP; today it is less than 15% and to make matters worse those industries (steel, aluminium, ship building, automobiles, aerospace, construction, etc) are almost all owned by foreign companies. What's the significance of foreign ownership? It makes it more likely that UK factories will be closed in order to save jobs in the companys home country and our lax laws make it easier for foreign companies to lay UK workers off than for UK businesses to do that in other countries.
Providing short-term aid to JLR or their suppliers is a prudent fiscal measure and will certainly cost less in the long run that letting companies (many of which are small and highly specialised with ageing skilled workers) go to the wall. Skills lost now will, almost certainly, be lost forever as we haven't had any real engineering apprenticeships for more than a decade so there are no young semi-skilled workers ready to step up to the plate as we recover from the recession.
Tata is a huge conglomerate but it is no more recession proof than anyone else. Their share values have taking the same hammering as Ford, Chrysler, Mercedes, et al. Hell, even Toyota have announced losses for this year! Having first hand experience of working with Tata right up until a couple of months ago I would say they are an honourable company and they will come up with the promised funds for JLR as and when their finances permit. I have a contract to carry out research work for their steel division here in the UK (used to Corus and British Steel before that) which has been put on hold. I am assured the contract will be honoured sometime in 2009 and, as they've never let me down before, I'm happy to believe that. Mind you, they won't get any work done until I see the colour of their money :-$
As for Tata sponsoring Ferarri ... well there's not much difference between a Tata and a Fiat is there?
Range Rover Blues:
--- Quote from: SteveGoodz on December 22, 2008, 23:02:59 ---
Skills lost now will, almost certainly, be lost forever as we haven't had any real engineering apprenticeships for more than a decade so there are no young semi-skilled workers ready to step up to the plate as we recover from the recession.
--- End quote ---
Hence all the money being thrown at the engineering diploma
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version