Yes, years ago, a dentist friend of mine owned an XKE, which he compared to being married to Elizabeth Taylor, at that time very glamorous.
He constantly mentioned the (sometimes) exotic fun together with the very high upkeep and tempermental behavior.
The modern equivealent would be Paris Hilton.
"He constantly mentioned the (sometimes) exotic fun together with the very high upkeep and tempermental behavior.
The modern equivealent would be Paris Hilton."
… and what is the problem?
“Yes,Lucas, Prince of Darkness. Even the Britishg called them that!”
The old joke was that all you had to do was remove everything that said “lucas” and replace it with something that said “bosch.”
Most of us don’t have the money, stamina or patience to cope with all these variables!
Sure you do. Life’s too short for boring… anything.
Apparently, he has “narrowed it down” to:
An un-named Chrysler vehicle
Cadillac Escalade
GMC Yukon
Chevy Suburban
A Jaguar
Subaru Tribeca
And that list doesn’t make sense to you?
;-))
Don’t forget the G-series benz and the ford powerstroke truck from his other threads.
Agree, Tata is a reputable company, and when India was a closed, centrally controlled economy many firms licensed their technology since they could not sell anything there.
My experience with licencees is that something gets lost in the prosess, and the local quality is not quite what it should be.
Latin America is full of Volvo heavy trucks, for instance, but their Argentina built quality is not quite up to Europe’s.
However, Tata has the best chance of improving Jaguar and Land Rover, since they have a very favorable cost structure and a huge staff to work on the problem.They are also very aware that the market for these cars is the whole world, so international quality standards have to be met.
If a company like Fiat had bought them, they probably would never get it right.
Oh–somehow I missed the Benz and the Ford truck.
It is becoming all the more clear that this is a youngster who is playing around on the site, or perhaps someone older who is…ummm…well, I think that you get the idea.
That’s OK, it’s entertaining and it’s keeping him off the streets. At least he’s not hitting on my daughter in MySpace.
You are right, Benzman, my knowledge of Tata is limited.
I hope they didn’t overpay for Land Rover. Land Rovers are in a reliability class all by themselves.
…you hope. He seems pretty good at multitasking… 
sorry, I shouldn’t do that to you…my daughter is only 4 months old and I’m already feeling the stress that is to come…
At the end of the day Ford sold Jaguar and Land Rover for roughly 1/3 what they paid.
While that’s not in the same league as the beating Daimler took when they off loaded Chrysler, it still amounts to big money.
It’s funny. India was one looked down upon by the British upper crust. Now they own the company that manufactures the very cars that upper crust likes to drive. Ah yes, hang around long enough and it all comes home to roost.
Benzman
“It’s funny. India was one looked down upon by the British upper crust. Now they own the company that manufactures the very cars that upper crust likes to drive. Ah yes, hang around long enough and it all comes home to roost.”
Eventually they will realize that the sun does (and has) set on the british empire. It is funny that one ex-colony just sold them off to another younger ex-colony. It also points out that the U.S. is starting to look a lot like england of the previous century.
"…you hope. He seems pretty good at multitasking…
sorry, I shouldn’t do that to you…my daughter is only 4 months old and I’m already feeling the stress that is to come…"
Naw, if he’s spending this much time playing with us he hasn’t discovered girls yet. (-;
My daughters are 12 and 17; trust me, you don’t want to know what the next couple of decades are going to involve… but it’s fun.
If we go back several 1000 years in history, for all but the last 400 years, China has been the largest econonomy in the world, and also the most advanced. India was a greatcivilization when my acestors in NW Europe were hunting game in sheepskins.
When my wife recently bought some more British Royal Albert china, she turned it over, and lo and behold, it was made in CHINA! Funny thing! Five hundred years ago the Dutch and British learned glazing from guess who?
You might say that the end of the 20th Century was also the beginning of the end of total Western dominance of the industrial world.
It mean that we will have to learn to share a lot of things. The golden rule here means that those with the gold will make the rules!
Yup, I fully expect that I (or at least my kids/grandkids) will end up living someplace in the far east sooner or later. That’s where all the action will be for the foreseeable future. It will be interesting.
I don’t anything about Tata but when Ford bought Jag they did provide the name with lots of improvements. But, I guess it’s all in one’s perspective.
If you are accident prone stay away from the Jag. The car has aluminum frame rails that cannot be serviced. If you have an accident bad enough that the frame rails need replacing you will find they are n/a. The only way to get them is to buy the entire body.
Haha, good point!
Ohhh that must be interesting…but yes, I am looking forward to it all as much as I dread certain parts.