Ford’s focus
ON NOVEMBER 3, 1989, Ford announced that it had bought Jaguar for $2.38 billion – ironically $0.08 billion less than it sold the company (along with Land Rover) to Tata 19 years later.
The deal was concluded after several weeks of jockeying between Detroit’s two largest car makers, Ford and General Motors, to buy majority ownership of the company.
Sir John Egan, Jaguar’s chairman since 1980, was against an outright purchase, which saw GMin pole position as it would have retained a degree of independence for the brand, and after nine months of negotiation the deal was nearly done.
But then along came Ford with an outright purchase proposal, just days after the British government lifted a restriction left over from the British Leyland era that would prevent another company from owning more than 85 percent of Jaguar. Ford had already purchased Aston Martin a year earlier, so the move was a good one. With Jaguar as well, Ford created its Premier Automotive Group (PAG), which would later encapsulate Land Rover and Volvo.
It would be a few more years, though, before the true impact of Ford’s ownership started to take effect on Jaguar. There was a lot to do from a business integration perspective to start with and while product improvements did happen, with both the XJS and the XJ40 being face lifted not long after the Ford ink was dry on the contracts, the first new car wouldn’t appear until four years later with the debut of the X300-generation of XJ at the British Motor Show.
Even then, the car wasn’t all that new. It may have been a move in the right direction, but the
