RISE & RUIN
Empire File No. 7

Tata Tried to Sell to Ford. 9 Years Later, It Bought Jaguar.

Tata JLR2008: Buys Jaguar Land Rover from FordThe comeback9 min watch
Tata Tried to Sell to Ford. 9 Years Later, It Bought Jaguar.
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The story

In 1999, Tata flew to Detroit to sell its struggling car business to Ford, and according to a Tata executive who was there, the meeting was humiliating. Nine years later, Ford was the one selling, and Tata bought Jaguar and Land Rover for $2.3 billion. Then the financial crisis hit.

This is the story of how an Indian company, famous for trucks and the world's cheapest car, turned two struggling British brands into a business earning billions, and why the story still isn't over.

Three lessons

  1. 1

    Buying cheap only works if you can survive what comes next. Tata bought at a great price, then nearly drowned in the crisis.

  2. 2

    Own it, don't overwrite it. Tata let the British brands stay British, and invested in their engineers and designers.

  3. 3

    Keep investing through the storm. The cars that saved the company were paid for in the years it was losing money.

Chapters

  1. 0:00Intro
  2. 0:55The meeting in Detroit
  3. 1:52Ford's British problem
  4. 2:37The favour
  5. 3:36The worst timing possible
  6. 4:37Let the British be British
  7. 5:37The turnaround
  8. 6:28The story isn't over
  9. 7:31Three lessons

Sources

Every fact in this file is checked against published sources before release. See our standards.

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