I neglected to include Jaguar and Land Rover in my Dead Pool article a couple weeks back. Turns out they may go down the tubes first – before Mitsubishi.
India’s Tata Motors – which owns the two brands – reported a 96 percent fall in net profit for its third quarter, citing sharply lower earnings for its British luxury carmaker business.
Consolidated net profit for the three months to Dec. 31 fell to 1.12 billion rupees ($16.7 million) from 29.53 billion a year earlier, the company said on Tuesday. Total income from operations fell 4.3 percent to 685.41 billion rupees.
Jaguar Land Rover’s net profit declined to 167 million pounds ($208 million) from 440 million a year ago, on revenue up 13.1 percent to 6.5 billion.
Tata Motors’ domestic business reported a net loss of 10.46 billion rupees as it revamped its passenger vehicles business to boost sales and gain market share.
Carmakers in India were also hit in the third quarter by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “demonetisation” move in November, when he declared notes of 500 rupees and 1,000 rupees illegal tender, taking about 86 percent of total currency out of circulation.
Tah-tah, Tata!
Not surprising though that all these luxury brands are going down (Jag and LR, that is). There’s a limited market that can afford their product- and even most of that market really can’t afford ’em- they finance ’em to the hilt. The vehicles are basically toys. Ya buy ’em for all the bells and whistles, and after a few years, they’re just another old car, but WAY too expensive to repair once out of warranty. I’ll bet most owners go for something more practical next time around- assuming they’re not bankrupt by then.
So many companies vying for the relatively small high-end side of the market; and the stuff aimed at the low-end is cheesy junk. Instead of their being a solid mid-range, the mid-range stuff seems intnet on trying to mimic the more expensive stuff, with more put into bells and whistles than substance.
They don’t seem to even want to sell your basic 3/4 ton 4×4 pick-up anymore, unless it’s loaded with luxuries and costs $70K. And I don’t even think you can even get one with a stick anymore….
There’s NOTHING out there. And they wonder why they’re all going broke? Unless you’re stupid or insane, who’d wanna buy any of this crap?
I know a guy in India that drives a tata nano. He likes it, nice and cheap and does what he needs it to do. They are not looked upon with favor there. All this friends teased him. They drive honda or predominately suzuki cars. All of which we don’t have here. Imagine if we had the choice to buy cars we want. If I could get a nano for $3000 it might be worth it for my 5 mile commute.
Hi Todd,
I like the Tata cars, too. The cash bleed seems to be chiefly due to losses from Jaguar/Land Rover and from the confiscatory monetary policies of the Indian government.
I, too, would love to see a basic $3,000 car available for sale here.
That we’re not allowed to buy such cars tells you something about how “free” we are.
I agree. Must need to kill more children in the middle east to get them to stop blocking us from buying the cars we want. 🙂