Tata Motors earmarks Daimler revival
Author: Chris Barker
Published: 30 July 2008
Tata Motors could be about to place the defibrillators on the legendary Daimler brand and ask eager onlookers to stand back as it looks to go head to head with Rolls Royce and Bentley, injecting some new blue blood into the upper echelons of the lucrative super-luxury car market.With very few UK car buyers having enough cash to chip in for a £1,250 Tata Nano – the worlds cheapest new car – in these financially uncertain days, the ambitious new owner of Jaguar Land Rover is setting his sights on overseas investors who always like a bit of old colonial to saunter about in, plus the odd dictator and war-mongerer.Thing is, it will take more than a tug on the old heart strings to breathe new life into the heraldic Daimler name and bring it back as a stand alone brand in its own right, having endured a lengthy spell in suspended animation. Once the cryogenically-preserved Daimler has thawed out, there’s the big business of spending a hefty chunk of Ratan Tata’s £1billion rainy day fund to complete the regeneration of the marquee that at one time came by appointment to the Queen and her mum.Although Tata bean counters aren’t lending much gravitas to these mutterings, industry analysts believe that the will is there, if the way and consequent infrastructure to support it, isn’t just yet. They reckon Tata’s best hopes of giving Daimler the kiss of life; lie in ensuring it’s enacted in the right, optimum-chosen segment. And that is commonly accepted to be somewhere between where the Jaguar range finishes and the Bentley range begins to take shape.
Formed in 1896 in Coventry, it wasn’t long before Daimler started rolling out motorized carriages fit for royalty after snapping up engines developed by Gottlieb Daimler, the pioneering German engineer.Having survived a glut of owners in its lifetime, including most recently British Leyland and its takeover by Ford in 1989, Daimler’s intellectual rights are now jointly owned between Jaguar Land Rover and Daimler AG, the German car manufacturer that spawned from the cast off seed of DaimlerChrysler that was splintered in 2007. Even after renegotiated terms, JLR still maintained the wherewithal to legally build Daimler cars should they see fit in the future.Presently, the only vehicle in the Jaguar portfolio that supports the Daimler moniker is the £80K Daimler Super Eight which was launched in 2005.
See Also:
Ford has announced the sale of Jaguar and Land Rover to India's Tata Motors, confirming one of the worst-kept secrets in automotive history.
The British car industry: Who owns who; what names might return; and whatever happened to Austin, Rover and Morris?
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