Detroit Motor Show: Where worlds collide

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the 2008 Detroit show wasn’t short of home teams proudly displaying their latest trucks. Being bigger and chromier than ever was clearly the order of the day, and if the latest leviathan could play the green card by running on bioethanol, all the better.

The Europeans and Japanese were there in force too, of course, using innovative design and cutting-edge technologies to tempt buyers away from their beloved US brands. There was even a smattering of Chinese manufacturers in the outer halls, touting copycat versions of decade-old humdrum Western models.

Of more interest to most of the journalists present on press day was finding out why Ford was selling off its premium brands (first Aston and now Jaguar and Land Rover) when it seems the companies in question are all finally turning a corner in terms of profitability after years of losses.

According to informed sources, Ford paid £1.6 billion for Jaguar in 1989 and £1.7 billion for Land Rover 11 years later, and has since spent another £6 billion getting the brands to where they are today. Yet now Ford is set to accept an offer of around £1 billion from Tata to buy both Jaguar and Land Rover outright, leaving an £8 billion hole in the accounts just when the companies could start paying some of it off.

It hardly seems like the deal of the century, but the explanation for the sale came from Jaguar & Land Rover CEO Geoff Polites. Apparently Alan Mulally, the man who replaced Bill Ford as president and CEO of Ford Mo Co last September, was brought in by the Ford family to rescue Ford, pure and simple – not the Premier Automotive Group. Briefed with turning the core Ford business around and restoring its profitability, that’s exactly what he’s doing.

As for Jaguar, there’s every chance it will return to profitability in 2009 – the X-type was quietly pulled from the US market at the end of last year, a radical-looking XJ replacement is well on its way, the XK is doing good business in the showrooms and everyone has high hopes for the new XF.

Polites said we should expect to see a more sporting XK very soon – possibly as soon as the Geneva show in March – and added that, if he had his way, Jaguar would not replace the X-type with a sub-XF saloon but with a Boxster-beating Jaguar F-type. Let’s hope the company’s new owners like the sound of that plan…