[Leica] Seriously OT - Jaguar

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

Jaguar is owned by Tata Motors. This from the Bloomberg Business News:

"Tata?s 2008 acquisition of British luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR)
always seemed like a vanity play. The symbolism was nice ? Indian company
buys high-profile symbol of the former colonial power ? but Jaguar and its
money-losing British operation seemed like an unnecessary burden for a
company that should be focusing on the huge opportunities in its home
market. The timing of the $2.5 billion deal was awful, too, coming just
before the subprime meltdown hammered demand for high-priced luxury names
like Jaguar. Investors clearly haven?t been so concerned, though. Tata?s
ADRs are up 422% in the past year ? and that was when Jaguar was still in
the red. Now the luxury division is finally starting to make profits for
Tata thanks to cost cutting, a better product mix and a slowly improving
global economy. A slew of analysts ? including those at Morgan Stanley, Bank
of America Merrill Lynch and Nomura ? have come out with upbeat reports
about the company following Tata Motors? quarterly earnings announcement
last week."

As a former classic Jaguar owner (140MC), I applaud any improvement in the
marque. My Jaguar was lovely to look at, exciting to drive, but took at
least one hour of maintenance for each hour on the road. Now if we could
only get Tata to buy Leica- - -.

Incidentally, Jasmine Tata, a niece of Ratan Tata, the chairman of the Tata
Group, was my graduate assistant at the university for several years. A
charming girl. She had eyes for my son. Too bad he wasn't interested.

Larry Z