Jaguar’s decline tells tale of tarnished brand

Roland Jones Associate editor • Profile • E-mail

There’s nothing quite as sad as a great name gone bad. Jaguar once was counted among the very best in luxury vehicle nameplates, and its name was synonymous with sophistication and style.

But the Big Cat’s image has seriously eroded in recent years under the ownership of Ford, despite a revival in its flagging quality.

Ford acquired the British nameplate in 1989 and has now sold it, along with the Land Rover brand, to India’s Tata Motors in a deal that will make the struggling U.S. automaker about $1.7 billion — roughly a third of the price it paid for the two luxury brands.

What happened? Put simply, Jaguar hasn’t kept up with the times, particularly when it comes to style. Research shows Jaguar buyers are older than the average luxury car shopper. Jaguar is suffering from an aging audience, according to George Magliano, director of automotive industry research at Global Insight.

“I don’t think people under 60 are aware of the luster of the Jaguar brand name,” said Magliano. “This is a difficult market, and people don’t necessarily see the Jaguar brand as a luxury sports car any more. And over the last decade the product just hasn’t been there to grab the American consumer.”

Jaguar, which traces its history to 1922, once stood for everything that’s best about automobile manufacturing — outstanding design, engineering and performance. The Jaguar E-Type, probably the most famous Jag of all, revolutionized sports car design in the 1960s and became an icon of that decade.

Now the posh British carmaker stands for everything that’s wrong at Ford. Despite billions in investment, Jaguar hasn’t turned a profit since Ford bought it in 1989 with plans to bring the brand to a broader market and challenge the likes of BMW. A series of poor business decisions, fierce competition and declining interest on the part of U.S. buyers meant this never came to pass.

Now Ford, which sold its Aston Martin brand in March 2007, finds itself fighting bigger problems at home, including a masive restructuring plan intended to bring it back to profitability by 2009.

Ford is selling Jaguar because the automaker knows it won’t be able to put money into the brand to keep it relevant and updated, and that’s probably because Ford really needs to focus on its core product line right now, noted Jonathan Linkov, Consumer Reports’ managing editor for autos.

“Car consumers are fickle, so you really have to stand out with your design these days, and so I think correct way to look at Jaguar is as an example of a brand that has been ignored and not given the funding and support it needed because Ford has had other problems to deal with,” Linkov added. “When you’re relying on sales of big SUVs and pickups for your big profits the smaller brands are going to get lost in the shuffle.”

One of the reasons for the demise of Jaguar may have been a decision to reduce costs by sharing parts across brands, so that Jaguars are built using platforms on which other Ford vehicles are built, Linkov explained. The practice is common in the auto industry, but in this case may have hurt Jaguar’s image or quality.

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