Jaguar, Land Rover Sale Still Months Away; Volvo Fate To Be Decided Sooner
August 23, 2007

Ford’s sale of Jaguar and Land Rover will occur late this year or early next, while the decision to keep or sell Volvo will be made within the next two to three months, a Ford official said.

Lewis Booth, Ford’s executive vice president in charge of Europe, told reporters at a briefing Wednesday night that Jaguar and Land Rover would not be sold by the end of September, as many publications have been reporting. Instead, it may take until the end of the year or into 2008 to finish the deal.

At the same time, a strategic review of Volvo and its fate should be completed within three months, he said.

Booth said the fate of all three European brands -– as well as the already-sold Aston Martin -- is about money. Ford, which mortgaged its future to stay afloat, could not feed all of those brands down the line, and Ford needed the cash it can make from their sale.

Booth said the sale of Aston Martin was a relatively easy decision, since it was nearly a standalone brand. Jaguar and Land Rover were a bit more complex. Volvo is even more complicated, since it shares technology, engineering and architectures with other Ford products.

Posted by at 8:27 AM under Ford , News | Comments (0) | digg this | Seed Newsvine