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Tata Motors will announce its purchase of Jaguar and Land Rover on March 5 or 6.

The dates have been agreed between Tata and Ford Motor Co., which is selling the two luxury brands, following talks with union leaders last week.

Roger Maddison, national officer of Unite, the largest union in the UK auto industry, told Automotive News Europe that Tata had agreed to meet guarantees sought by union leaders.

He said, “Everything seems fine as far as we are concerned; it’s just the lawyers working on it now.”

Union leaders spoke with Ford and Tata to resolve final details before the drawing up of a memorandum of understanding for the sale.
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The Telegraph is reporting that Ulrich Bez has not just been turning around legendary car maker Aston Martin, but he has been leading them to profit.

To quote the Telegraph, “Are profits still growing? Aston Martin has not yet published its 2007 financial results but Bez says: ‘Usually when there is a change of ownership you can say that a company will go through a difficult time for a year or two. We have not seen any of that. We have not lost any of the motivation that we had under Ford where we were a very enthusiastic team. We have been profitable since the last quarter of 2005 and we have increased that profitability year on year.’”

Jaguar Cars Ltd. has taken 10,000 customer deposits globally for the upcoming XF sedan, including about 3,000 in the United States. That’s a promising start. Jaguar executives say they released the figures to show the impact of the XF even without advertising or cars available to test drive.

Instead, Jaguar has combined dealer training with posh customer-only events. The company put together a 21-city road show with a few demo XFs in tow, training entire dealerships at once. Dealerships then conducted events for loyal customers and luxury intenders.

Ken Gorin, owner of The Collection in Miami, has 80 sold orders from holding two events, one at the dealership and another in the Miami Design District.

“I sold 30 XFs the first night,” Gorin says. “I haven’t seen a reaction like that since the (Porsche) Boxster came out. When people hear that it’s $49,900 with a standard V8, they say, ‘Sign me up.’ ”

Irma Elder, who owns four Jaguar stores in the Detroit area, hosted an owner-only event at the Fox Theatre and didn’t invite the media. She has about 50 sold orders in hand.

The United Kingdom, Europe and North America will all begin selling the XF on March 10. The simultaneous launch is a first for Jaguar. It used to do regional rollouts, with the United States getting cars up to six months after Europe. But Jaguar has proved equal to the task, says Mike O’Driscoll, managing director of Jaguar Cars Ltd.

Marketing also is different. TV commercials will continue in the vein of past “Gorgeous” ads. But Jaguar is returning to a more masculine stance with its print message. That includes running in magazines such as GQ, Rolling Stone, Esquire and Vanity Fair.

Source: Autoweek

Concerns over the quality of the cars being built by Shanghai Automotive (SAIC) at the Birmingham-based Longbridge factory have caused further delays.

The MG TF is due to be the first model launched by the Chinese firm in the UK and production began back in May 2007, but it was stopped not long after.

Since then, NAC (the Chinese firm that bought the MG brand following the collapse of MG Rover) has been bought out by rival Shanghai Automotive and the delays have been further extended.

NAC originally claimed that it would have the MG TF on sale in early 2007 and provide more than 1000 jobs. So far, the car’s launch is more than a year overdue and only 140 jobs have been created.

President of SAIC, Chen Hong, claimed that “if we launch the product on the UK market and don’t have sufficient quality to meet customers’ expectations, we damage the brand. We believe more time is needed to achieve that quality.”

Source: Autocar

Morgan Motor Co., the tiny British automaker so old-fashioned it still uses wood frames, is stepping well into the future with LifeCar, a hydrogen fuel cell hybrid it says will prove “a zero-emission vehicle can be fun to drive.”

Morgan will unveil the hand-built aluminum-bodied coupe next month at the Geneva Auto Show, and although there’s no word on whether LifeCar will ever be more than a one-off concept, the company hopes to show hydrogen is a viable – if distant – alternative to fossil fuels. Morgan has spent more than two years working with a British defense firm, two universities and a hydrogen supplier to develop a car it promises will “minimize the fuel cell cost and provide the fuel economy for a 200 mile range.”

As impressive as the LifeCar is, what makes it truly remarkable is a company so small as Morgan built it. The company, founded in 1912, employs 156 people who built 650 cars last year – all of them by hand in a small factory in rural England. Yet it is standing alongside Honda, General Motors and BMW with a hydrogen-fueled vehicle that works.

Morgan’s cars look like they were designed in the 1930s, and LifeCar draws on that decade’s streamlined art deco aesthetic. LifeCar is based on Morgan’s Aero Eight and uses a fuel cell built by British defense contractor QuentiQ. Charles Morgan, the founder’s grandson, said the challenge was to build “a proper sports car,” and meeting it required a novel approach.

“The use of ultracapacitors to store the surplus energy and then use this for acceleration and braking does promise a dynamic ride, especially when combined with our ultra light chassis,” Morgan told Business Week. “The paring of weight to a minimum is our strength and allows a much smaller fuel cell than conventionally though necessary. This gives energy and yet more weight savings.”

Britain’s Department for Trade and Industry helped finance the project, which reportedly cost 1.9 million British pounds (about $3.7 million at today’s exchange rate). The collaborative effort included Cranfield University, which developed the on-board computer and control systems, and Oxford University’s work on the regenerative electric motors.

We called Morgan and were told quite politely the company had nothing to say about LifeCar right now but will provide more information next week. Meanwhile, here are some conceptual renderings of the car and pictures of it under construction.

Source: Wired

Not strictly British car content, but of interest to most British car enthusiasts. Autoweek is reporting that three special commissioners appointed Monday by a Turin, Italy, bankruptcy court have 30 days to evaluate if struggling Italian contract manufacturer Carrozzeria Bertone will have a future.

Bertone stopped volume production in December 2005 and since then has been desperately looking for new work.

In the past two months, two attempts to sell Carrozzeria Bertone failed, pushing the Turin bankruptcy court to appoint the special commissioners.

The three commissioners are:

– Antonio Bene, an engineer and former head of manufacturing at Fiat Auto.

– Stefano Ambrosini, a law professor at the University of Turin, a bankruptcy expert.

– Vincenzo Nicastro, a lawyer from Milan and a financial contracts expert.

After the three commissioners complete their findings for Carrozzeria Bertone in mid-March, the bankruptcy court will have two options:

1. Approve the commissioners’ proposal and let them run Carrozzeria Bertone for one year.

2. Decide that there is no possibility to save the company and put it in liquidation.

If a restructuring plan is approved, the commissioners could apply for the resumption of a state-funded layoff program, which ended at the end of 2007. The program temporarily paid the salaries of the Bertone workers.

Since January, all Carrozzeria Bertone workers are being paid by the company.