John Duckers, Birmingham Post, 11th December, 2008 The seriousness of the crisis facing Jaguar Land Rover – as well as the rest of the world’s carmakers – was spelled out at a unique round table meeting at a Birmingham restaurant. The Birmingham Post reports. Jaguar Land Rover Chief Executive David Smith has urged the Government [...]

Automotive News Europe, 15th December, 2008 KUWAIT (Reuters) — Kuwait’s Investment Dar said on Sunday it was considering offers to sell up to 20 percent of British carmaker Aston Martin and is seeking to borrow up to 300 million dinars ($1 billion) to refinance debt. The investment firm, which bought half of Aston Martin in [...]

Mehul Srivastava, Automotive News Europe, 15th December, 2008 NEW DELHI — Tata Motors is racing to produce several thousand units of the inexpensive Nano in the next few months, say three suppliers and a Tata operations executive. Because of plant-construction problems, the cars are being built on temporary lines at Tata plants — a move [...]

Diana T. Kurylko, Automotive News, 15th December, 2008 MINI USA will add 10 dealers by the end of 2010 as the brand continues its rapid, recession-defying growth. The additional stores will give MINI 93 dealers by the first quarter of 2010. Most construction will be complete by the end of 2009, says Jim McDowell, vice [...]

Jesse Kraal Firstly, my compliments on your very informative site. I end up spending hours here, losing myself reading stories and looking at pictures. I published a column about the MG Maestro on the largest Dutch car forum and that turned into quite an active thread about the Maestro, Montego and the Metro ranges. However, whilst looking at your site recently, [...]

Keith Adams The Metro Owners Club has been up and running for nearly a year – mainly as an online community. However, as of the 1st February 2009, it’s going to expand to become an official Owners’ Club organisation and, to celebrate the event, there will be a Launch Party at Longbridge Vicarage from 1.00pm [...]

MG Enthusiast Magazine MG UK is implementing the full 2.5% VAT reduction on the TF LE500 from 1st December 2008. The TF LE500 is now priced at £16,055 following the Government’s announcement to cut VAT from 17.5% to 15%. The TF LE500 comes with a host of features like hard top, rear parking sensors, leather [...]

Keith Adams According to Autoblog, the state that the Big Three in the USA now find themselves in is rather precarious. After collectively going cap-in-hand to congress (in the most eco-cars they could find) and asking for a mere $34bn, it looks like the requests made by the three companies’ CEOs were only partially met to the tune of [...]

Keith Adams AROnline’s readers are probably already pretty familiar with the products of Mitsuoka thanks to our Faking it gallery – but, for any who are not, the Japanese company builds pastiches of British classic cars, based closely on modern day underpinnings. If you thought it was impossible to make a Jaguar Mk2 out of a [...]

Song Jung-a in Seoul, Financial Times, 4th December, 2008 Faced with the acute credit crunch, SsangYong Motor said it asked its Chinese parent to provide financial support for the development of new vehicles. SsangYong, in which China’s SAIC Motor owns a 51.3 per cent stake, is in desperate need of cash as it faces 150bn [...]

Jon Griffin, Birmingham Mail, 5th December, 2008 Land Rover saw its monthly UK sales plunge by nearly two-thirds in November as the consumer spending crisis took a brutal toll on showrooms across the UK. The Midlands’ best known manufacturer suffered a sales fall of more than 64 per cent last month as the recession began [...]

Keith Adams Thanks to my mate, Andrew Elphick, I spent a delightful evening browsing the Autotrader website looking at cars for sale. There’s nothing odd about that particularly but, given that 2008 has been all about belt-tightening and buying fewer cars for me, I’ve been avoiding the temptation. Or so I thought… I have been good [...]

Jon Griffin, Birmingham Post, 2nd December, 2008 Tata Motors is appealing for investment from the Indian public to help meet the costs of its purchase of Jaguar and Land Rover. The scale of the financial problems facing the Asian group was highlighted as it emerged it had resorted to taking out an advertisement in an [...]

Jon Griffin, Birmingham Post, 2nd December, 2008 Warwickshire luxury car maker Aston Martin is to cut up to 600 jobs – as it celebrates the second most successful year in its history. The severity of the global downturn was thrown into sharp focus as the Gaydon-based manufacturer announced it was set to cut up to [...]

Ian Nicholls I suppose that this blog might make me unpopular but, with Tata/Jaguar/Land Rover asking for a handout from HM Government, perhaps now is time to question whether state aid for motor manufacturers is cost effective and, indeed, whether motor industry finances make any sense at all. The amounts being talked about are enormous, considering the [...]

just-auto.com Editorial Team, 1st December, 2008 An in-house engineering team and two major component suppliers have together developed Land Rover’s new fuel-saving stop-start technology which will be available on manual diesel Freelander models from next May. A Land Rover spokesman said the control system was developed by the automaker’s engineering centre at Gaydon, Warwickshire, while Bosch provided the engine [...]

Diana T. Kurylko, Automotive News Europe, 1st December, 2008 In the long run, a repositioned Jaguar selling only premium cars could achieve the same sales levels as Porsche, says Mike O’Driscoll, managing director of Jaguar Cars Ltd. That would mean annual global sales of between 100,000 and 120,000 vehicles, rather than the Mercedes- Benz level [...]

The final Car of The Month for 2008 goes to yet another overseas reader, Todd Fitch from Seattle, Washington, USA, who also wins the AROnline award for the being one of those near-obsessed fans who is an inspiration to the rest of us. If you still need persuading that Todd’s a sucker for the cause [...]