Thread: New Defender ??

I hope VW buys it and puts in their V10 turbo diesel........

Originally Posted by DirtyDawg

I hope VW buys it and puts in their V10 turbo diesel........

That would be nice.
I think the Ford motor will be in there for a while. The new buyer will probably want to put their engine in it. Will take a year??? to fit and sort maybe.

Originally Posted by DirtyDawg

I hope VW buys it and puts in their V10 turbo diesel........

now you're talking Dawg!

What do we do if Toyota buy it?

Originally Posted by Maggot4x4

What do we do if Toyota buy it?

Sell up and buy Nissan Ford will probably want to keep selling the 2.4lt to the new company to make some Money

Do Honda still have a share in Land Rover?

They owned 20% when British Aerospace owned it and sold S1 Discos in Japan as Hondas.

If it had remained with that arrangement it would have been good, we could have easily got Grey import Honda Badged Land Rovers from Japan.

The British Telegraph speculates:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/...6/mrmike16.xml

It's called 'Project Swift' - designed to offload Jag, LR and possibly even Volvo.

LR + Jag = £4 billion
LR, alone = £2-3 billion
Jaguar, alone = £1 billion
Volvo = about £3.5 billion
(Ford spent £1.6 billion in 1989 for buying Jaguar and £1.7 billion in 2000 for Land Rover)

all this means big discounting on all 3 brands is about to happen in the major US and European markets.

The Telegraph points out that ideally, Volvo will get enough private backing to buy LR and Jag and be able to keep using the existing Ford engines. Imagine a Volvo owned Land Rover! 6 airbags and stability control will be standard, even in a Defender...

Other industry talk about the sale is:

* We could know within 4-6 weeks
* Two private industry backers, who just missed out on the sale of Aston Martin are hot contenders for the Project Swift sale...

from the Birmingham Post:
Among those named by industry insiders were Wolfgang Reitzle, the former head of the Premier Automotive Group which includes Jaguar and Land Rover, and Jac Nasser, the ex Ford chief executive.

Mr Reitzle, who left his post as vice-president of PAG in April 2002, is a former top BMW executive and was chairman of Rover from 1995 to 1997. He is currently chief executive of German industrial gas and engineering company Linde.

Mr Nasser, now a partner at One Equity, the private equity arm of JP Morgan, was also in the running to buy Aston but lost out to a Kuwaiti-backed group's £479 million deal and is also thought to be in the running.

If VW buys it I would like to see the twin turbo W16 out of the Bugatti veyron on board!!!