'Ford really screwed Jaguar with a terrible business plan and a series of quick-and-easy sign-offs on some awful oars. Worse still, they crushed the spirits of some really good people'

摘要

A transporter load of xks and XFs makes a pretty compelling case for Jaguar. It looks like a good business, and, these days, it largely is; 17,000 Fs sold straight out of the box, and enough of the higher-margin Ks to stretch Jag to within a smidge of making money last year. A business indeed. And surely one worth more than the ￡1bn Tata paid Ford for Jaguar and Land Rover, especially when you consider Land Rover makes that amount of money every year currently. It has been said [technically, I'm just about to say it] Ford paid too much for Jaguar, sold it for too little and screwed up just about every decision in between. Honesdy, some of the Ford folks who held positions of power at Jaguar during the 20 years the Americans thought they knew better, should have ended up in court for serial crimes against a well-loved friend. Instead, they usually got promoted. Geoff Polities was different. Maybe the one good thing that will come of him dying last month, way before he should have, is that folks will be obliged to properly consider his time at the head of Jaguar, a bittersweet scrutiny not afforded his inept predecessors. I can't claim to have known Polities very well, I tend to leave the bosses to Paul Horrell to chat up. He gets a lot more out of them. But the few times we did meet, he always made me laugh, and I liked that. But it was the sight of him in January, struggling to deliver more than a single paragraph of an after-dinner speech before leaning on a wall for support against the cancer and the chemo that was killing him that made me truly appreciate the man. I wanted Ford to call for his car the moment he stood up. He needed to go home.