Evoque the F-Type: Tata Defies Critics with Jaguar Land Rover Turnaround

Tata Group long has been one of India's most successful enterprises, a family-owned industrial conglomerate with its fingers in many aspects of a booming Indian economy. That included Tata Motors, which made (mostly) inexpensive little cars, including the "world's cheapest," the Nano.

But when Tata took over Jaguar Land Rover by buying the double-headed bastion of Britishness from Ford for $2.3 billion in June 2008, few western analysts gave the company a chance of succeeding where a huge American auto company had not been able to. Previous forays by powerhouse companies from emerging markets buying western outfits hadn't fared well, including Tata Steel's own acquisition of Corus Steel in 2007.

Doubters sniffed that Tata Chairman Ratan Tata, a car buff, had become too enamored of buying global brands, as Tata acquired Tetley Tea, Daweoo Commercial Vehicles, and the Pierre Hotel in New York. But Tata Motors has confounded those skeptics.Continue reading...