Quarterly and other results to the thirty-oneth of March continued to dribble in this week so let’s start by hoisting the Union Jack, drum roll, trumpet blast, and highlight Jaguar Land Rover’s 11% full fiscal year profit hike.
The mantra for such premium-brand automakers is simple – keep adding new products people just gotta have, keep the lid on costs and they will come and you will make money, or in this case, owner Tata Motors, whose own Q4 results surprised analysts, will.
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Speaking of Tata, as in group rather than motors, partner Johnson Controls has bought out full control of their Indian joint venture, illustrating how important western partsmakers consider such emerging markets. India has let JCI do this; the Chinese wouldn’t.
Speaking of China, one of Honda’s JV partners has started work on yet more factory capacity and Toyota appears to be very close to pushing the start button on a JV to make hybrid batteries. In a country where a new smartphone or tablet will sell about a squillion units on launch day, it’s surprising high-tech hybrids haven’t taken off. Toyota actually assembled the second generation Prius there for a while but initially didn’t bother with the G3 redesign as sales were so low. But, as you’ll read, government policy changes are likely to give the petrol-electric models a bit of a push.
I’m occasionally questioned as to why we give “so much space” to Australia. Well, two of us are from the region, we’re a global-audience website, the ‘lucky country’ has a manufacturing industry, and a parts industry (both struggling a bit), plus they sell 1m units, give or take, each year. Down Under, Toyota has been rewarded for finally going diesel with the new RAV4 and doubtless will take the credit for convincing t’gaffer-san in Japan to build the latest Lexus ES with right hand drive after a hiatus of about seven years.
ES doesn’t make it to Europe this side of Russia while Camry was axed years ago but I recall the original RHD model I drove for a week in the early ’90s as being a superbly made, refined and comfortable luxury sedan with all the toys, even though it was, at the time, essentially a rather pricey, gussied-up Camry.
A large EV conference in Germany produced the usual flurry of announcements from parties interested, including this study that rather concluded the obvious, plus news of a laudable attempt – supported by automaker heavies like BMW – to standardise EV charging across Europe – London to Leipzig by Leaf anyone?
And now, a little trumpet-blowing from us. What started as a fecetious tweet to Bentley over a Dubai media event uncovered a great sense of humour in the press office and an unexpected offer for V8 nut here to sample the so-equipped Continental GT; it’d have been rude not to.
We also published our latest management briefing, this one on ASEAN market prospects.
And, finally, may I draw the data crunchers amongst you to our in-house treasure troves – the Production Life Data Base and QUBE?
Have a nice weekend.
Graeme Roberts, Deputy Editor, just-auto.com
