Will Jaguar / Land Rover Decouple After Sale?

Even though Ford is intent on selling its premium brands Jaguar and Land Rover as a package deal, the new owner of the companies may opt to sell Jaguar after the purchase according to an Economic Times article. One of the reasons that Ford has wanted to group the two brands together was because of the increased cooperation between the nameplates: Land Rover products use the Jaguar AJ-V8 in a number of models and the new LR2 is being manufactured at Jaguar's Halewood plant. Exactly who would buy Jaguar isn't discussed in the article, but I imagine that a private equity firm or a Chinese manufacturer might be interested.

The top three bidders that Ford is working with are rumored to be Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra and private equity firm One Equity Partners. TPG, Terra Firma and Ripplewood are apparently out of the running.