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Tata to get Jaguar and Land Rover tech, platforms too?

Since buying Jaguar Land Rover, Indian automaker Tata has generally left its luxury arm's platforms and technology alone. However, those days might be gone. The two of them are gradually growing closer with coordinated development and rumors of shared platforms. And it looks like all of that work and money is finally going to pay off with an actual vehicle in the near future.
According to Australian website Drive, Tata wants to make its cars more attractive to buyers outside of India, and to do that the company knows it must improve quality. The Indian company is being careful, though, because it doesn't want to dilute the Jaguar or Land Rover brands with cheap models. "You're going to see in the future a lot of sharing of technologies and platforms over time, but you won't see a JLR with a Tata badge on it," said Darren Bowler, managing director of Tata's Australian distributor, to Drive.
According to Bowler, these future vehicles are already on the way. Tata and JLR have a global platform in the works for 2017 that both companies could use for cars or crossovers. He also hinted that Jaguar's new Ingenium engines could be shared among the brands in the future, too.

Jaguar Land Rover to cut more U.K. jobs as it moves Discovery output to Slovakia

LONDON — Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is set to cut more jobs in Britain as it moves all production of its Discovery car to lower-cost Slovakia before building its new Range Rover at an English factory. Britain's biggest automaker, JLR has previously said its next-generation Discovery will be built at its Slovakia plant and on Monday announced there could be some job cuts in Britain as a result. "The potential losses of some agency employed staff in the UK is a tough one but forms part of our long-term manufacturing strategy as we transform our business globally," the company said in a statement. Moving production from Britain will slash several thousands of pounds off the cost per vehicle, the firm's Chief Finance Officer Ken Gregor said last year. The new Range Rover and Range Rover Sport will however be built at the firm's central English Solihull plant on an architecture which is designed to allow for diesel, petrol, electric and hybrid models to be produced. Monday's announcement comes after the firm said this year it will cut 1,000 jobs and reduce production at two of its English factories as demand for diesel cars slumps in the face of higher taxes and a regulatory crackdown. The firm has also blamed Brexit for hitting demand in Europe's second-largest autos market, where demand fell 6 percent last year, a source told Reuters in April. JLR said in January it would decide this year whether to build electric cars in its home market after announcing all of its new cars will be available in an electric or hybrid version from 2020. The company, owned by India's Tata Motors, builds nearly one in three of Britain's 1.7 millions cars but is producing its first electric vehicle, the I-Pace, in Austria. JLR's new factory in the Slovak city of Nitra is due to begin production by the end of the year and will have a capacity of up to 300,000 vehicles. It already employs 1,400 people there as it gears up to open. In Britain, the firm built just over 530,000 vehicles last year at three production facilities and also has a separate engine site and headquarters, employing roughly 40,000 people in total. Related Video: Image Credit: Reuters/Paul Ellis Hirings/Firings/Layoffs Plants/Manufacturing Jaguar Land Rover SUV Luxury Off-Road Vehicles jaguar land rover jobs jlr slovakia

2019 Mercedes-Benz G-Class vs big luxury off-roaders: How they compare on paper

During our first drive of the 2019 Mercedes-Benz G-Class, the all-new SUV's product manager was asked to identify competitors that might have been benchmarked in its development. The look on his face was about the same as if someone had asked him to recite King Lear in Klingon. As far as Andreas Hoeppel was concerned, the G 550 and AMG G 63 doesn't actually have a rival, or at least something the engineers and designers thought to compare it against. The G-Class is a G-Class, who cares what the other guys are doing? Well, in case you care, we figured we'd plug the new G-Class' specs into the old Autoblog Comparo Generator 3000 (TM) to see how the G 550 and AMG G 63 compare to the Range Rover and its mightiest SVAutobiography Dynamic model, plus the Lexus LX 570 and Bentley Bentayga V8. Frankly, Heir Hoeppel was onto something as each of these is wildly different. But, they do share some common elements: giant size and weight, ultra-lux interiors, and far more off-roading capability than other luxury SUVs offer and any of its owners are likely to ever utilize. Sad. So enjoy this trip down specification lane, and if you're still left hungry, you can always check out our Range Rover comparison or create your very own comparo. Off-Road Clearances and Capability All the fancy off-roading software and special cameras in the world won't do you a lick of good if your SUV is too close to the ground or has low-hanging body work that'll get easily ripped off. As such, check out each of these uber-SUV's ground clearance, approach and departure angles, and wading/fording depths. In this case, the Range Rover has an advantage due to its air suspension that can raise itself into an Off-Roading height that's a whopping 2 inches higher than the new G-Wagen. Sadly for itself, Lexus only provides figures for its air suspension when in normal height. It could match or surpass the Range Rover for all we know (but doubt it). As Land Rover does provide figures for the Range Rover's approach and departure angles in normal and Off-Road height, you can get an idea of just how much clearance the new G-Wagen has without any fancy (and expensive to fix) raising and lowering air suspension hardware. In fact, its departure angle is better than even the Range Rover's Off-Road height. Bentley doesn't provide any such information despite touting the Bentayga's surprising off-roading talents.