Wednesday, March 26, 2008

TATA for Now

No, I'm not going anywhere – just engaging in a bad pun for the purpose of restarting this blog.

TATA Motors of India, in what has to be world class irony, is buying to esteemed British brands from Ford Motors: Land Rover and Jaguar. Back in my dreamy misspent youth in western New York state (the hinterlands some 400+ miles away from The City) I used to dream about traveling across deepest, darkest Africa or some other god forbidden place in my Land Rover. Not luxury but the opposite. A bone jarring ride on terrain that required a vehicle as tough as the men on board. Luxury be damned, it was reliability and ease of repair we adventurers required.

Of course, that was I time when I would have purchased my big game rifle, a Weatherby .457 magnum, from that premier outfitter, Abercrombie and Fitch, located in Manhattan.

So now, Land Rover is reduced to selling SUVs to folks who have to negotiate the difficult terrain of southern Connecticut, in rain or snow. It is in competition with the Toyota Land Cruiser which seems to have pre-empted the Rover from its natural habitat if not the 'burbs.

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