Agent47 Posted December 28, 2020 Posted December 28, 2020 When you’ve spent the past 125 years recording other people’s attempts to create car history, it feels pretty remarkable to be offered the chance to make some yourself. But that’s where we find ourselves, after being approached by a not-at-all-hypothetical car-mad billionaire, a long-time Autocar reader who fancies setting up his own car firm. Said billionaire – who, it must be stressed, we definitely didn’t make up for the sake of justifying a feature – has a theory: since the Autocar team knows so much about the car industry, we’d be the perfect people to set up and run their nascent car firm. We were intrigued and, once promised full creative freedom and the necessary funds, agreed. We divvied up key jobs within the team, with roles assigned based on expertise, authority and the occasional coin toss. All we have to do now is actually invent our new car brand. So can a car magazine actually come up with a brilliant concept for a car company? The big boss - Steve Cropley The brief: Identify a market gap and opportunity for a new car firm, and set a general direction Never waste a good crisis, Winston Churchill is alleged to have said at the start of World War II, implying that great challenges encourage greater solutions. Whether or not he uttered these precise words, we believe the sentiment applies very well to the current situations of Jaguar Land Rover and its Indian parent, Tata Motors. We have formed a small management team of Autocar ‘experts’ tasked (at least, for the sake of this Christmas issue) with finding a plan for a plausible, profitable and all-new car company, based in the UK but capable of big-scale earnings from exports. Our notional launch backer is a major investment fund ready to invest billions with partners in this enterprise, provided there is great confidence it can work well financially. After much deliberation, we believe the answer is to launch a brand-new company, Freelander EV Ltd, created initially to be a satellite of Land Rover (as Volvo supports Polestar) so that it can make selective use of JLR’s talents, resources and suppliers, but heading eventually for public flotation to provide its biggest backers (who, we are confident, would include JLR) with a major financial return once the products and company direction are well established. Others will reveal more about the positioning of our products, but our plan is based on three precepts: ■ Electrically powered compact SUVs show every likelihood of being some of the highest-demand vehicles of both the near and far future. ■ JLR will have a strong interest in supporting an SUV enterprise that helps it move away from diesel power. ■ Freelander is a ‘vacant’ name that already exerts a great deal of appeal, especially since it has ideal size and age group implications for the compact, youth-oriented products that we want to build. Our CEO, Mark Tisshaw, has already begun to formulate plans that would allow the new Freelander range to be created, engineered, launched and sold… The manager - Mark Tisshaw The brief: Develop a business case, as well as key technologies and production capabilities The successful launch of Freelander EV Ltd lies within careful curation and adaptation of things – from components to factories – already within the Jaguar Land Rover world. We’ll identify them and invest in them.
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