Seventy-one percent of voters turned down the pay offer. As this article went to press, unions were counting mail ballots in a strike vote. Ford can't take for granted its Land Rover story will have the same happy ending as the tale of its ownership of Jaguar in nearby Browns Lane, says Charles Moss, researcher at J.D. Power-LMC in Oxford, England. They have an appalling production process. It takes a long time to build each car.
Quality is poor.
But the German carmaker didn't devote much attention to the project until the closing days of its ownership, when it reversed its hands-off policy. Solihull remained antiquated and inefficient. Vehicles coming off the four assembly lines have been poorly built. In last year's J.D. Power initial quality survey in North America, the Land Rover Discovery finished 171st out of 184 models. Ford wants to fix Solihull the same way it fixed Jaguar.