The whisper campaign, which few in Stuttgart or Munich would acknowledge, highlights the growing industry trend of deploying common components across both volume and luxury brands. Let's put this in perspective. About 10 percent of X-Type's body frame comes from Mondeo. We'd be crazy to develop our own fuel pump. Note, too, that DaimlerChrysler is pushing to develop common electronic architecture that would be shared between Mercedes and the Chrysler brands.
Scale is everything in the global auto business.
A close second is competition. Jaguar is betting the minor hoopla about the parentage of some X-Type components will have almost no impact on the buying public.