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History
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Jaguar Land Rover page on 12 October 2018, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC is the holding company of Jaguar Land Rover Limited, a British multinational automotive company with its headquarters in Whitley, Coventry, United Kingdom, and a subsidiary of Indian automotive company Tata Motors. The principal activity of Jaguar Land Rover Limited is the design, development, manufacture and sale of vehicles bearing the Jaguar and Land Rover marques. Both marques have long and complex histories prior to their merger – Jaguar going back to the 1930s and Land Rover to the 1940s – first coming together in 1968 as part of the ill-fated British Leyland conglomerate, later again independent of each other, and then as subsidiaries of BMW (in the case of Land Rover), and Ford Motor Company (Jaguar). Ford acquired Land Rover from BMW in 2000 following the break-up of the former Rover Group, which was effectively the remainder of the British Leyland car producing companies.
Jaguar Land Rover has been a subsidiary of Tata Motors since they founded it for the acquisition of Jaguar Cars Limited and Land Rover from Ford in 2008. On 1 January 2013 the operations of Jaguar Cars Limited and Land Rover were merged as Jaguar Land Rover Limited and the parent was renamed to Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC.
Both businesses having been part of British Leyland for parts of their histories until 1984, Jaguar Cars and Land Rover were eventually reunited into the same group again by the Ford Motor Company in 2002. Ford had acquired Jaguar Cars in 1989 and Land Rover from BMW in 2000. In 2006, Ford purchased the Rover brand name from BMW for around £6 million. This reunited the Rover and Land Rover brands for the first time since the Rover group was broken up by BMW in 2000.
On 18 January 2008, Tata Motors, a part of the Tata Group, established Jaguar Land Rover Limited as a British-registered, wholly owned subsidiary. The company was to be used as a holding company for the acquisition from Ford of the two businesses – Jaguar Cars Limited and Land Rover. That acquisition was completed on 2 June 2008. On 1 January 2013, the group, which had been operating as two separate companies (Jaguar Cars Limited and Land Rover), although on an integrated basis, underwent a fundamental restructuring. The parent company was renamed to Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC, Jaguar Cars Limited was renamed to Jaguar Land Rover Limited and the assets (excluding certain Chinese interests) of Land Rover were transferred to it. The consequence was that Jaguar Land Rover Limited became responsible in the UK for the design, manufacture and marketing of both Jaguar and Land Rover products.
In addition to the Jaguar and Land Rover marques, JLR also owns the rights to the dormant Daimler, Lanchester and Rover marques. The latter was acquired by Land Rover, whilst still under Ford ownership, from BMW in the aftermath of the collapse of MG Rover Group; BMW had retained ownership of the marque when it broke up Rover Group in 2000, then licensed it to MG Rover.