Autocar UK – 31 July 2019

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THE HAPPY CONSEQUENCE OF

CAR-MAKER TECH ALLIANCES

HOTTEST HOT HATCH

We ra te th e m o st p owe r fu l ye t ,

the Mercedes-AMG A45, p

MEA CULPA

We don’t get every verdict right...

as our writers confess, p

6 ¾ HOURS

That’s how long ITV broadcast live

at BTCC rounds. We join them, p

AN EXPANSION OF the tie-up between Jaguar Land

Rover and BMW should come as no surprise. With each

passing week, more rivals are pooling resources to try and

fund the huge investments needed for future technologies. 

That’s all while trying to invest in updating present tech

and models to stay relevant today and well into the medium term; a

ubiquity of electrified models in showrooms is still some way out, and

the advanced, developed cars of today still need to be sold. 

JLR simply isn’t big enough to meet the investment challenges alone.

No car maker is, in fact. Something has to give, and that is displayed

through alliances between even the biggest of rivals to share the burden. 

Ford and Volkswagen are working together on electric cars and vans.

BMW has also teamed up with its greatest rival Mercedes-Benz in

several areas, and super-mergers, like that proposed (but currently ‘off ’)

between Fiat Chrysler and Renault, are likely to become more common. 

Tantalisingly, tie-ups also create opportunities for new models,

which, in the case of JLR, is the smaller, volume cars it has long

craved yet never had the architecture to realise (p8). With

BMW, now it has a chance to get them off the drawing board. 

Mark Tisshaw Editor

m a r k .t i s s h a w @ h a y m a r ke t. c o m @ m t i s s h a w

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