Mike O'Driscoll will retire as Managing Director of Jaguar.
Mike O’Driscoll, a key member of the Jaguar management team that guided the company through its often difficult days under Ford Motor Co. and then through its sale to India’s Tata Motors, will be leaving the company.
With more than 30 years of experience at the British automaker and its U.K. affiliate, Land Rover, O’Driscoll played a critical role in salvaging the two brands during their years as Ford subsidiaries. He then oversaw the challenging transition as the U.S. maker decided to focus on its core domestic brands and sell off Jaguar-Land Rover.
“Over the last three years we’ve had the opportunity to start the rebuilding,” O’Driscoll told TheDetroitBureau.com in announcing his decision to retire next March. “It’s a great way to sign off my career.”
The legendary Jaguar brand, known for benchmark designs like the classic E-Type sports car, was a financial basket case under British government ownership when Ford decided to buy the maker – after a brief but intense bidding war pitting it against rival General Motors – in 1989.
The U.S. maker had significant goals for its new British subsidiary, especially once Jacques Nasser was named Ford CEO. Nasser, who also acquired Land Rover, originally planned to quadruple Jaguar sales with the addition of a range of new products, such as the small X-Type.
But while it was designed to compete with the likes of the BMW 3-Series, the X-Type was harshly criticized for being too much like the less upscale Ford Mondeo, the European sedan with which it shared key components.
Sales for the model lagged and Jaguar officials, including O’Driscoll, ultimately acknowledged X-Type didn’t help the brand image, eventually pulling it from the market.
Sales ultimately fell short of Nasser’s expectations and Jaguar went through a retrenchment that included closing unnecessary production capacity and moving to a strategy in which it shared key components, notably powertrains, with Land Rover.
When Ford hired former Boeing executive Alan Mulally as CEO, four years ago, the decision was made to focus the company inward on its core brands – which meant selling off the various foreign marques that had comprised the once-promising Premier Automotive Group, or PAG. With the sale of Volvo, earlier this year – and the planned elimination of the Mercury brand – Ford is now left with only the core Ford and Lincoln divisions.
Jaguar-Land Rover, in an unexpected development, was sold to Tata, an ambitious automaker with global aspirations.
O’Driscoll, who had moved to the States, some years back and worked his way up to become Jaguar’s North American chief executive, agreed to go back home and serve as the marque’s managing director during its transition.
A native of Coventry, the headquarters of Jaguar, and a graduate of the University of Warwick, O’Driscoll had first joined the company in 1975, so he will have clocked nearly 36 years with the brand under a variety of owners when he steps down.
The company he will be leaving appears to be in significantly better shape than just a half decade ago. It has launched a series of new products that have gotten significantly better reception, including the XF sport sedan and the new XJ, the marque’s flagship sedan.
At the Paris Motor Show, late last month, Jaguar took the wraps off the C-X75, a plug-in hybrid supercar capable of hitting 205 mph – and going up to 68 miles per charge before its unusual micro-turbine backup power system fires up. At the announcement, Carl-Peter Forster, the new chairman of the Jaguar-Land Rover group, told TheDetroitBureau.com he would like to put the prototype into production, though he cautioned that the maker’s “resources are limited,” and that Jaguar has to put its focus on volume vehicle lines first.
Ralf Speth, CEO of Jaguar-Land Rover, meanwhile, expressed his “gratitude” for O’Driscoll’s “passionate leadership (which) has been vital during this time in its history.”
O’Driscoll, he noted, will return to the U.S., where he will become chairman of Jaguar Heritage, the organization that manages the corporate museum and archives.