The sale to Ford (2000)Last updated: 18 June 2012 The single most important event in the L322's story happened before it even went on sale: in 2000, BMW broke up the Rover Group and sold Land Rover to Ford. The L322 had been designed around BMW hardware. So Ford inherited a car it would spend years re-engineering. 
A 2002–2003 Range Rover L322 (Ford/BMW era) · Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Key takeaway: The 2000 sale to Ford is the key event: BMW kept its newest tech, supplied engines only to 2005, and Ford spent years swapping in Jaguar hardware.
The 2000 saleBMW sold Land Rover to Ford for around $2.6 billion, placing it in Ford's Premier Automotive Group alongside Jaguar, Aston Martin and Volvo. (The loss-making Rover/MG car business went separately to the Phoenix consortium for a nominal sum, while BMW kept Mini.) The project codename changed from L30 to L322 at this point, fitting Land Rover's new Lxxx scheme alongside the Sport (L320), Discovery 3 (L319), Defender (L316) and Freelander (L314). The engine-supply clauseCrucially, the original engines were not part of the sale. The contract included a clause keeping BMW involved until after the car reached volume production, and set up a supply agreement for BMW to provide the V8 (and diesel) engines until 2005, giving Ford time to substitute powerplants of its own. This is exactly why the BMW engines lasted only to 2005-2006 before the Jaguar units arrived. What it changed
A twist of fate
IRONY
By the time the L322 launched in 2001, the man steering Land Rover at Ford's Premier Automotive
Group was Wolfgang Reitzle. The very same BMW executive who had driven the project
from the start, having left BMW in 1999. He effectively followed "his" Range Rover from one owner
to the next.
Land Rover would change hands once more: in 2008 Ford sold Jaguar Land Rover to Tata Motors, under whom the L322 saw out its final years and the all-aluminium L405 successor was developed. More on the late models » |
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