I got a book of coupons yesterday with the come-on that one lucky person could win a new XF. I hadn’t actually looked at it until this morning, as I was enjoying an experimental breakfast of fried eggs smothered in HOT sauce that I had doggie bagged from a fav Indian restaurant the night before. I love hot sauces and this was incendiary. It was SO hot they had to put it in a ceramic box rather than the usual cardboard to keep it from eating its way through. (slight exaggeration). Anyway, there I was, slurping my faux eggs vindaloo and it struck me - the battles of the past (at least some of them) are being won by yesterday’s losers. Who was it that had kept an iron grip on the jewel of their empire? Great Britain, of course. And the object of their grip was India. British on top, India beneath. And yet who now owns Jaguar, that veddy British car company? Tata Motors, the Indian company that’s brought us the Nano at the low end and now Jaguar at the other extreme.
This line of thought then veered onto that supreme Conflict of the Continents: Germany vs England. You’d have thought England won in the late 40’s. And yet, that most British of British cars, the uber car known as the Rolls Royce … is now firmly in the hands of that Bavarian powerhouse, BMW.
And the US totally beat the Japanese, right? So why is it that GM is bankrupt and Subaru posted a profit? And Lexus, Honda, Toyota, etc, etc, are dominating the American highways?
Because while one battle might have ended, the wars go on. Just on a different battlefield.
