Jaguar Land Rover boss dies (2008)

Geoff Polites, Jaguar Land Rover CEO: 1948-2008

By Gavin Green

Motor Industry

21 April 2008 06:53

Geoff Polites, who died yesterday aged 60, will go down as one of the great British car industry bosses. He took over as CEO of Jaguar Land Rover in September 2005, when the Jaguar half of the business was at its lowest ebb. Sales of the lame duck X- and S-types were fast evaporating; Jaguar was consistently failing to hit its financial forecasts; morale was poor.

Under Polites, the JLR business returned to profit, a sale was successfully negotiated with Tata – a deal widely considered to be in the best interests of the company – and company morale has blossomed.

Geoff Polites: turning around the JLR oil tanker

Polites not only oversaw a big increase in Land Rover’s profits – last year the 4x4 maker made over $1 billion – but also greatly cut the losses of Jaguar. It is widely expected that Jaguar, unprofitable for decades, will break even next year.

He also boosted profitability while winning popularity. He was a much-liked figure with senior managers, with employees, with trade unionists and with dealers. Jaguar was changing CEOs and MDs like Sir Alan Sugar sacks apprentices before Polites steadied the rocky ship.

Polites was a feisty and likeable Australian who worked his way up through Ford Australia – including running a big Sydney dealership – before becoming boss Down Under in 1999. He moved to Europe in 2004 to head Ford’s European sales operations, before taking up the Jaguar Land Rover post the following year. ‘Geoff was a fantastic businessman with real passion and focus, and a marvellous people person,’ Lewis Booth, head of Ford’s European operations, told CAR Online.

Struggle with cancer

Polites was diagnosed with cancer two years ago yet continued to work tirelessly, never hiding his illness yet never seeking sympathy. When I last saw him, in early March 2008, he looked far better than he had a month earlier; friends also remarked that Polites had a new spring in his step.

He was relishing the challenge of heading JLR under Tata ownership. But his health degenerated last week and he flew back to his hometown of Melbourne, Australia, where he died alongside his wife and two sons.

An interview with Geoff Polites, done shortly before he died, and in which he speaks frankly about his illness and his struggle to turn around Jaguar, appears in the June 2008 issue of CAR Magazine, on sale 30 April 2008

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By Gavin Green