Beginning with cotton mills -- Jamsetji opened the Empress Mill in 1877, when Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India -- his heirs would build on his foundation with Tata Steel, Tata Power and ultimately 98 other companies in seven business sectors.



In January Tata Motors announced production of the "Nano" -- the world's cheapest car.  Today it's official: Ford Motor Company has sold their luxury brands Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata for $1.7 billion (net, after Ford pays into the Jaguar pension fund), which is rather significantly less than the $2.5 billion Ford paid to acquire Jaguar in 1989 or the $2.7 billion it paid for Land Rover in 2000. 

You'll have to ask Suze Orman to make sense of those numbers, because I'm not sure I can.  It's not that I'm worried about how Ann or Charlotte Ford or their family are going to make ends meet, but I can't help wondering how giving Tata access to dealerships around the world, not to mention giving away the Ford talent that's gone into these brands (under the hood, so to speak), benefits Ford in either the short or long run. 

But my failure to understand these business deals is probably why my last name isn't Ford or Tata.
 
I do think it's interesting that in 1904 Henry Ford negotiated with the owner of a wagon works company in Walkerville (later Windsor) Ontario to create the Ford Motor Company of Canada, LTD.  The Ford Model C -- the first Canadian Ford -- rolled off the assembly line and into the British Empire market in October of 1904, the year Jamsetji Tata passed the empire he'd created on to his sons.

"Who'd a thunk it," as my mother used to say, quoting what I suspect is an old line from Fibber McGee and Molly, a radio show for which Joss Wheedon's grandfather was one of the writers.   

Henry Ford was no slouch (plus he warned my own grandfather and their mutual buddy Dr. Kellogg when the banks were about to close, so they all got their money out in time).  But think: from the Empress Mill to Jaguar?  [From Fibber McGee to Buffy the Vampire Slayer?]  That's what you call passing the torch, isn't it; handing down a tradition, passing on a legacy of talent and style.   As the official Tata website (linked above) says, quoting Lewis Lapham, "Money is like fire, an element as little troubled by moralising as earth, air and water.  Men can employ it as a tool, or they can dance around it as if it were an incarnation of God."

Talent is like fire too; like money, it's a tool.  The question is what you do with it.

And that's a mystery we all dance around sometimes.