#1 – Ford should get away!

#2 – Ford should buy it… This is based on the fact that while Ford may be (very) financially unstable at the current moment, they can employ their current platforms and engines to the brand and envigorate it to provide a true combatant against the affordable European market, such as Citroen, renault, Fiat and Seat.
Ford, as it has proved since 1989 (1988?) cannot sustain the Jaguar luxury brand, but they have kept with it, and have moved Jaguar into territory that it could never have imagined back in the late 80’s — a brand that can truly compete with the German luxury sedans. While times have changed since Ford’s acquisition of Jaguar (eg. the appearance of Japanese luxury brands such as Lexus), Jaguar deserves a larger market share than it currently holds.
Regardless, if Ford was to try to re-integrate into the mass-production automobile market in Europe (not including the current models it markets in Europe under the ‘Ford’ moniker), it would probably do substantially better, because it is appealing to a wider market than it ever has.
Jaguar was a low-volume brand when Ford purchased it, and it basically remains so.
If Ford were to purchase Rover, as I mentioned before, at least they could use existing technology, such as their engines and platforms, to bring the brand back and to truly provide a realistic challenge against the base European brands.
Rover already has a certain cachet, which is the European pedigree. Probably many Great Britain’ers would be so happy to see the Rover namesake live on, that they would buy the car, just the same way that many of them bought Jag’s back in the early ’90’s… The main advantage now — 90% of Europeans car-buyers could actually afford a Rover, over the possible 10% that could afford a Jag (of which, on average, 9.5% of those select a different brand, such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, etc).
P.S. — from “the main advantage now” above — I just estimated the stastical #’s above, but according to the many articles that I’ve read, they should be about right… either way, please feel free to write your opinion back.

R.I.P.