[rab60bit]

I don't know the detailed background but the venture was always under-resourced - finance, development plan and ideas. The auto business needs either a lot of at least one of these and adequate of all of them. For various reasons the future money spinners had been leached out and the shell business was left with a narrow obsolete product range with pretty well nowwhere to go.
Like a lot of things, timing is everything and with a bit more 'space'/direction backed up with sufficient funding it might have been a different story. Making the best of what they had in the late 90's was never going to deliver long term and all they could manage was virtually badge engineering and the vanity but doomed V8 project....