London - India's Tata Motors group, which owns British luxury car maker Jaguar and Land Rover, has said it plans to revive the super-luxury Daimler brand to appeal to wealthy customers from Asia, Russia and the Middle East.

Ratan Tata, head of the Indian conglomerate, has told investors of his plan to resurrect the Daimler marque in direct competition with luxury brands Bentley and Rolls-Royce, Britain's Times newspaper reported Monday.

Tata had earmarked 1 billion pounds (2 billion dollars) to develop new models at its British-based manufacturers, the report said.

Jaguar shares the rights to the Daimler name with Daimler AG, the German luxury car manufacturer created last year when DaimlerChrysler was split up and the American operations of Chrysler were bought by Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm.

Daimler Motor Company became a subsidiary of the Birmingham Small Arms Company in 1910. It was acquired by Jaguar in 1960 and remained with the company through its merger with British Leyland and its takeover by Ford in 1989.

Jaguar agreed terms late last year which allow the German company to use the Daimler brand as the title of a trading company, a trade name or a corporate name - rights that it did not hold previously.

The renegotiated terms did not affect Jaguar's rights to build Daimler cars, the report said.

A spokesman for Jaguar said: "The extended usage agreement does not affect either company's existing right to use the Daimler name for a product."

Analysts believe that a new generation of Daimlers could find ready buyers, the Times said.

"Tata could make a very good job of this, especially if they target the space between where the top of Jaguar's current range ends and where manufacturers such as Bentley kick in. Daimler has a fantastic heritage," Garel Rhys, motoring analyst at Cardiff University, told the Times.

The Coventry-based Daimler Motor Company was formed in 1896 after Fredrick Simms signed an agreement to sell engines developed by Gottlieb Daimler, the pioneering German engineer, in Britain.

The first British-built Daimlers appeared a year later and proved hugely popular, and have been associated with royalty ever since. (dpa)