Jaguar Land Rover Has Record Sales Last Year. Watch Out Germans?

It’s no secret that Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is upping the ante these days for the Jag side of their ever rotating coin. First came the extraordinary F-type 2 years ago. Now we have the XE to look forward to and if the other journals that have driven it are to be believed, and why wouldn’t they, then we’re in for a 3-series-thrashing treat. They’ve also produced the F Pace and while strangely named, it should sell better than any Jag in recent memory since people love SUVs for some reason. The Land Rover side of things continues to hum along and produced some of the most luxurious SUVs in the world and celebrities buy them up like their cures for the common cold.

Sales have gone up for the dynamic intracompany duo in the last year to the tune of a company record. From March 2015 to March 2016, JLR sold a record 521,571 autos. Now, that’s no where near their German luxury competitors, but it marks a significant turn around from where they were as separate entities.

Jaguar Land Rover sold half a million cars for the first time ever in the past year, helped by strong demand in Europe and North America.

However, the UK’s largest car manufacturer, owned by Indian conglomerate Tata, saw pre-tax profit fall as customers opted for cheaper models and it suffered a slowdown in the lucrative Chinese market.

JLR sold 521,571 cars in the year to the end of March, a 13% rise on the previous 12-month period. The increase, boosted by the popularity of new models such as the Jaguar XE, delivered a £342m rise in revenues to £22.2bn.

Despite the soaring sales, pre-tax profits dropped from £2.6bn to £1.56bn. This included the £157m cost of an explosion in the Chinese port of Tianjin last August, which forced the company to write off almost 6,000 vehicles.

Still, a sales record is something to celebrate and makes you wonder what’s next for the company. The F Pace and the XE should sell well and LR always has something new up it’s sleeve.

JLR is planning to invest about £3.75bn this year to further expand production capacity, develop new technologies and manufacture models such as the Jaguar F-Pace and Range Rover Evoque Convertible.

The company has doubled vehicle sales and staff headcount over the past five years, overtaking Nissan to become the UK’s largest car manufacturer by production.

Personally, I’m a very big supporter of JLR as I love their product and have driven several examples including an F-Type coupe and convertible, a Range Rover SVR, and a Jaguar XF. If they keep up what I know for a fact is great marketing and auto manufacturing, JLR should be a name we hear more and more when comparing sales figures to the benchmarks.

(Source: The Guardian)