Yesterday, the British company Jaguar Land Rover, owned by the Indian Tata Motors, announced another major change: now it is simply called JLR, without deciphering, since the Land Rover brand, in fact, is leaving the market, three separate brands — Range Rover, Discovery and Defender will take its place. The Jaguar brand will continue its course towards the luxury segment, the first model of the new line has been announced.
Jaguar Land Rover’s big restructuring was started two years ago by its then CEO Thierry Bollore, formerly of Renault: it was he who launched the Reimagine long-term transformation plan, which stopped all current Jaguar projects and aimed the brand at the luxury segment, as the fight against it lost to the big German trio (Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz) in the premium segment. Jaguar's new designated competitors are Aston Martin, Bentley and Porsche, with the reformatted Jaguar producing only electric cars.
In November last year, Thierry Bolloret abruptly resigned, and is now replaced by Adrian Mardell, an experienced financier and board member of the company, but he is still listed on the JLR corporate website as «interim CEO», that is, a permanent one has not yet been found. Yesterday, JLR management, led by Mardell, announced that they would continue to implement the Reimagine plan, but there were adjustments made to it, mainly for Land Rover.
The Jaguar brand will continue to follow the course set by Bollor towards the luxury segment, that is, it will produce fewer cars and sell them at higher prices. Last year, insiders reported that luxury electric Jaguars would develop their own Panthera aluminum platform and that the new lineup would consist of three crossovers. The official introductions outlined yesterday paint a slightly different picture: the new platform is not called Panthera, but JEA (Jaguar Electrified Architecture), and the first of three new products is designated as a 4-door GT starting at £ 100,000, it will be presented in 2024, it will hit the market will be released in 2025. The power reserve on a single charge will be about 700 km.
Teaser of the first Jaguar luxury model
The wording «4-door GT» is quite vague, it can be anything — for example, a coupe-shaped crossover, cross-coupe, sedan, liftback or even a shooting break. The only teaser published yesterday for Jaguar's first luxury model does not allow us to determine the body type. It is also too early to judge the design, the company only promises that in terms of appearance it will be a breakthrough level of the legendary Jaguar E-Type. There is no official information about the other two new Jaguar models yet.
With the Land Rover brand, in turn, there was a downright drama that caused shock in the ranks of its fans. JLR management decided to split Land Rover into three separate brands — Range Rover, Discovery and Defender, explaining this by the fact that customers are already de facto using the names of these models in isolation from the brand. Judging by the comments on the Web, not all Land Rover customers are happy with the new strategy, many are deeply outraged by the intention to archive the brand.
Meanwhile, from a business point of view, three separate “off-road” brands are a completely expected decision, as many do today (for example, General Motors and almost all large Chinese automakers). Range Rover will now be able to boldly enter the luxury segment, Discovery, which is not very successful at the moment, will focus on “family values”, and Defender will be the most extreme in terms of style and cross-country ability. Time will tell how this will work in practice.
This year, Range Rover will introduce its flagship electric SUV on the MLA (Modular Longitudinal Architecture) universal modular platform, designed for both «hydrocarbon» and all-electric models. The first electric Range Rover will hit the market only at the end of 2024.
The successors to the junior crossovers Range Rover Evoque, Range Rover Velar and Land Rover Discovery Sport will be fully electric, they will be based on the EMA (Electrified Modular Architecture) platform, which was originally developed for the new Jaguars, but left with the filing of Thierry Bollore in Land Rover.
JLR's Halewood, Merseyside plant will switch entirely to EV production for the Range Rover, Discovery and Defender brands. Electric Jaguars will be assembled in Solihull (West Midlands). The engine plant in Wolverhampton, West Midlands, which now builds Ingenium inline engines and AJ-series 5.0-liter supercharged V8s for outgoing Jaguars and the top-of-the-line Defender (Range Rovers have already switched to V8s from BMW) will be retooled to produce electric motors, power modules and batteries. JLR does not plan to release its own battery cells — Tata's parent company will do this.
invests £15bn over the next five years. The complete abandonment of internal combustion engines, according to the British magazine Autocar, the company has planned for 2036.
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