8:36 am, January 16, 2023
Jaguar’s next generation of cars are likely to cost upwards of £100,000 as the manufacturer aims to compete with other luxury car brands.
Insiders at the firm told The Sunday Times that the company is keen to move the brand’s new electric cars models up the price brackets.
The insider told the paper the car manufacturer is keen to encroach on Bentley’s market where cars start at £160,000 adding Jaguar was ‘not intimidated by reaching higher into that territory’.
The paper said temporary chief executive Adrian Mardell will give an update to the markets in March on the brand’s ‘Reimagine’ strategy which promised to turn its cars all electric by 2025.
Jaguar has promised its cars will be a ‘copy of nothing’ and there are likely to be far fewer in the line up. A first look at the new range is believed to be pencilled in for next year.
At the same time as Jaguar’s electric revival, Land Rover is likely to launch its electric versions of the Range Rover Sport and Land Rover Defender.
The news comes as car sales at JLR rebounded in the third quarter thanks to a ‘gradual’ improvement in supplies of semiconductor chips.
Latest figures from the British brand show it finished Q3 (October to December 2022) with wholesale volumes of 79,591 units – 15 per cent up on the same quarter a year earlier, and nearly six per cent up on the previous quarter.
However, the order backlog grew by 10,000 units, meaning some 215,000 Jaguars and Land Rovers are waiting to be built.
Wholesale volumes grew by 17 per cent in North America and by 13 per cent in the UK.
Europe saw sales slide by three per cent while Covid lockdowns impacted Chinese sales by -13 per cent.
The Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and the Land Rover Defender represent 74 per cent of the manufacturer’s order book.
The latter was the best-selling model among retail customers, clocking up 19,841 sales – a near 62 per cent improvement (7,589) year on year.
The Range Rover is the second most popular car the brand sold in the quarter with 14,076 sales to its name, while the Evoque was third with 11,203.
Land Rover retail volumes rose by seven per cent (4,568) in Q3.
Jaguar, meanwhile, saw a 0.9 per cent improvement on Q3 2021, selling just 837 more cars.
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