JLR look about to partner with Chery in China
It’s being reported that Jaguar Land Rover are close to partnering with Chinese car maker Chery to produce cars in China.
It’s been great to chronicle the return of Jaguar and Land Rover to the sort of form we’ve not seen in a generation. And as far as we can see, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
But away from the new models we are looking forward to, JLR’s future is, to a large extent, away from the UK. Yes, it would be daft for them ever to allow either Jaguar or Land Rover to be perceived as anything other than ‘British’, but building cars in emerging economies is the future.
We have no doubt that JLR will be setting up manufacturing in India (they are already doing CKD Freelanders), but it’s China that is the current focus. And it’s starting to look as though JLR are about to jump in to bed with Chery to build cars.
Tata’s Carl Peter Forster has been in China this week and, although he also visited Great Wall, he spent far more time with Chery, who have been tipped for some time to partner with JLR thanks to their manufacturing abilities and – important in China – political resources.
JLR seem ready to invest £100 million in building a new plant in China to produce upwards of 50,000 cars a year. Which will be a good entry point in to the burgeoning Chinese market and make JLR’s products much more accessible to the Chinese – and at a much lower price.
It seems likely that the first car to be built in China will be the Jaguar XF. But it won’t just be a ‘Jaguar’ XF. Under Chinese law, Western Companies who want to manufacture in China have to partner with a Chinese Company and it is expected that the products of Jaguar will be intergrated in to Chery’s range to produce a Chery version of the XF. Which all sounds quite appalling, but it’s the way things work in China at the moment.
There’s nothing official yet, but we’ll keep you posted.
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