Jaguar E-Pace will NOT be built in the UK – a first for Jaguar

The new Jaguar E-Pace – Jaguar’s baby SUV – will be the first Jaguar ever to be built exclusively outside the UK. It will  be built in China and Austria.

When the new Jaguar E-Pace was teased a few weeks ago, we did question how on earth they were going to find capacity in the UK to build it. And now it seems they’re not.

According to the Daily Mail’s This is Money, Jaguar will announce tomorrow – when the Jaguar E-Pace is officially revealed – that no E-Pace models will be built in the UK at all.

It seems that as well as using Magna Steyr in Austria to build the E-Pace, it will also be built in China, with not a single car running down any of JLR’s UK production lines.

It’s the first time any Jaguar Land Rover model has been exclusively built outside the UK, although JLR do already build cars in places like India, Brazil and India.

The question is, as we asked about Volvo recently, does it matter any more where a car is built?

Just like Volvo and it’s very Swedish nature, much of JLR’s kudos comes from its very British identity, but the consensus now seems to be that as long as the core identity isn’t lost – and build quality is up to scratch – it really doesn’t matter. 

Of course, JLR have been so successful in recent years that they’re at maximum production in the UK, so to build more cars here they’d need to build more production plants. Instead, they’re busy building a new plant in Slovakia.

It’s business.