Jaguar and Land Rover quality issues cost 100,000 sales a year, says JLR boss

Jaguar Land Rover are losing 100,000 sales a year due to potential customers’ fear of unreliability, says JLR boss Thierry Bollore.

Jaguar Land Rover are on a mission to embrace electrification, with Land Rover and Range Rover models promising EVs across the range and Jaguar going completely electric.

Not only that, but the plan is for Jaguar to move upmarket in to the sort of territory Bentley inhabits, and cut production by 25 per cent as it aims to sell fewer, more expensive and more profitable cars.

But a big elephant in the room for both Jaguar and Land Rover is the shadow of unreliability that’s hung over both Jaguar and Land Rover for decades, and refuses to go away. Perhaps with some justification.

But, according to Automotive News Europe, new JLR boss Thierry Bollore looks to be addressing the problem head on, and claims big strides are being made on quality and reliability, whilst admitting that the perception of unreliability is costing the company 100,000 sales a year.

But it’s not just lost sales the reputation for unreliably affects, it also affects the price of new cars sold with buyers playing on the issues to get a discount, and it also means big warranty costs for the company.

But there are signs reliability is improving as JLR’s warranty costs in the last nine months of 2020 stood at £489 million, down from £812 million the year before.

The quality issues seem to be heading in the right direction, and with Gerry McGovern declaring future models will be ‘simpler’, reliability should improve further still.

But changing car buyers’ perception is going to be no easy task.