Jaguar Land Rover planning US production

Jaguar Land Rover are planning to open production in the United States and are looking at sites in the southern States to build 200k cars a year.

Ever since Jaguar Land Rover was grabbed by Tata in 2008, they’ve hardly put a foot wrong.

With ever increasing sales (particularly for Land Rover and Range Rover), new models that have been critically acclaimed and clever marketing, both Jaguar and Land Rover are starting to bury the past and build a strong future, and yet are still managing to hang on to the best of their heritage to give their cars ‘soul’.

But ever increasing sales means the search for more production capacity, and production capacity that offers real advantages beyond just the ability to build more cars.

So we’ve seen production of JLR’s cars happening in India (although mainly from CKD until recently), a joint venture with Chery in China which sees JLR’s first proper plant outside the UK open today and plans for a new plant in Brazil to feed the growing South American market. There are even plans for a plant in Saudi Arabia to tap in to the Saudi’s aluminium production.

Now it seems JLR are planning to manufacture in the USA (although they’re saying such an assertion is ‘speculation’), with the Sunday Times reporting this weekend that JLR are looking at sites in the southern States – particularly South Carolina – where a new plant would attract financial support from the State government, avoid transport and import costs and feed North America with up to 200,000 JLR vehicles a year.

It certainly sounds like a sensible plan, even if it is just ‘speculation’ at the moment.