Jaguar Land Rover Sales FALL in February

Jaguar Land Rover are reporting that they retailed a total of 28,689 cars in February 2015, a drop of almost six per cent on the same period in 2014.

We’ve got used to Jaguar Land Rover revealing sales figures that rise inexorably, and in the last five years JLR has managed to double its sales and triple its turnover (and double its workforce in the process) in a real turnaround for Land Rover and, to a degree, Jaguar too.

So it was unusual to see that JLR retailed 28,689 cars in February this year, a fall of almost six per cent compared to the same period in 2014. But there are reasons.

JLR say the drop is largely due to the run out of the Freelander, although we’d have expected that Discovery Sport sales would be starting to compensate for that by now. Perhaps not.

Despite the drop in sales, JLR managed to shift more Range Rovers (4,310) in February than ever before, and sales of the Jaguar F-Type were also a record (795).

Sales for Jaguar, compared to 2014, would also have been impacted (slightly) by the loss of the Jaguar XK, and both the Jaguar XF and XJ are getting a bit long in the tooth and struggling to excite buyers as they once did.

But the launch of the new Jaguar XE and a new Jaguar XF arriving later in 2015 should start to see Jaguar sales rising strongly, and Land Rover sales should soon reflect the new Discovery Sport more fully and return to their ever upward record of recent years.

So it would seem February was a blip.