Jaguar Land Rover strong September sales thanks to Evoque & XF 2.2

JLR Sales up in September thanks to XF 2.2 & Evoque

Jaguar and Land Rover have posted strong September sales, with Global Retail sales up 26 per cent on the back of Evoque and XF 2.2 launches.

We’ve had cause to take Jaguar Land Rover (well, Jaguar) to task lately for disappointing sales, particularly in the US and the UK.

So it seems only fair, after dishing out disapprobation, that we should balance that with a story about a decent set of sales figures for JLR in September, especially in the face of weakening sales from other manufacturers in the UK.

Unsurprisingly – although how long it will last is debatable – China was the strongest performer for Jaguar, certainly in percentage terms, with a rise of 156 per cent for Jaguar and 85 per cent for Land Rover and year on year figures up 60 per cent.

The UK saw Jaguar improve across the board by an average of 12 per cent, with XF up 12.8 per cent, XJ up 14.8 per cent and XK up 11.8 per cent with the new XF 2.2 diesel grabbing a third of Jaguar’s registrations.

So Jaguar where right when they said the 2.2 diesel would be a big fillip for XF sales, but if sales were up for XF by 12.8 per cent and the XF 2.2 diesel took a third of all Jaguar’s sales in September, you would have to conclude that other models in the XF range – the 3.0 litre diesel and the 5.0 litre supercharged – took something of a dive.

That situation seems to have been mirrored across Europe with the 2.2 XF, with 43 per cent of European XF sales being of the new diesel.

Land Rover has also done well – in their case on the back of sales of the new Evoque in particular – but also a spectacular year on year increase in Range Rover sales of 97 per cent.

Even the US – where we worried that reliability issues were harming sales for Jaguar – there was a 10 per cent increase overall, with XF sales up by 33 per cent despite the 2.2 diesel not being on offer.

With sales of the XF 2.2 diesel and the Evoque likely to power forward in coming months, JLR should be able to sustain these improvements, and new models – such as the Jaguar XF Estate and Jaguar XE – should further bolster Jaguar’s sales when they come on line in 2012.

We could be in for Land Rover struggling a bit more next year and in 2013 – despite the popularity of the Evoque – as the new Land Rover models start to get close and buyers begin hanging back for the new models to arrive. But that’s to be expected.

All round decent figures and worth shouting about.