Jaguar XE and XF Saloon cars SAFE, say Jaguar, despite sales slump. Really?

Jaguar has no plans to ditch the XE and XF saloon cars, despite saloon sales slumping and SUV sales rising, says JLR boss Ralf Speth.

Jaguar Land Rover is is the eye of a miserable storm at the moment, beleaguered under a mountain of woes from Brexit to diesel demonisation and slumping China sales to tariff tensions – and the world falling out with saloon cars. 

Jobs are going at JLR and production of the Discovery has moved to Slovakia (with production of the new Defender heading the same way) and Castle Bromwich looks to have numbered days.

Land Rover has its problems – the Velar looks to be stealing sales from the Sport, Discovery Sport and Evoque sales are down and the Discovery isn’t as good as you’d hope – but it’s Jaguar where the real problems are (and always have been) as its raison d’etre – sports saloon cars – fall out of favour.

But despite XE and XF sales falling by over 20 per cent in the last year – and the Jaguar XJ selling in such small numbers (around 5,000 in 2018) – JLR boss Ralph Speth declares the XE and XF are ‘Safe’.

In an interview with Automotive News Europe, Speth declared that the future of the XE and XF was certain as Jaguar needed to compete in the sector to achieve economies of scale but, rather oddly, also declared saloon cars would be needed to meet future CO2 targets as they’re aerodynamically more efficient.

Speth was quoted as saying:

Whenever you think you go away from sedans, you have to consider new CO2 regulations. By 2030 and 2040 you are looking for reductions in the order of magnitude of 40 percent. That means from a pure physical point of view the concept of a sedan is far more favourable than SUV.

There is some sort of logic to the statement if we were moving forward with the long-term development of ICE cars, but with most of Europe declaring ICE cars will be banned from sale by 2040 (or earlier), it makes little sense.

We’d love to see Jaguar saloons survive, but surely they’re only going to do that if they move to electric platforms? Speth’s statement seems to assert that’s not the case. 

Which seems odd.