New Range Rover and Range Rover Sport prove VERY difficult to steal as JLR relaunches its own car insurance

JLR’s efforts to curb thefts of Range Rover and Defender models look to be paying off, as a new car insurance offering is launched.

Land Rover and Range Rover models have been in the news a lot recently, and much of the news has been about big drops in value, high theft rates and excessive insurance quotes (and, in many cases, an outright refusal to offer cover by many insurers).

All of the problems above are clearly linked, with high insurance costs due to high theft rates scaring customers off and reducing values of used cars.

To be fair to JLR – although it should perhaps have been more proactive sooner – they are trying to secure models already on the road by recalling models from 2018 onwards to have new security software added to cut car thefts of older models.

If that update effort delivers the same level of security as JLR’s latest cars then it should make a big difference to theft rates, with JLR claiming just nine of 12,200 Range Rovers built since January 2022 have been stolen and just 13 of 13,400 Range Rover Sports.

JLR has also relaunched its own insurance offering for their models (although underwritten by a third-party insurer) and says that of the 4,000 quotes they’ve give the average cost has been under £200 per month (which still seems a lot to us).

A JLR Spokesperson said:

Customers of luxury cars and other luxury items are experiencing?an increase in thefts due to organised criminal activity in the UK. The desirability of our luxury vehicles, coupled with concerns around thefts, has recently led to challenges in obtaining insurance cover for some clients. We are fully committed to doing everything we can to address this by adopting a multifaceted approach: from our significant investment in vehicle security, to now providing our own insurance.

While our new insurance proposition is a key milestone, we want to reassure clients that we will continue monitoring and refining our service so that even more clients can take advantage of it.

Still, JLR should be applauded for finally addressing issues that have gone on for far too long, although the statement (above) from JLR does indicate they’re picking and choosing who’s eligible for cover.