Record Land Rover Defender sales help JLR to 10-year PROFIT high

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) reports record profits of £2.5 billion – a 10-year high – helped by record sales of the Land Rover Defender.

It’s a turbulent time for car makers in a world where they’re being forced to build EVs despite a lack of demand and having to negotiate Trump’s tariff games.

With many car makers struggling to make financial sense of the challenges they face, JLR is bucking the trend with record profits for the full year of £2.5 billion – a 10-year high – helped, no doubt, by not building EVs yet. Well, apart from the Jaguar i-Pace, which found just 7,826 buyers worldwide in the year.

With Jaguar pretty much in hibernation until the arrival of its electric 4-Door GT later this year, the only model JLR is producing apart from the I-Pace is the F-Pace, so its profits come entirely from Range Rover, Discovery and Defender sales.

The Land Rover Defender was JLR’s biggest seller, hitting a sales record of 115,404, with the Range Rover Sport shifting 79,862, Range Rover 76,715, Evoque 44,240 and the Velar 23,787, all up apart from the Velar, whose sales were down by 18%.

That just leaves Discovery sales, which fell by 20.7% to 14,433, although Discovery Sport did well with 19,593 sales, a 9.3% increase.

Adrian Mardell, Chief Executive Officer, JLR: said:

JLR has ended the year with strong annual and quarterly earnings, including delivering our tenth consecutive profitable quarter and our net debt zero target. We have achieved record sales of Defender, revealed the stunning Jaguar Type 00 and we are preparing to launch the wonderful Range Rover Electric.

With a strong order book – including 61,000 for the Range Rover Electric – JLR seems well-palced to maintain growth, although whether these strong numbers can be maintained amidst the tariff turmoil remains to be seen, although the latest 10% tariff in the US on UK cars shouldn’t be too difficult to navigate. But unless the EU can do a similar deal then Defender and Discovery sales may well be hurt with the current 25% tariff, as they’re built in Slovakia.