Jaguar Land Rover global sales booming
Jaguar Land Rover today revealed a 60 per cent surge in sales for last month, providing further evidence of the recovery in global car markets.
The British marques, now part of India's Tata Motors, sold more than 17,000 vehicles in February.
Although the increase at the start of 2010 mirrors the depressed markets of early 2009 – sales for the past 10 months dropped 16 per cent – Land Rover sales jumped 62 per cent to 13,905 in February, while 'leaping cat' sales lifted 55 per cent to 3,292, totalling 17,197.
The car maker employs around 14,500 people in the UK, 12,000 of them in the West Midlands. JLR also has a plant at Halewood on Merseyside.
The company has still to decide on the fate of the two West Midlands operations, with Tata planning to close either Castle Bromwich, which makes Jaguars, or Solihull, home of the Land Rover.Jaguar Land Rover said today this was the sixth consecutive month of improving sales.
Land Rover sales rocketed overseas, up 86 per cent in France and 162 per cent higher in Turkey, while sales in China doubled and in Brazil were up 75 per cent. In the UK and North America sales rose 46 per cent and 18 per cent respectively.
The manufacturer has recently announced its first quarterly profit since being bought by Tata for £1.25 billion in 2008 from American car giant Ford.
In the three months from October to December 2009 it revealed profits of £55 million against losses of £60 million in the previous quarter.In another development it has emerged that Jaguar Land Rover has done a U-turn over plans to close its final salary pension scheme.
The company has confirmed it has withdrawn proposals to close its current defined benefits scheme to future accruals and introduce a new defined benefit retirement fund from next month.Jaguar
