Jaguar loses £533m

West Midlands luxury car-maker Jaguar today revealed it lost a stagging £533.7 million in 2005 - but insisted it is on track for recovery.

Jaguar spokesman Don Hume said today the company had made considerable progress since 2005. Since then the firm has come up with a new business model, with the aim of selling fewer but higher-value cars that make more profit.

It has ditched its move into the volume car market with the ill-fated X-Type "Baby Jag", based on the Ford Mondeo.

Instead the company has come up with the profitable new XK sports car and a replacement for the S-Type - the C-XF - goes on display at the Geneva Motor Show next month.

It proved a massive hit at its launch in Detroit last month.

But the 2005 figures show just how bad things have been at the ailing motor manufacturer, which has had to be continually propped up by parent company Ford since it was bought for £1.6 billion in 1989.

The US car giant has failed to make a single penny profit from its British company since then.

The figures from Companies House include a £186.7 million write-down in the value of its assets, but do not include the costs of axing production at the historic Brown's Lane site in Coventry.

Jaguar car-making is now concentrated at Castle Bromwich, in Birmingham, and at Halewood on Merseyside.

Mr Hume, Jaguar's director of corporate and government affairs, said: "When we launched the recovery plan in 2004 we said it wouldn't be a quick fix, but we are saying it is on track."

He again dismissed rumours that Ford - £6.4 billion in the red as its combats fierce Japanese competition - had any plans to sell Jaguar.

Jaguar is part of Ford's Premier Automotive Group (PAG), along with Volvo and Land Rover.

Ford's 2006 figures showed that PAG's losses were more than £160 million.

But Jaguar's sister company, Land Rover, is doing much better. The newly-revealed 2005 figures showed the 4x4 firm turned a £215 million loss in 2004 into a £57 million profit.

By Simon Penfold