Black Country-powered Jag helps JLR to accelerate to new record

But JLR is still assessing the full impact, and likely cost, of the Tianjin explosion and fire in August which wrecked nearly 6,000 of its cars that were in storage at the port.

The latest figures show the company managed to hike sales by three per cent, to 47,634, beating last year's previous record September. So far this year sales remain broadly in line with 2014, with 349,412 vehicles rolling off forecourts around the globe.

So far this year sales are up by15 per cent in the UK, by 21 per cent in Europe and by 18 per cent in North America.

But in China they are down by 29 per cent, and fell another 12 per cent in JLR's other overseas markets – Russia, Brazil, the Middle East and North Africa.

JLR says the lower sales in China 'reflect the continued accelerated slowing of economic conditions in China, together with planned new model transitions'. This suggests Chinese car buyers may be holding on, waiting for locally-produced Range Rover Evoques and Land Rover Discovery Sports, as well as the launch of the new XF and XJ Jaguars later in the year.

Meanwhile the company is focusing on the positives. Andy Goss, Jaguar Land Rover group sales operations director said: "The all-new Jaguar XE and the all-new Discovery Sport continued to impress this month, retailing more than 13,000 vehicles in total.

"Sales in the UK, Europe and North America have shown impressive growth year-to-date and despite a challenging macro-economic environment, particularly in China, customer demand for both our Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles remains encouraging."

Meanwhile, JLR says it will have to absorb a one-off financial cost, probably tens of millions of pounds, for the destruction and damage to the 5,800 vehicles that were stored at the Chinese port of Tianjin when it suffered a deadly fire and disaster in August. It will be hoping to recover some or all of the cost over the coming months, probably through insurance claims.

"Given the exceptional nature of this event, Jaguar Land Rover is still assessing the damages and it may be some time before the company knows what insurance and other recoveries will be," said a spokesman.

The sales figures for September show Jaguar performing strongest, selling 10,394 cars, up 22 per cent on the same month last year. This reflects strong sales of the XE saloon that went on sale in May, while China sales only started in September and US sales don't start until next year. The bigger new XF has also been launched.

Land Rover saw its sales dip by one per cent, to 37,240, although the new Discovery Sport is outselling by the old Freelander it replaced by 30 per cent while Range Rover and Range Rover Sport were up six per cent and 11 per cent respectively.

The company said it 'remains confident about the future' and is aiming to build on the successful launches of the Land Rover Discovery Sport, the Jaguar XE and the new Jaguar XF, as well as launch the new Range Rover Evoque and Jaguar XJ, followed by the recently unveiled Jaguar F-Pace next year.