Strong China sales buoy Jaguar Land Rover's July figures

Boosted by the launch of its new Range Rover Velar, the luxury West Midlands car-marker saw sales rising overall in July. The UK car market continued its slowdown last month but JLR exports around 80 per cents of the vehicles it makes in Britain.

Jaguar Land Rover sold 46,074 vehicles around the world in July, up 3.6 per cent on the same month a year ago. It means continuing strong demand for the two-litre petrol and diesel engines coming out of JLR's growing factory on the i54 site at Wolverhampton.

July saw higher sales for the Jaguar XF and a solid performance from the F-Pace. Land Rover's Discovery Sport and Range Rovers were also solid, while the latest version of the Discovery is has gone on sale in North America and China.

China was the strongest market, with sales up 34.4 per cent thanks to the new long wheelbase Jaguar XFL made for the Asian market, while demand was strong for the F-Pace, Discovery Sport, Range Rover Sport and Evoque.

At the same time, sales were down one per cent in the UK, down 2.7 per cent in North America, down 5.7 per cent in Europe and fell 6.1 per cent in other overseas markets.

Andy Goss, JLR's group sales operations director, said: "July has been another successful month for Jaguar Land Rover, particularly in China, where we reinforced our commitment to the market by opening our new engine plant in Changshu on July 21.

"Year on year, we have seen an increase in sales for Land Rover, led by continuing strong sales of the Discovery Sport and Range Rover. The new Range Rover Velar has already reached customers in the UK and Europe and we anticipate continued strength of sales as Velar continues to go on sale around the world."

Land Rover sales were up 5.8 per cent in July to 33,110, thanks to the new Discovery and Velar, but Jaguar fell 1.8 per cent to 12,964.

And the resilient sales performance over recent months is expected to be reflected in the company's financial results on Wednesday, for the first three months of its financial year. And JLR will be hoping to build further on the strong profits it saw in the previous three month period.

Jaguar Land Rover is investing more than £4 billion a year expanding its range of models and its manufacturing sites. As well as doubling the size of its Wolverhampton engine factory to 2 million sq ft it is building a new plant in Slovakia.