Record year for Jaguar Land Rover – but sales sliding in recent months

Despite strong figures in China it proved a tough month for Jaguar Land Rover and a weak end to the company's financial year, even with the launch of new cars like the Range Rover Velar, the Jaguar E-Pace and an updated Land Rover Discovery.

Although JLR saw record car sales in the 12 months to the end of March, of 616,309 vehicles worldwide, it was only a rise of 1.7 per cent on the previous year.

And figures released today show the deteriorating picture, with sales over the last three months down 3.8 per cent, and down 7.8 per cent in March.

JLR – which makes its four-cylinder diesel and petrol engines at its £1bn factory on the i54 in Wolverhampton – said this was "primarily due to lower UK sales and to a lesser extent lower sales in Europe".

Felix Brautigam, JLR's chief commercial officer, said: "Weaker market conditions in the UK and Europe, driven by lack of consumer confidence and lower demand for diesels, are impacting our growth.

"But even against this backdrop it’s good to see that we have closed our financial year with record retail sales.

"New models such as the award-winning Range Rover Velar continue to drive our growth. Sales of the completely refreshed 18 Model Year Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, including our PHEV (plug-in hybrid) option, are still ramping up.

"For Jaguar, sales of the new E-Pace are gathering momentum. The I-Pace, our first battery electric vehicle, is just going on sale. It is the world’s smartest five seater sports car and will entice even more customers to our showrooms."

JLR's retail sales for the financial year were up almost 20 per cent in China, up 4.7 per cent in North America and up 3.4 per cent across its so-called overseas markets (Russia, South America, India and the Middle East). But they were down 12.8 per cent in the UK over the 12 months and fell 5.3 per cent in Europe, primarily driven by continuing uncertainty over diesel.

JLR said Jaguar retail sales managed a one per cent rise to 174,560 vehicles in the financial year thanks to the introduction of the E-Pace, continuing solid sales of F-Pace crossover and the long wheelbase XFL made especially for the Chinese market.

But Jaguar sales slid 7.5 per cent in the last three months of the financial year, and were down 12.7 per cent last month.

The new Velar and Discovery helped buoy up Land Rover sales over the 12 months, up two per cent to 439,749 vehicles.

But this was partially offset by lower sales of the Discovery Sport and Evoque whilst JL:R blamed lower sales of its Range Rover and Range Rover Sport retails because of an upcoming changeover to newer models, including the first Range Rover plug-in hybrid.

But sales for Land Rover for the fourth quarter were 122,778 vehicles, down 2.2 per cent, and retails in March were 59,432 vehicles, down 5.7 per cent compared to March last year.