JLR sales down 5.9pc for 2019

The luxury car maker, which has its engine manufacturing plant at the i54 north of Wolverhampton, sold 396,105 Land Rovers – down 3.8 per cent – and 161,601 Jaguar vehicles.

Last month retail sales were 52,814 – up1.3% on December 2018. Land Rover was up 9.6 per cent to 39,442 and Jaguar down 17.3 per cent to 13,372.

For the month JLR was boosted by China where sales were up 26.3 per cent year-on-year – a sixth successive month of double-digit growth. This offset lower sales in North America (down 1.1 per cent), UK (a fall of 2.9 per cent) and Europe (5.3 per cent fewer).

The new Range Rover Evoque continues to perform very well with overall sales up 33.2 per cent and the refreshed Land Rover Discovery Sport was also up 19.6 per cent.

For the calendar year JLR sales were down 13.5 per cent in China, 4.9 per cent in Europe and 1.7 per cent in the UK. There were record sales in North America - up 1.8 per cent.

Following a record 2018, Jaguar sales were down in 2019.

Felix Brautigam, JLR's chief commercial officer said: "2019 was a year of two halves for Jaguar Land Rover. Over the last six months we saw a marked improvement in China, where intensive work with our retailers, combined with significant process and product improvements are starting to gain traction. Elsewhere, adverse market conditions continued to affect the industry, but encouragingly in North America we closed 2019 successfully with a new record year."

In 2019, six per cent of Jaguar Land Rover’s global sales were either fully-electric or with plug-in hybrid electric powertrains. In the UK, for example, four per cent of the company’s sales were electric and four per cent plug-in hybrid, more than double the overall market take-up, with 23 per cent of all Range Rovers and 20 per cent of all Range Rover Sport vehicles being plug-in hybrids.