Land Rover Defender drives JLR profits to a ten year high

Jaguar Land Rover raked in £2.5billion of pre-tax profit during the last financial year – its highest profits in 10 years, and a 15 per cent increase year‑on‑year – and saw record sales of the mighty Land Rover Defender, with 115,404 new models flying out of showrooms in that same period.

JLR generated £29billion in revenues in the 12 months from the end of March last year during which time, like other car makers, it also had to navigate “global economic challenges,” particularly the 25 per cent tariff imposed by President Donald Trump on foreign-made cars imported to the US, which was first announced back in February. 

Of course, the news of JLR’s record profits comes just a week after a trade deal was struck between the UK and US that will reduce the tariff for the first 100,000 British-made cars going across the pond down to 10 per cent, and has provided some welcoming relief to the automotive industry in the UK.

That’s great news for the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport which are built in Solihull in the Midlands, especially as the first-ever Range Rover Electric will be arriving very soon and has already amassed a waiting list of roughly 62,000 potential customers.

However, the Land Rover Defender is made in Slovakia, meaning it’s still subject to the original 25 per cent tariff. When asked about this, JLR CEO Adrian Mardell told Auto Express: “We're working where we can to mitigate all the impact of tariffs, including on the Defender from Europe into the USA. 

“We don't have any news at the EU/US level of what trade agreements will be put in place, but similarly to the UK, we're really confident at some point there will be a different trade deal, and therefore obviously we're hopeful that will happen earlier rather than later, which will be important for our business within Defender in Europe.”

“However, we have a series of measures that we will also be considering and taking, and depending on the time and extent that this 25 per cent tariff continues with Defender, clearly the magnitude of those responses will become adjusted.”

No immediate plans to build cars in the US

One obvious way to get around these tariffs is to simply build cars in the US, which is what President Trump is hoping companies will do. Mardell shut down any speculation JLR had such plans in the works, telling us: “We had, and we have, no plans to build cars in the US at this point in time. That was the case before January, and it's also the case after April [when the tariffs went into effect]. 

“I'm not discounting at some point in some place going forward we do something in the US for the US, but there are no plans to do that.”

JLR actually put a temporary stop on all car shipments to the US in April in response to the tariffs. It has reportedly now resumed exports to the States, but JLR's chief financial officer Richard Molyneux is confident the pause won’t have impacted the company’s sales figures.

He explained: “During the last quarter of last year we did push quite hard for US volume to make sure that we had probably more than enough stock for retailers to cover our position. Obviously knowing that something was brewing, and this did allow us to take a pause in shipments in April.”

Of course, the rebirth of Jaguar as an all-electric luxury brand continues as well. Mardell confirmed by the end of this year we should be seeing a concept version of the brand’s new four-door GT, which will be built in the company’s Solihull plant, where new production lines have now been installed for the car.

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