Land Rover Defender pick-up and reborn Jaguar to deliver huge US growth for JLR

Jaguar’s push into the US market – set to be supercharged by a Stellantis partnership building Defender trucks Stateside – looks set to unleash significant growth for the British luxury car maker.

“If we execute our plans well, the US business can be as big as JLR [is] today,” CEO PB Balaji told Auto Express on a call to discuss the company’s Q2 financial results. “That is the holy grail that we need to get to, and we are quite excited and absolutely confident we will get there.”

In the 2025 financial year, North America accounted for around 100,000 units, a quarter of JLR’s total volume. Merely doubling sales would give JLR a huge profitability shot, given Balaji’s strategy to lower the company’s breakeven point to 300,000 cars a year.

JLR and Stellantis announced a memorandum of understanding in May, to explore a North American collaboration. Land Rover’s US dealers have long coveted a Defender pick-up, a dream that could become reality by tapping into a Stellantis body-on-frame vehicle architecture.

“There’s definitely a portfolio that’s relevant to the US,” the boss told us. “Hence we are in conversation with Stellantis on the Defender brand: are there interesting opportunities we can work with them on? Both companies are working feverishly on this topic; we hope to come back with a clearer announcement in the coming months.”

Manufacturing is the obvious win-win opportunity, with JLR able to boost its American volume without incurring import duties, and circumnavigating the glass ceiling of the 100,000 annual units across all British auto exporters. 

“We’ll still have 10 to 15 per cent excess capacity in the United States, even with everything Stellantis plans to build,” a Stellantis executive recently told Auto Express. “And the value to JLR [of US assembly] is very clear.”

The talks are homing in on Land Rover tapping into Stellantis architectures, rather than JLR trying to implant a platform. “We have enough volume that [sharing components] doesn’t help us much on cost. JLR would benefit from it, but we would benefit from the [reduced excess] capacity,” said our source.

JLR pivoted to the US market in early 2025, following the collapse in Chinese sales for western car brands. “China was considerably down for us in the [most recent] quarter,” JLR chief finance officer Richard Molyneux told the call.   

“The US as a market will remain attractive for quite some time to come, given the sheer amount of wealth creation,” said CEO Balaji. “Our luxury brands [offer] an extremely differentiated proposition for customers. But in terms of penetration, they do have some distance to cover, so as we start investing into the US, there is significant growth opportunity. But it is going to be a tough fight, as in any market.”  

Balaji also confirmed JLR was in the thick of five new model launches, out to 2027. JLR is meeting 4,500 advance orders for the Range Rover Electric and its zero emission Sport sibling, while Jaguar Type 01 deliveries are set for summer 2027. Also ramping up next year are two electric cars out of Liverpool’s Halewood plant, the swoopy Range Rover GT and the mid-size electric Defender. 

JLR grew revenues by three per cent over the July-September 2026 period, to £5.9bn. Profit before tax and exceptional items – a £530m hit, largely for redundancies to chase the lower breakeven point – was a slight £6m. But it showed the firm was bouncing back from September 2025’s cyber attack: the comparable figure for last year was a £485m loss.  

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