Reborn Land Rover Defender crucial to firm’s 2019 revival

This glut of important new launches arrives at a time of considerable belt-tightening at JLR. Since Tata bought JLR in 2008, its trajectory has been almost entirely upwards. However in recent months its sales and profits have been hit by a combination of a falling demand for diesel-engined models, the thawing of car sales in China brought on by the US-China trade war and the uncertainty around Brexit – an issue to which JLR is more exposed than perhaps any other manufacturer. 

Last October the company announced a turnaround plan designed to save £2.5 billion and improve cash flow over the next 18 months, including trimming the R&D budget by £1bn. The ‘Project Charge’ plan followed two straight loss-making quarters coupled with falling sales. 

The wide-ranging cost savings are being felt across the company. There have already been production shut-downs at the Castle Bromwich and Solihull plants, and the decision has been made to skip the upcoming Geneva show – an event that would cost a vast amount of money to support and attend at a time when JLR has no headline-grabbing new products to reveal. 

The best way for a car maker to extricate itself from a perceived crisis is to create innovative new products that resonate with buyers, a strategy that represents the crux of JLR’s plans for this year following a quieter 2018. 

Since Autocar published the first spy pictures of the new Defender, several other variants have also been seen testing around the company’s Midlands base, as the production line for making the mules is up and running. 

An ultra-short-wheelbase three-door version has been spied along with a much longer and larger five-door, the latter both with and without spare wheels. This trio gives a glimpse of the extent of the range, which, it is understood, will run at up to 12 variants. 

A whole host of different bodystyles, from pick-ups to soft-tops, will be spun off the new model and fitted out with everything from ultra-utilitarian interiors to super-luxury versions, in order to broaden the Defender’s appeal and make the business case stack up. Initial launch models are set to include the shorter-wheelbase model with both hard and soft-tops and the larger hard-top, all of which have already been seen testing. Prices are expected to range from £40,000 to £70,000. 

That broad appeal is at the heart of the new Defender’s business case: it must be seen as having rough and tough, go-anywhere purist appeal at one end of the scale while also having broad everyday consumer appeal that will allow it to hit the volumes of around 50,000 units per year that will make the project viable.