Solihull is the most likely of Jaguar Land Rover's two West Midland's plants to be closed by the middle of the next decade, industry sources have hinted.
Earlier today the firm said it would shut one of its factories in the West Midlands, although it claimed no redundancies would be necessary due to the expansion of the remaining plant.
A decision will not be made until next year, but Solihull is the most likely due to the aluminium manufacturing capacity at Castle Bromwich, which will probably be utilised for the next generation of Range Rover and Sport.
Those cars are due around 2012 and if built at Castle Bromwich a major part of the production capacity at Solihull would be removed, leaving the low-volume Defender and the Discovery. A new Discovery is due around 2014, which would provide an opportunity to close Solihull.
The new small Range Rover, currently called LRX, will be built at the Halewood plant on Merseyside. That plant will also build the proposed seven-seat Freelander.
Vehicles produced at Solihull have been plagued by quality issues, while Jaguars from Castle Bromwich have supplanted Lexus at the top of the annual JD Power reliability surveys in the US.
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