Say goodbye to the Land Rover brand, and get ready for a smaller, much more expensive model line from Jaguar.
Those are the top-line takeaways from Jaguar Land Rover’s new strategy, as first reported by Automotive News.
The storied Land Rover brand name will reportedly be relegated to a “trust mark” badge on tailgates — perhaps elsewhere; the announcement is short on details. The Jaguar brand — so esteemed that Ford paid $2.5 billion for it in 1989 — will finally abandon efforts to become a full-line luxury brand, shifting upmarket to build fewer — one hopes more profitable — vehicles that compete with the top of Mercedes’ and BMW’s lines. Prices will start north of $125,000 and likely elevate into Rolls-Royce/Bentley territory.
Land Rover, on the other hand, will grow into three separate brands: Range Rover, Discovery and Defender.
My first thoughts? It’s fair to view highly publicized “rebranding” campaigns skeptically.
A billion here, a billion there
Ford paid $2.75 billion for Land Rover in 2000, for those of you scoring at home. Neither Jaguar nor Land Rover acquisitions paid off. Ford sold Jaguar and Land Rover to current owner Tata Motors of India for $2.23 billion in 2008.
JLR’s been up and down since then, but Tata proved a good steward of the brands, expanding their model lines and improving quality, technology and design.
Tata plans to invest about $19 billion over the next five years to convert them to electric vehicles and create a new “House of Brands approach to accelerate the delivery of modern luxury vision.”
Is JLR writing a new chapter in “How to Turn a Large Fortune into a Small One in the Auto Industry”?
The program includes:
- Two new all-electric vehicle architectures: one for Jag, one for several midsize Rover SUVs.
- Converting the Halewood, England, assembly plant to EVs.
- Converting an English engine plant to produce EV drivetrains.
3 new electric Jaguars
The first electric Jag will be a four-door Grand Tourer, a European term open to wide interpretation: The only requirements are that it be fast and luxurious, a road-tripper for the 1%.
The Grand Tourer will be based on a new architecture that will only underpin Jaguars. Called JEA — presumably Jaguar Electric Architecture — look for it as the basis of the two other electric Jaguars JLR promises. Deliveries of the Grand Tourer will begin in 2025. JLR says it will cover 430 miles on a charge, though that projection is likely based on a more generous test procedure than US range estimates
The other two EVs will follow. For Jag’s sake, I hope they cost more, not less, than the Grand Tourer. Repeated attempts to expand Jaguar downward to compete with cars like the BMW 5-series and 3-series have failed.
Jag must find a new path. Morphing into a boutique brand of ultraluxury electric cars may not be the answer, but I haven’t heard any better suggestions.
Rover’s first EVs
JLR’s new Electrified Modular Architecture will underpin several midsize electric SUVs, with production beginning in 2025. First out of the chute will presumably be a Range Rover high-luxury SUV; dealers will start taking orders for it later this year. Given that prices for the current gasoline-powered Range Rover can top $200,000, the sky’s the limit on pricing.
The EMA should also be the basis of EVs for the Discovery and Defender brands. Official information about them ends at the names, and the fact that the Land Rover badge will appear somewhere to establish a link between the new EVs and eight decades of rugged rock climbers. Downplaying the original name and badge is a risky distance from the ready-for-anything image Land Rover has cultivated.
Many brands covet that heritage, but it’s reasonable to expect the Discovery family to have some pretensions of off-road capability. They’re family vehicles, offering more room and less extravagant luxury — at lower prices — than Range Rover.
Defenders will have to carry the flag for off-road capability. They will probably have the lowest starting price.
Rover will keep building internal combustion-powered Range Rovers and Range Rover Sports using the current MLA architecture as long as demand lasts.
Will the rebrand work?
It’s fair to view highly publicized “rebranding” campaigns skeptically.
Your brand is your product. Get them right and the public perception will follow. If the product doesn’t deliver, it doesn’t matter how clever your messaging is, how smooth the lattes are in your boutique dealerships — people will figure that out, too.
In JLR’s favor: Buying a car is an emotional affair. Few transgressions are insurmountable. A new look and attitude buy more second chances than they probably should.
How else to explain that Rover, the name of the vehicle that was all but unsellable a generation ago, is swimming in investment today while the haughty Jaguar finds itself on a short leash?
JLR has consistently got it right with Land Rover, but failed to fire the public’s imagination with Jag.
This reset has six or seven years — into the launch of JLR’s second generation of EV-only vehicles — to show which this is.
Contact Mark Phelan: 313-222-6731 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @mark_phelan. Read more on autos and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.