Jaguar Land Rover benefits from scrappage scheme
Jaguar, which is due to unveil its long-awaited new XJ in London on Thursday night, saw sales fall by 19 per cent to 1,516 units last month and by 20 per cent to 9,118 on a year to date basis.
The Big Cat’s sales are being underpinned by demand for its Birmingham-built XF mid-range sports saloon, particularly the 3-litre diesel variant. With JLR’s Indian owner Tata Motors thought to be considering closing one of the company’s three assembly plants in response to one of the worst recessions in automotive industry history, the focus in the coming months will be the level of advanced orders its dealers book for the new flagship XJ.
Land Rover, heavily affected by the shift in the market away from big off-roaders, sold 2,105 vehicles last month, a fall of 28 per cent compared with the same month last year.
Sales for the first six months were 39 per cent down at 13,392, although the Lode Lane company was only just beginning to retreat from a three-year run of record sales at this stage of 2008.
Chinese-owned MG based at Longbridge registered 31 sales last month and 130 for the year so far, two of which were under the scrappage scheme.
Eric Wallbank, of Ernst & Young’s Birmingham-based automotive team, said the efficacy of the scrappage scheme was shown by the fact that private sales constituted half of the UK total compared with 40 per cent last year.
“Fleet and business sales are still suffering and have seen marked declines year on year – 28 per cent and 34 per cent respectively,” he said. “This suggests business confidence is still weak and whether this improves towards the end of the year remains to be seen.”
The UK scrappage scheme is less generous and came later than the incentives bankrolled by other major European countries. As Mr Wallbank said, in Germany, where eight-year-old cars qualify, June sales were 40 per cent up on 2008.
He answered critics who say that, because scrappage sales are largely confined to imported mini and super-mini class cars, the UK automotive sector was not benefiting. The majority of the engines in the top-selling Ford Fiesta and second-ranking Ford Focus, for example, are produced at UK plants, as are the four-cylinder engines that power Minis and BMW 3 Series cars.
Mr Wallbank said: “This underlines the importance and significance of the European-wide roll out of the scheme – albeit subject to differences in each country – which has created cross-border demand in all the major automotive manufacturing countries.”
