Tata Motors’ Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will build the redesigned Land Rover Discovery at two European plants – at ‘the home of Land Rover’ in Solihull, near Birmingham in the UK and the planned new plant in Nitra, Slovakia.
The decision, JLR said, was made “following strong advanced orders for the new flagship in the Land Rover model range”.
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Global manufacturing director Wolfgang Stadler said: “The new Discovery is already a hit with customers, confirming our decision to launch this car as the lead vehicle in Slovakia, alongside manufacture in Solihull. This multi-plant approach mirrors the strategy taken for Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover Discovery Sport at our plants in Halewood, China [where a 50% capacity expansion has just been announced – ed] and Brazil, ensuring our manufacturing output is able to keep up with strong consumer demand.”
The Slovakian factory, scheduled to open in 2018, will add to production from Solihull which is operating at full capacity across three shifts, with 24-hour production to support global demand for the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and the recently launched Jaguar F-Pace. Together these models have helped JLR achieve a year-on-year sales increase of 23% to the end of October.
The latest announcement followed confirmation at the recent Los Angeles Auto show the Jaguar I-Pace, the company’s first battery electric vehicle, would be manufactured under contract by assembly specialists Magna Steyr in Austria.
