Things at Jaguar Land Rover seem to be on the up at the moment.
Reporting record sales, creating new jobs, opening a new £500m engine manufacturing centre, welcoming its new 2013 graduate intake, launching a female engineering scholarship and just this week showcasing a brand new Jaguar concept car, the C-X17 SUV.
On Wednesday from the Frankfurt Motor Show, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) announced an investment approaching £1.5 billion to introduce an all-new technically-advanced aluminium vehicle architecture in forthcoming models.
To support this, 1,700 new jobs will be created in the UK at its advanced manufacturing facility in Solihull.
Commenting on the announcement, Dr. Ralf Speth, JLR’s CEO, said: “Jaguar Land Rover is a business driven by design, technology and innovation and this investment and level of job creation is yet further evidence of our commitment to advancing the capability of the UK automotive sector and its supply chain.”
The first model to utilise this aluminium architecture will be an all-new mid-sized sports sedan from Jaguar. As this will only be launched in 2015, to give a taste of what’s to come Jaguar unveiled its first ever sports crossover concept vehicle, the C-X17,- at the Frankfurt Motor Show on Wednesday.
Make of it what you will, this design study, created by design director Ian Callum and his team, illustrates what we will be seeing from Jaguar in years to come, helping it to compete in new segments and markets.
The development of this new flexible alumiunium architecture is not only good news for prospective employees, but for JLR’s supply base too. Since 2011 the manufacturer estimates that 9,000 new jobs have been created in the UK, which it claims will lead to an additional 24,000 positions in the supply chain.
