Jaguar's new F-type sports car has provided a boost for the West Midlands-based luxury car maker as it revealed surging sales figures for the last month.
VW has said Chattanooga is the front-runner for the seven-seat SUV, which would be based on the CrossBlue prototype unveiled at the January 2013 Detroit auto show. The company has said it wants to have the vehicle in dealer showrooms in 2016. The plant now produces just the Passat midsize sedan.
Demand for the Freelander and the Evoque far outstripped sales in April a year ago, while the newly launched Range Rover Sport and flagship Range Rover had roared away from dealer forecourts around the world.
Jaguar sales are also on the up but the car maker will be holding its breath for the reception of its new XE Saloon, due to be unveiled later this summer.
The XE will be the first car to be powered by the new Ingenium engines that will be built at the new factory nearly completion on the i54 site on the border of Wolverhampton and South Staffordshire.
The £500 million factory, which will eventually employ around 1,400 people, is expected to start turning out production versions of the engine early next year, and they will go straight into the new aluminium-bodied XE as it in turn rolls off the production line at Solihull.
Meanwhile, in the first year of its new financial year, Jaguar Land Rover has seen sales soar 30.4 per cent on last April's figure, as customers snapped up 37,171 of its cars.
Demand is still rocketing in China, where sales were up 71.7 per cent, while there were big surges in the US, the company's UK home market and across Europe.
While Land Rover sales were strong across the board, figures from its Jaguar sister company were more patchy, with demand down slightly in the US. But for both marques it was the Chinese market that proved dominant, with sales up more than 70 per cent for both Jaguar and Land Rover as China proved by far their biggest sales area.
More than 80 per cent of Jaguar Land Rover's cars, made at Solihull, Castle Bromwich and Halewood as well as growing number of factories around the world built to cope with surging demand.
It saw the company scoop yet another Queen's Award for Export earlier this month, when chief executive Ralf Speth said: "Our success is thanks to our dedicated and passionate employees who create exciting vehicles that are in high demand with customers around the world.
"The more we build our business, the more opportunity we can create to improve the lives of many families, by recruiting and training more people, investing in facilities and communities, and strengthening the overall growth of the UK economy."
The companies surging sales figures have been accompanied by massive investment in its UK factories, as well as the new plant at Wolverhampton, while it has recruited thousands of new engineers in the last few years giving it a UK workforce of around 29,000.
Source: expressandstar.com
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