Looks like squeaky bum time for Jaguar Land Rover! Their Halewood plant in Liverpool is to close for 10 days not because of the coronavirus but bad sales. 
mirror.co.uk/money/jaguar-l … k-21640184
This on top of Bristol cars calling it a day after 73 years. 
lancpudn:
Looks like squeaky bum time for Jaguar Land Rover! Their Halewood plant in Liverpool is to close for 10 days not because of the coronavirus but bad sales.
mirror.co.uk/money/jaguar-l … k-21640184This on top of Bristol cars calling it a day after 73 years.
Isn’t the car industry supposed to be the flagship industry of Free Britain?
The whole European car industry is facing a tough time, what with people less willing to buy diesels, Governments announcing bans in internal combustion engines in a decade or so, City emission zones, the costs of developing new EV platforms, a sluggish European economy, the increase of Chinese car makers and then a slow down in the Chinese economy even before the Coronavirus and since it happened car sales in China are down 80%, obviously that will improve, but with all those problems that last thing they needed was Coronavirus, especially now as the Northern (more industrial part) of Italy is in lockdown, it will be difficult for manufactures to recover enough to met their sales targets for the year.
VAG, PSA, BMW and Mercedes have all announced major job losses in the last year, for Mercedes I think its about 10% of the Global workforce, I think there’ll be far more bad news than good this year.
Rubbish… we have just entered a golden age of opportunity and prosperity. Our government is finalising advantages trade deals with countries all around the globe as we speak. Former colonies, eager to buy our goods and services.
Aren’t we? Boris? Michael…■■ Jacob■■?
muckles:
The whole European car industry is facing a tough time, what with people less willing to buy diesels, Governments announcing bans in internal combustion engines in a decade or so, City emission zones, the costs of developing new EV platforms, a sluggish European economy, the increase of Chinese car makers and then a slow down in the Chinese economy even before the Coronavirus and since it happened car sales in China are down 80%, obviously that will improve, but with all those problems that last thing they needed was Coronavirus, especially now as the Northern (more industrial part) of Italy is in lockdown, it will be difficult for manufactures to recover enough to met their sales targets for the year.
VAG, PSA, BMW and Mercedes have all announced major job losses in the last year, for Mercedes I think its about 10% of the Global workforce, I think there’ll be far more bad news than good this year.
Firstly in the case of Jaguar it long ago deliberately turned its back on a massive core sector of its market.You know 3 litre +, petrol engined, performance saloons with manual transmission.
Then they did exactly what Rover did with the SD1 by going from decent looking 3 box styling to ugly coupe styles.
Then it went for silly downsized blown V8 screamers, at a V12 price, all lumbered with auto only, regarding what petrols remained in its line up.
Then it bought into the bs eco madness.By alienating what enthusiasts it had left in the classic market, by adding the insult of the idea of EV conversions for classics not just its new crap products, to the injury of the effective withdrawal of classic spares product support for the classic models.Meaning Jaguar Classic Parts Division in name only.
While the government then added the final nail in the form of loads of anti car use rhetoric and massive road fuel taxation and speed regulation to the mix.Why is anyone therefore surprised.Why buy a Jag in that environment when there are plenty of others who can do poverty spec, slow eco loon, products at a cheaper price.
While for spares support and reliable affordable performance, classic American is the way to go.The problem being that prices confirm it.
I see more bad news from that neck o the woods! Vauxhall Ellesmere Port move to a four day week. liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/li … e-17880810
Greta is too blame.Idiotic times.
lancpudn:
I see more bad news from that neck o the woods! Vauxhall Ellesmere Port move to a four day week. liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/li … e-17880810
The only surprise is why are PSA keeping Vauxhall alive when it was a dead duck from when GM chucked them and now Opel and Holden under the bus.Except that happened long ago in the case of Vauxhall when it lost the rwd Victor/Ventora range and Luton was effectively closed down.
When even at the end they only got the Astra not the Zafira which the Germans took.
Realistically PSA is only keeping it going to maintain brand loyalty of naive Vauxhall/Opel customers.When most of the range is PSA with a Vauxhall badge and certainly no replacement for the Zafira.Which I’ll probably replace with an old Rover V8 petrol Discovery on LPG ‘if’ only I can find one at a reasonable price because the things are holding their values better than much later diesels.
lancpudn:
I see more bad news from that neck o the woods! Vauxhall Ellesmere Port move to a four day week. liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/li … e-17880810
I think Ellesmere Ports days have been numbered for some years now, more so since PSA took over General Motors European operation and found themselves with too many cars plants in a shrinking market, they’ve already announced over 4000 job losses at Opel, 14% of the workforce with more to come.
On the flip side though, better news for the North East
autocar.co.uk/car-news/indu … ew-qashqai
And in the Midlands
autocar.co.uk/car-news/new- … ar-xj-2020
And although at a very different scale to either JLR or Nissan, but good news for this part of the UK, Lotus have opened their new factory to build the Evija and they been recruiting like mad over the last year, for both production workers and development engineers.
Land Rover & VW were amongst the car manufacturers paying hefty fines for missing emission targets in 2020 when it was introduced, Suzuki & Subaru were so far off the mark it cost them €1000/vehicle & €3230/vehicle respectively .
" Suzuki missed its target by 10.4 g/km, according to EU figures, translating to a fine of nearly €1,000 per vehicle. With 160,570 registrations counting toward the target, fines would be about €160 million euros.
Subaru missed its target by 34 grams, or a fine of €3,230 per vehicle. With 16,176 registrations, fines would be about €52 million.
Volkswagen, Land Rover, among those paying millions in fines for missing CO2 targets | Electrek
It’s not rocket science.Pass on the fine to the customer.Who, as sales prove, is happy to pay the premium along with the insurance cost and fuel consumption of a big 6 or 8 cylinder petrol JLR.
The bit where it gets interesting is where and when the government removes buyers’ freedom of choice to buy and maintain such cars.At that point the manufacturer comitts commercial suicide and the government loses all those fines and VAT and VED and fuel tax revenues.While the banks and car finance companies are left with a negative equity crash on cars financed at or almost 6 figure prices.