Tata Motors, the Indian owners of Jaguar Land Rover reported flat global wholesales for April yesterday but revealed growth in sales of its British brands.
Overall, global wholesales for Tata Motors Group remained stagnant compared to sales in April 2011. There were 87,377 wholesales in April 2012.
Sales of commercial vehicles for the group, including Tata, Tata Daewoo and Tata Hispano Carrocera models, were 8% down on April last year while overall passenger vehicle sales were up by just 7%.
The dominant success story within the Tata Motors range however, was clearly its Jaguar and Land Rover sales growth.
Joint sales of all JLR vehicles were up by 29% on April 2011 and individually Jaguar saw an increase of 17% while Land Rover reported 32% growth – meaning the sale of 21,540 Land Rover vehicles.
Although JLR has established a joint venture with Chinese automotive company Chery to service hot demand for its vehicles in the Chinese market, the vast majority of Jaguar and Land Rover models are manufactured in the UK at sites in Merseyside, Solihull and Birmingham.
JLR employs around 21,000 people across these three sites.