Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), a part of the Tata Motors Group is reportedly planning an affordable compact luxury SUV which will be built in India.
As on date, majority of cars sold by JLR India are sold via completely knocked down (CKD) route, which are assembled at the company plant in Pune. Though taxes levied on CKD units is not high as that of CBU units, they are still considerably high as compared to a locally produced car.
Jaguar Land Rover is planning on making their first ever made in India SUV. This will not only help them reduce the entry level price tag of their line-up, it will also support Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make in India campaign.
As per a report from Economic Times, JLR India will establish a new manufacturing plant for this new compact SUV. Internally, the project is known as ‘mini-Defender project’ and is codenamed L860 as on date. From the name, it seems that JLR is planning on using (now discontinued) Defender’s platform to build the new SUV.
This is not the first time Jaguar Land Rover have initiated talks about launching a made-in-India car. Back in 2008, when the takeover took place, there were talks about the same, but nothing materialized as at that time the vendor fraternity was not matured enough. Things are different now and latest checks reveal that vendors are quite matured.
A source close to the development of this new SUV reveals that a team of engineers has already started collecting samples, quotations from vendors in India. If all goes well, the company aims at producing 50,000 units of this new SUV in India every year (for domestic as well as export markets).
Note – Images above are of Land Rover Defender DC100 Concept, used for representation purpose.
via Economic Times
