Is ditching the superdeluxe Range Rover a bad thing?

IT has been a week of ups and downs for Jaguar Land Rover as the Coventry car maker continues to navigate a path through some very challenging times.

First came news that the plug was being pulled on a superdeluxe Range Rover - the SV Coupe that was due to be made in Coventry.

That was followed by the announcement that another superfast Range Rover - the Velar SV Autobiography Dynamic Edition - would be made in the city instead.

Things would have seemed to have been levelling out there but then came news of quarterly losses for the tail end of 2018 totalling £273m.

Those losses were most definitely expected and come on the back of losses of £90m for the third quarter of 2018.

Some analysts might have expected those losses to be even greater and, had it not been for sales increasing in North America and the UK, they might have been.

Speculation will continue as regards Jaguar Land Rover’s ups and downs going forward but what of those Coventry specific events and the Range Rover switcharound.

It might seem smallscale compared to the company’s constantly changing fortunes but arguably they say something crucial about the car maker and where it is heading.

Should we be worried that the Range Rover SV Coupe is not going ahead?

In short the answer is ‘not really.’

This was a vehicle that could perhaps be dubbed a vanity project and was dreamt-up at a time when Jaguar Land Rover could afford to be more indulgent.

Announced a year ago it was devised as part of celebrations to mark Land Rover’s 70th anniversary.

What better way to celebrate than to deliver a Range Rover that harked back to the original model with two doors.

It was also going to aim to be part of a very select group of the ultimate SUVs.

With a price tag of £240,000 - before optional extras were added - it would be on a par with the Rolls Royce Cullinan.

What should have been a year of celebration for the Land Rover marque instead started to turn into what might be compared to the Queen’s famed ‘annus horribilis.’

Much of that was not the fault of the car make but global headwinds.

The bottom started to fall out of the Chinese car market, demand for diesel cars plummeted and uncertainty over Brexit caused some serious jitters.

The upshot was that sales started to slow and a trend of continued record-breaking profit figures was reversed.

Perhaps this prompted a re-focus from Jaguar Land Rover - away from the grand schemes that could be branded as indulgence to more real world ambitions.

The replacement for the Range Rover SV Coupe, though it’s not quite as simple as that in logistics terms, is the Range Rover Velar SV Autobiography Dynamic Edition.

It’s a good example of where Jaguar Land Rover is going though as both will be built at its Special Vehicle Operations division in Coventry and they are very different cars.

While the Velar SV is far from being a car for the common man, at the end of the day it makes a lot more sense than something like the SV Coupe.

It will cost around a third of the price of the two-door Range Rover and is likely to be in demand by buyers with deep enough pockets who want an SUV that can go very fast indeed.

Looking at both projects dispassionately and analytically, this is the sort of vehicle Jaguar Land Rover needs to be thinking about if it wants to get back on its feet and capitalise when the Chinese market recovers and those of other emerging economies follow in its wake. So, is the demise of the Range Rover SV Coupe a bad thing?

The answer is most definitely no.