I have a cunning plan...

WITH Brexit looming, surely what JLR should be trying to do as a matter of some considerable urgency, is to locate a new factory in the UK which would have the capability of building not only the new Defender but also the Discovery, for the UK market version only, leaving the Slovakian factory to build for the rest of the world?

Ironically, after many years of struggling to be able to order enough Discovery models, especially the commercial models, in the Republic of Ireland, the distributor over there now has the ability to order as many as they like because of the move to Slovakia, and the fact that they can also now order in Euros which makes the overall consumer price of the Irish version of the Discovery 5 Commercial quite a bit cheaper than the UK version!

I also think that somehow JLR really do need to reduce the prices of the entire Land Rover range by £10,000 across the board in order to make them competitive. I accept that they are more luxurious than the competition in general, but at the same time I would like to see a Defender and a Discovery that the average person, farmer, business owner can actually afford.

It would also raise sales back up to where they once were in the UK. We don’t see as many Discovery 5s around in this country as we ever did of the previous models because of the overpricing.

If the new Defender is going to cost at least £40,000 then we won’t be seeing as many of them on the roads here either. It needs to start at £25,000 if they are hoping to sell in large numbers in the UK.

Colin Gregory

Via email