Jaguar Land Rover says key models in short supply, some have six-month wait lists

Fri, 08 Aug 2014

Care for a bit more proof that the Jaguar Land Rover portfolio of vehicles is the best it's ever been? Well, the Indian-owned pair of brands saw a record year in 2013, while 2014 has seen a 14-percent increase in sales. The crazy thing is, though, is that figure could be even higher, provided the company had the production capacity.

JLR is running a six-month waiting list on two of its most popular models, the Range Rover Sport (above) and Range Rover. According to Mark White, the company's chief technologist for body engineering, the blame can be placed on the paint shop at the company's Solihull factory, in the UK.

"We will probably max out the paint shop before we max out the body shop. Putting the second body shop in has given us the flexibility to ebb and flow the different models that go through there and meet the capacity demands we've got," White told Automotive News. "However, you always hit a bottleneck somewhere. And the paint shop is probably going to be the next biggest obstacle."

The problem, meanwhile, doesn't have an easy solution, particularly as the company prepares to kick off production of the Jaguar XE.

White told AN that the new, smaller sedan "will only add to the problem," before adding that, "It's a nice problem to have, making more cars than you can actually get through the paint shop."

By Brandon Turkus