In many minds, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is a premium maker to be considered alongside the leading German trio of Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, but right now that’s far from the reality. In terms of affordability, it’s in a different stratosphere.
The company said on a recent earnings call that its average transaction price globally was “over £70,000” in the last three months of 2022 as it focused its attention on the three models that it said made it the most profit on: the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and Land Rover Defender.
It’s difficult to find an average selling prices for premium brands, but Tesla declared it was around $47,000 for 2022. In 2020, Mercedes’ average selling price was €50,917, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation. That’s likely to be higher now as production constraints removed the need for discounting, but it won’t be anywhere near as high as JLR’s.
JLR has never been mass-market, but the company’s sales figures for the previous quarter laid bare just how focused it is right now on selling the big stuff. Its runaway best-seller for the quarter was the Defender at 23,816, while the Range Rover was second with wholesales (ie sales to dealers) of 16,682. JLR pointed out that it had booked more than 5000 orders of the SV version, with average pricing above £180,000. Third was the Range Rover Sport, with 11,318.
And what of its cheaper models? The Range Rover Evoque, traditionally JLR’s best-seller along with the related Land Rover Discovery Sport, dipped below 10,000 sales for only the second quarter in its history. The Land Rover Discovery Sport had its worst quarter since launch, with sales of just 6369. Range Rover Velar sales also tailed off to 5905, while those of Discovery continued to bump along the bottom, at just 1984.
Over at Jaguar, the F-Pace SUV remained its best-seller over the thee-month period, at 6230, while I-Pace sales have more than halved from the same period a year ago, at 1111. Sales of the Jaguar E-Pace have almost ground to a halt, with just 725 shifted in the quarter.