Land Rover Austria

Land Rover Austria

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100SRV

Original Poster:

2,126 posts

241 months

Friday 3rd July 2015
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Surprised that this hasn't had a mention on PH or in here:
http://expeditionportal.com/the-new-land-rover-def...

David87

6,648 posts

211 months

Friday 3rd July 2015
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It's interesting that this news broke yesterday, as in the afternoon I was booked on a 'Heritage' factory tour of the Defender production at Solihull. Two things were abundantly clear from my (fantastic) visit:

1. The Defender in its current form is a difficult and time-consuming sod to build, requiring many skilled workers, who effectively make the car almost entirely by hand. Land Rover don't make much money on each vehicle, but the biggest problem are the volumes involved. Since December last year they've been building over 100 cars per day as demand has increased due to the production coming to an end, but they only have one shift of folk who know how to do it all. Whilst the rest of the vehicles made at Solihull (Discovery, Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and Jaguar XE) are produced 24/7, the Defender shift only work 4.5 days per week, from 7am until 3.30pm. This leaves them with a bit of a problem - to increase production any more than what they're doing now would require a whole other shift of folk who know how to build it!

2. It's rammed. The Defenders are just a small sideline in the scheme of things - Land Rover are raking in huge pots of cash from selling Range Rovers all over the world. The amount of finished cars to be dispatched is quite incredible to see (they're making 1,300 cars per day in total), and with the site sitting in a dip, there's really anywhere else left to expand into. Most of the staff have to park at Birmingham Airport and are bussed in and out by JLR as there's no room for them to park their cars within the factory complex!

I believe the plant at Halewood is also pretty much at capacity, although I'm not sure about Castle Bromwich. Thus, it's clear that massively more production capacity somewhere is needed ASAP, although it does make me sad to think of it anywhere but the UK. What wasn't clear from the Solihull tour was what was going to happen to the space where the Defender is currently made once it goes out of production - and there is a lot of it! The current Discovery is also approaching the end of its life, so that too should free up some capacity for other stuff to be built. I believe the Jaguar F-Pace is due to be made alongside the XE at Solihull, so that just leaves the new generation of Discovery and Defender and any completely new model lines without a confirmed build location. For me, they still have to be made in the UK, but maybe the cars built elsewhere will just be for markets that are geographically closer to where manufacturing takes place?

Cfnteabag

1,195 posts

195 months

Friday 3rd July 2015
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Hopefully they don't build anything like the pinzguaer then as they are a bloody pig to drive and work on!