JLR to avoid German battle

The global sales director of booming Jaguar Land Rover has declared the brand has no ambition to take on the big three German luxury brands in an outright battle for volume.

Speaking during a media roundtable at the Paris motor show, Andy Goss played down prospects of mixing it up with Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, even as the two Indian-owned British brands enjoy record sales on the back of an unprecedented product roll-out.

The Indian-owned British-based JLR combine sold in excess of 500,000 vehicles for the first time ever in its 2015-16 financial year, which ended March 31.

In the calendar year global sales are up a further 24 per cent year-on-year, with Jaguar climbing an extraordinary 72 per cent and Land Rover 14 per cent.

"We are not as big as German three OEMs and we are not going to be as big as the German three OEMs," Goss declared.

"That is just not our plan ... We are not having an internal conversation that we have got to be as big as X and our owners are not having that conversation with us either.

"What we have got to do is be massively credible, protect those two brands and get a strong business.

"That's the be-all and end-all."

Goss also made it clear that JLR would not embroil itself in a product tit for tat with the German luxury brands, who are always trying to one-up each other and wage a constant battle for bragging rights.

"The three Germans look at each other all the time and our customers probably see us as a little bit of an antidote to them," he said. "There are certain things we do that they don't do and there are certain things they do that we don't do.

"We aren't going to succeed by being me-too German."

Goss shied away from announcing specific sales and targets timings for JLR, something the German brands have been happy to do.

For instance, Audi was very public in its determination to crack one million sales, which it achieved in 2008. It hit 1.8 million sales in 2015

BMW delivered more than 1.9 million vehicles to customers and is shooting for 2 million in 2016.

Mercedes-Benz is also looking to top 2 million sales in 2016 and take the lead of the luxury segment.

"There is not some big mantra in the company that we have to do one million by X," Goss said. "We will do one million when we do one million; that will be some time in the future.

"We will not be a one-million-sales car company for the sake of it," he said. "We have got two brands and we have got to protect those two brands and do it the right way.

"They are two premium brands and we have to sell them in a premium way through a network that behaves in that particular way as well."

However, Goss made it clear that policy did not preclude JLR moving into the lower end of the market as the German big three have, boosting their volume but also risking damage to their brand image.

In fact, Goss argued JLR was already making the move into more affordable segments with models such as the Jaguar XE (pictured), Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover Discovery Sport.

"Will we go below where are? Possibly, but not yet," Goss said.

"There is a clearly a move into more volume but lower margin segments, but what we have to do is balance the need to keep below the CO2 glidepath and keep the two brands in place.

"So if a business case worked and it didn't dilute the brand and we could afford it, of course we would look at it. And we are looking at all those things all the time."