Castle Bromwich to finish production of Jaguar's saloons, estate and sports car in a matter of weeks.
04 Mar 2024 | 5140 Views | By Felix Page, Autocar
Jaguar will end production of the XE, XF and F-Type in a matter of weeks, as its Castle Bromwich factory in Birmingham prepares to transition to production of body panels for a whole new line of vehicles.
The retirement of Jaguar's two saloons and its flagship sports car ...
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Jaguar will end production of the XE, XF and F-Type in a matter of weeks, as its Castle Bromwich factory in Birmingham prepares to transition to production of body panels for a whole new line of vehicles.
The retirement of Jaguar's two saloons and its flagship sports car means the brand's line-up will become SUV-only, with just the I-Pace, E-Pace and F-Pace remaining on sale through 2024.
Jaguar's new era begins in 2025 with the introduction of a 600bhp electric four-seat GT car in the vein of the Porsche Taycan, which is thought to be followed a year later by a Bentley Bentayga-style luxury SUV and then a large luxury saloon. All will share the firm's new – and bespoke – JEA platform, and are entirely unrelated to its current models.
Customers can still order a new XE or XF, but the models are being built to set specifications in their final few weeks of production, and as such are not available to configure.
The news was broken to Road & Track magazine (via Automotive News Europe) by Jaguar's North American CEO Joe Eberhardt, who said: "The majority of our products cease production in June, but they will be on sale for a much longer time.
"We will have a production schedule that enables us to have a continuous supply of vehicles until the new cars come. We're trying to time it so we have enough volume to take us through to the launch of the new product and have a clean handover."
JLR has confirmed to Autocar that Castle Bromwich will stop building cars in June, but it remains unclear how long it expects supply of the Brit-built cars to continue.
The Birmingham site – originally used to build Spitfires and Lancaster bombers in World War II – was taken over by Jaguar Cars in 1977 and has historically produced the XK, XJ and S-Type.
It was originally planned to build the electric XJ, but that project was scrapped in 2021, and Jaguar will now build its upcoming EVs elsewhere, beginning next year with the GT some 15 miles away in Solihull.
Last year, in its eighth year on sale, the BMW 3 Series-rivalling XE sold 9935 units worldwide, compared with the larger XF's 10,918 - both significant increases on the year before, as testament to JLR's ability to increase production of its more affordable models as the supply crisis eased.
They were only outsold by the Solihull-built F-Pace SUV, which claimed nearly 16,000 sales.
The F-Type, which is more than a decade old, still recorded 2678 sales worldwide last year.