LANDROVER MONTHLY 33The Enthusiast
GARY PUSEYMANY LRMreaders havejoined the
chorus of condemnation follow-
ing JLR’s formal announcement
that theNew Defender is to be
built alongside the Discovery at
the company’s factory atNitra in
Slovakia, although thiswas not
totally unexpected news. I haveto
say that I also think it is a shame
that theNew Defender will not be built atSolihull.It feels like
the end of an era somehow.
It’s easy to see why JLR made the decision, though. On the
one hand, I’m sure it’s important to them to havea plant in the
EU, although since theywereplanning it long before the
referendum they can’t blame it on Brexit. But thereal reason is,
of course, to do with money. The European Commission
produces a league table of hourly labour costs and a quick look
at this shows that in Slovakia theaverage is around 11.6 Euro,
while in the UK it is more than double
that at 27.4 Euro. Sothere are big savings
to be had, although that doesn’t explain
how Germany and France are both able to
build carsvery successfully on their home
turf when their hourlyrates are 34.6 and
35.8 respectively.
It’s alsoworth knowing that when JLR
completed their assessmentregarding the
location of their new factory they ended
up with two alternatives: onewas in
Slovakia, and the otherwas inMexico.
The clincherwas the offer of a 125m Euro
grantbythe Slovakian government,
which the EU Competition Commissioner
decidedwas an acceptable piece of
state-aided and taxpayer-funded support given that itwould
lead to the creation of up to 3000 jobs in Slovakia thatwould
otherwise havebeen lost toMexico.
I doubt that building the Discovery and theNew Defender
in Slovakia means the final purchase price to the buyer will
be cheaper as aresult of the lower employment costs, though.
It just means that the profit margin for the company will
be higher.
The Slovakian plant is not JLR’s first offshore factory, of
course, because it already has its Chinese jointventure and its
plant in Brazil, both of which build theEvoque and the
Discovery Sport, its facility in India that builds theEvoque,
Velar and the Discovery Sport, and a contract withMagna to
buildvehicles inAustria, although at the moment this is
restricted toJaguar models only.
Some commentators havesuggested that JLR now has too
much manufacturing capacity across theworld given the
massive slump in newvehicle sales that it hasexperiencedover
the past 18 months, and it has been suggested that thisover-capacity could contribute toeven more of its productrange
being builtoverseas.Naturally enough, the company takesevery
opportunity tostress its commitment to the UK and itsrecent
opening of a new electric drive facility atHamsHall, aswell as
promises of further investment at Castle Bromwich andSolihull,
seem toreinforce this.
But it seems that it will be the top-of-the-range models with
complex electric propulsion that will be built here, and it
wouldn’t surprise me if there is an increase in offshore
manufacturingover time with the UK becoming more ofa
worldwide headquarters and engineering and design centre for
the company.Such is globalisation.
Despite our emotional discomfort with theNew Defender
being built in Slovakiarather thanSolihull, I guessweall need
to focus on the importance of JLR’s financialrecovery, which
I’m sure is directly connected to the success of theNew
Defender. I hope it is a success, and I am looking forward to
driving it in due course.Myconcernremains that it will be too
dependent onvast amounts of on-board
electrickery and I don’t really care how
accomplished it is, both on-road and
off-road, if it turns into a large
paperweight when the gremlinsstrike.
Modernvehicles are fine when they’re
new or a fewyears old. I havequite a few
friends whoregularly shell out the
readies on brand-new LandRovers, but
they movethem on before thewarranty
expires.If I ever fulfil my desire torepeat
my 1993 traverse ofIceland I’ll happily
do it in a new, or new-ish, modern Land
Rover. But Iwouldn’t do it in my
eight-year old L322 RangeRover unlessI
had a support crew following me ina
Unimog truck with half a ton of electrickery spares in the back!
Come to think of it, if Iweredoing it again I’d take something
I’d be confident of fixing if anythingwent wrong, like my 1990
RangeRover or my 1997 ‘Real Defender.’
Now there’s a thought – I don’t really like calling theNew
Defender the‘New Defender’ and I don’t know whether JLR is
going to call it that or something else, like Defender II.Sohow
about ‘Real Defender’ for thevehicles built from the
introduction of the name in 1990 right through to the end of
production in 2016? Whatever JLR decides to call the new
vehicle, I’m going to call my 1997 300Tdi aReal Defender.
Meanwhile, Iwonder what JLR is going to do with the ‘Home
of the Legend’ visitor centre atSolihull?Is now the time to
makeyour advance booking for the‘Nitra:Home of the Legend’
factory tour? There are plenty of cheap flights to Bratislava.“DespiteourdiscomfortwiththenewDe fenderbeingbuiltinSlovakia,we needtofocusonJLR’s fi nancialrecovery”■Gary Pusey is co-author of RangeRover The First Fifty, trustee
of The Dunsfold Collection and a lifelong LandRover enthusiast.
What this man doesn’t know, isn’t worth knowing!Rule Britannia! Er, not quite...