Joe Eberhardt, president and CEO of Jaguar Land Rover North America, has a long career in the auto industry, with stops at Chrysler, DaimlerChrysler, and Mercedes-Benz along the way. We spoke to Eberhardt recently on the occasion of the 2021 Jaguar F-Type’s debut.
The Defender 110 is planned to go on sale this spring, followed by the 90. What will its impact be?
Obviously, it helps sales volumes. It brings to the front the totality of the Land Rover brand strategy with three families or subbrands, which is Discovery, Range Rover, and now Defender.
We have waited a long time for the Defender in the U.S.
The rest of the world waited a few years, but there has been a 23-year void for us in the U.S. It allows us to really communicate the purpose of each subbrand. They are all unified by design and engineering excellence, but they are differentiated. Range Rover stands for ultimate luxury and refinement. Discovery stands for versatility and functionality. Defender is the ultimate in terms of durability and capability. They share some core brand DNA, but then they accentuate certain elements. In the past it was difficult to get that across because of that missing third leg of the stool. Hopefully when customers look at the entire lineup now, it is clearer what the intent of the overall brand strategy is.
Defender helps define Discovery?
Exactly. People say the Discovery doesn’t look like an LR4. True, but that was on purpose because we knew Defender was comin,g and if the Discovery was too rugged, too off-road oriented, it would have clashed with the family.
Will the Defender be a high-volume vehicle?
I fully expect the Defender to be up with our best-selling vehicles. The Land Rover Range Rover Sport sells about 24,000 units a year. And overall interest in Defender gets people in the showroom. It focuses attention on the brand. My hope is every other product benefits from it.
What is the Land Rover flagship?
The icon is Defender, and the flagship is the Range Rover.
Will you keep adding SUVs for Jaguar and cut back on cars?
A lot of our competitors have said they will walk away from sedans. We have no intention to do that. The fact that we just launched a refreshed F-Type is proof that we still believe in sports cars, especially the Jaguar brand. While the volume might not be what it once was, we still think it’s the heart and soul of our company. Walking away from that is definitely not going to happen. Sedans will have a future with the Jaguar brand. The question is what those sedans will look like and how many will there be. Those are all things we will study over the next couple of years. For instance, the next-generation XJ will be fully electric, so it’s a different interpretation of a sedan, but it’s a sedan.
Will XJ also get a gas engine? The XJ is fully electric, but other models will have a combination of engines. We have said every new Jaguar and Land Rover will have a form of electric powertrain: could be a mild hybrid, plug-in hybrid, or full battery electric.
Manual transmissions are gone for the 2020 model year?
Manuals are gone. We tried.
Are there gaps in your lineup you’d like to fill?
There always are, but we have to be realistic as a company of our size and scale. We cannot do everything, which is a helpful process because it drives you to focus on segments that ultimately will have the biggest, most immediate and direct return. There’s still enough room to grow for us that we don’t have to further proliferate our lineup.
Do you need to go smaller in size?
We don’t need to go further down from where we are today. And no room to go bigger.
Are you a mainstream automaker?
I see us as a mainstream luxury brand that is more focused. We’re not everything-for-everybody luxury. There are segments we’re not pursuing even though it might have incremental volume. We’ll never attempt to match the larger luxury brands on volume. We’re comfortable where we’re at. Our compound growth rate in North America is well north of 15 percent over the last 10 years. We see the next two or three years more as a consolidation period. We’ll be happy if we stay flat year over year for the next two, three years.
The post JLR President Joe Eberhardt on Land Rover Defender, Next Jaguar XJ appeared first on MotorTrend.
from MotorTrend https://www.motortrend.com/news/jlr-eberhardt-interview/
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