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The new Land Rover is due to be built in Wales. This is what it will mean for British manufacturing

The prospect of another upper-middle manufacturer in the UK deserves to be hugely welcomed

Hamish McRae
Wednesday 18 September 2019 00:22 BST
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The return of a classic 4X4
The return of a classic 4X4

Billionaire Sir James Ratcliffe is expected to announce in the next few days that his Land Rover successor, the Grenadier, will be built in Bridgend, Wales. Jaguar Land Rover has gone upmarket and built a softer and more expensive version of what became the Defender, which was launched last week at the Frankfurt Motor Show. He saw an opportunity for a simple four-wheel-drive workhorse that would hark back to the original Land Rover ideal. It will have a separate chassis, BMW petrol and diesel engines, and will reach the market in 2021.

There are several stories embedded here.

One is that it still makes sense to manufacture in the UK. Jim Ratcliffe is not choosing Wales for charity. He will doubtless get a good deal from the Welsh government, for Bridgend needs an uplift after Ford announced that it would shut its engine plant there. But it must make reasonable financial sense or he would go elsewhere. It won’t be a huge plant, for the aim seems to be to sell about 25,000 vehicles a year. But that may be a sweet spot: big enough to establish a global brand but not so large as to risk a financial disaster.

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