Are JLR's engineers too ambitious for the company's own good?

Jaguar is not short of ambition when it comes to the engineering of its upcoming electric GT. This doesn't seem to be unusual for JLR. Every time I go on a deep-dive technical exploration of one of its models, there will be something that none of its engineers, or perhaps anyone else's, have tried before. This time it's the new 1000bhp tri-motor Jaguar Electric Architecture, including some extraordinarily strong castings and a front strut brace that doubles as an electrical junction box (patented with propulsion engineer James Matthews' name on it). I think last time for me it was the 6D Dynamics suspension system in the Range Rover Sport SV, aiming to give that car the ability to pull 1.1g of lateral grip even on all-season tyres. And the I-Pace wasn't just a radical Jaguar, it was a radical car. Partly JLR's technical ambition comes because the LR side of the business asks its cars to do so much. In its mix of on-road performance, off-road prowess and towing ability, the Range Rover Sport SV has probably the broadest remit (arguably Bentley Bentayga aside) of any production car on sale. Demands like this need extreme engineering answers, and JLR isn't shy when it comes to looking for them. If the right level of kit doesn't exist to get a job done, it invents something new. And it likes to do these things itself. This extends, I believe, beyond vehicle engineering. There's a lot to admire about a company where the prevailing attitude is to roll up one's sleeves and see what needs to be made to get the job done. Because when it works, it really works. I've spoken to several industry engineers and designers who were in little doubt that Jaguar's original XF and subsequent XE were among the most capable cars in their classes in period. And I'm sure that how good a JLR product is when you first get in it, feel it and drive it is at the root of its appeal. But in the case of the XE in particular, it also made it an expensive car to produce and then to make money from compared with similarly sized cars around it. Then there's the issue of scale. JLR is not, by volume, an automotive giant, making somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 cars per year. And its modest size (relatively: with 33,000 workers, it's the UK's biggest automotive employer) means that when it invests, it's investing – or being brave – in larger terms relative to a company or group that makes 10 or 20 times the number a year JLR does. In essence, more of its cars have more of its new tech, which brings with it more risk. Early JLR diesel Ingenium engines have premature timing-chain stretch issues. If this was one engine type out of a dozen, it would go less noticed. As it is, a big proportion of JLR cars at the time were fitted with them. Not that scale alone averts problems with cars, as anyone who has had issues with a wet-belt Ford or PSA engine will know. And as someone who owns a 21-year-old, 243,000-mile Land Rover, I can attest that there is a difference between reliability and durability. As our colleagues at What Car? have found in their Reliability Survey, JLR "has had issues with reliability in the past and has sat at the bottom of the brand reliability chart in previous years". "However," they add, "in the latest survey [March 2025], it gained an overall score of 87.1%, which puts it in 27th place out of 31 brands." Also, "the latest models, such as the Defender, are proving impressively robust". This ambition, though, is I think the quandary of JLR. It's a relatively modest company without the extraordinary resources of a massive global empire, yet it has tremendous engineering ambitions and largely meets them. That is one of the primary reasons people are drawn to its cars time and again: because of the way they drive, how capable they are and the way they make you feel. But there's also a reason people buy Toyotas. In the long term, what level of ambition would give JLR the best chance of success?

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Are JLR's engineers too ambitious for the company's own good?

Forget the 1000bhp coming out of the new Jag: it’s the advanced tech that I find the most interesting

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Are JLR's engineers too ambitious for the company's own good?

Forget the 1000bhp coming out of the new Jag: it’s the advanced tech that I find the most interesting

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Latest car reviews

Top manufacturers

Quick search

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Legal bits

About Autocar