Sales at Jaguar Land Rover slumped in the final quarter of last year as US tariffs hit and production was slow to recover after a devastating cyber-attack.
Wholesale volumes – sales via dealerships – fell by 43.3% to 59,200 vehicles in the quarter to December, while retail sales were down 25.1% at 79,600 cars after the hack in late August.
The attack forced JLR to suspend production at its factories in the UK, Slovakia, Brazil and India through September and pushed it into a quarterly loss of almost £500m.
Production at Britain’s largest carmaker only returned to normal levels by mid‑November and it took time to distribute vehicles globally, the carmaker said. It also cited “incremental US tariffs impacting JLR’s US exports”, along with the planned wind-down of older models before the launch of the new Jaguar.
The much-hyped electric vehicle faced an online backlash over its teaser trailer that did not feature the car itself, prompting Elon Musk, the boss of the rival EV brand Tesla, to ask: “Do you sell cars?”
The JLR design boss, Gerry McGovern, insisted the car brand had shown “fearless creativity” but departed the business just four months after its new chief executive took charge. PB Balaji, previously the finance chief at JLR’s Indian owner, Tata Motors, was appointed as the UK carmaker’s chief executive in August.
JLR’s retail sales fell in all markets between October and December, including a 13.3% drop in the UK.
North America was down 37.7%, Europe fell by 26.9%, China was down 18.4%, Middle East and north Africa was down 18.7%, and the rest of the world dropped by 14.1%. Retail volumes for the financial year to date fell by 19.1% to 259,400.
Wholesale volumes fell most in North America, down 64.4%, while the UK slipped by 0.9% and the rest of Europe was 47.6% lower.
The Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and Defender models made up nearly three-quarters of sales, up from 70.3% a year earlier. Wholesale volumes for the financial year so far dropped by 26.6% to 212,600.
Shares in Tata Motors fell by as much as 4% on the news before recovering some ground to be down 2%.
The figures came as a rise in the popularity of Chinese brands pushed total car sales in the UK above the 2m mark last year for the first time since 2019.
Chinese companies accounted for 9.7% of the 2m new car registrations in the UK in 2025, or 196,000 vehicles, according to preliminary figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, a lobby group.
