Luxury car marque Jaguar is expected to announce the closure of its factory at Brown's Lane in Coventry as part of a restructuring plan to be announced on Friday, according to reports.

The Financial Times said unions and local MPs for the factory, which employs 2,000 people, are discussing an action plan to fight any closure.

The car maker is owned by Ford and last month Jaguar said it would cut production by about 15,000 cars, or 11%, for the rest of the year in response to weak sales in its key market of the United States.

At the time a Jaguar spokesman said: "We consider this a prudent move to enable us to balance out our stocks, particularly in the United States, where we have been affected by the exchange rate and a competitive luxury car market."

At that point Jaguar had said there would be no job losses at its three UK plants and had said the production cuts would be achieved by closing the factories on Fridays. It blamed the fall in the dollar for making imports into the US more expensive.

Jaguar sells half its annual production of about 135,000 cars to the US but sales are down about 7% this year and were down a quarter in July alone.