Jaguar Land Rover now has a backlog of 205,000 cars

Jaguar Land Rover has announced it now has a backlog of 205,000 cars that have been ordered but yet to be manufactured.

The premium British brand said that this was a new record, with the order bank growing by 5,000 cars from June 2022, as of September 30.

Impressively, 145,000 of these orders are for just three models – the new-generation Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and Defender.

The news comes as Jaguar Land Rover announces its performance for the second quarter of the 2023 financial year (July, August and September 2022), with the overall group manufacturing 88,121 units during the period. Some 70,781 of these were for Land Rover, which saw sales grow by 3.6 per cent year-on year, while Jaguar’s units increased by 9.9 per cent to 17,340.

Sales grew the most in China and North America (up by 38 and 27 per cent respectively), but fell 10 per cent in Europe, and seven per cent in the UK alone.

Jaguar Land Rover says its sales growth was ‘lower than planned, primarily due to a lower than expected supply of specialised chips’. Similar to other manufacturers, the firm says it prioritised ‘production to the highest margin products’, with the firm ramping up manufacturing of the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport – its two most expensive models.

It added that it hoped ‘new agreements with semiconductor suppliers are expected to enable sales improvements in the second half of the fiscal year’.