High hopes for Halewood’s Discovery Sport

JAGUAR Land Rover (JLR) is anticipating high demand for its new Discovery Sport which was officially launched on Friday.

The first vehicle rolled off the production line through dry ice at Halewood in Merseyside, the factory responsible for the Evoque, a runaway success for JLR which has sold 300,000 in three years.

The new model replaces the Freelander, also made at Halewood, and is a seven seater, set to compete against the Audi Q5 and the Volvo XC60.

The Evoque is expected to continue to dominate production at Halewood which now employs 4,750 people, but operations director Richard Else said he expected demand to be “very high” for the new Discovery.

He said: “This has been four years in the making, so our adventure at Halewood starts today. I’m really proud of the team who have achieved so much already. We’ve created another 250 jobs this year just purely because of the Discovery Sport and 1,000 in the supply chain due to £3bn of new contracts we’ve created.

“The Discovery should go on sale in the early part of next year so we’ll be ramping up production in the next few weeks. Orders are already rolling in and the interest from our customer base is high. The Discovery family is going to grow. The brand has been very successful over the past 20 years and this is the first car in the new Discovery family.”

He added: “The demand for the Discovery will be very high. We don’t always quote numbers but we anticipate, because of the nature of the car with five-plus-two seating and its premium nature, that demand will be very high.”

The first car will be handed over to Land Rover’s partner Virgin Galactic and shipped to its “spaceport” in New Mexico. Prices for the Sport start at £32,400.

The conventional Discovery will continue to be manufactured at JLR’s plant in Solihull.

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