While other manufacturers in the Ford Premier Automotive Group (not to mince words, Jaguar) have struggled, Land Rover has experienced a record-breaking 2005, beating its previous high-water mark by 14% to notch up 185,120 sales worldwide.
In the UK, Land Rover has broken its own record every year for the last six, while sales in the US improved by an impressive 30%. The Chinese market for Land Rover products more than doubled in 2005, and there was a 67% upturn in the Russian market.
Land Rover means Range Rover too, of course, and the Range Rover Sport has proved to be a considerable success, with 30,356 examples sold in the six months since its introduction. This compares very favourably to the performance of the Discovery, of which 53,558 units were sold across the whole year.
Speaking of the global figure, Land Rover's Managing Director Matthew Taylor says that "this fantastic achievement is a reflection of a strong, new model line-up and is a reward for significant investment and hard work. We said 2005 would be the year of opportunity and the United States would be an increasingly important market for Land Rover. We set out to seize success and grabbed it with both hands. We now need to maintain that momentum."
