Jaguar Land Rover’s new boss could slash the car-maker’s product range — even ditching its forthcoming electric XJ saloon, according to The Sunday Times.

Former Renault chief executive Thierry Bolloré is believed to be mulling deep cuts to its line-up, with up to six current and planned models facing the axe.

Bolloré, who replaced Sir Ralf Speth last month, is grappling with an array of issues at Britain’s biggest car-maker, from the economic slump to a confused mix of similar models. He also inherited a range of poor-selling Jaguar saloons.

Sources said Bolloré had two to three months to make a decision on whether to continue with the electric XJ or pursue a fundamental shake-up of the Jaguar brand.

He is understood to have raised concerns about persistent losses at Jaguar, which have been subsidised with profits from Land Rover.

Jaguar’s flagship XJ was launched in 1968 and an armoured version is used by the prime minister. A new, battery-powered model had been due to roll off production lines at its Castle Bromwich factory in the West Midlands early next year, but that was delayed by the pandemic until next October.

Bolloré is understood to be considering halting the XJ, despite JLR and its suppliers having spent tens of millions of pounds on tooling for the new car. It has limited sales prospects, with Jaguar hoping to sell 38,000 a year. Bolloré, 57, is considering ditching two more models — a Range Rover and a Jaguar SUV — that were due to be built on the same platform, or skeleton.

Also at risk are its Jaguar XE and XF saloons, sales of which have disappointed, and its Discovery Sport SUV, with similar characteristics to a number of its other SUVs. That raises questions over JLR’s Castle Bromwich and Halewood plants.

Model cuts would be a significant diversion from Speth’s strategy. The Bavarian was hired by Tata to turn round Jaguar after the Indian conglomerate bought the car-maker from Ford for £1.1bn in 2008.

Speth steered it to record profits and sales, set a target of selling one million cars a year, and tried to take on the German giants. However, issues ranging from slumping sales in China to the US-China trade war sent it crashing to heavy losses and forced deep job cuts.

Bolloré is believed to be keen to move Jaguar more upmarket to take on Tesla. He is also understood to have raised concerns about the pace of electrification at JLR, and expressed surprise about the prospect of no all-electric Range Rover any time soon. JLR said it “does not comment on speculation from anonymous sources about our business”.

The Castle Bromwich debate

There’s no doubt JLR is in reverse. Sales were diving before the pandemic, from a peak of 614,000 two years ago to 426,000 in the last calendar year, with commensurate financial woes. A minnow in the car industry, where giants such as VW Group and Toyota sell 10m cars annually and scale is key to absorbing huge costs, JLR is falling short of the 1m sales aspiration Speth set in the early 2000s. Bolloré has options, and some potential moves are obvious.

JLR has facilities to produce many more cars than it currently does, raising questions over further cutbacks, on top of thousands of staff shed by his predecessor.

The company’s Castle Bromwich plant – home to Jaguar’s saloons since the Seventies – is now largely idle, with demand for its cars low. Staff have been transferred to the Solihull plant, which produces more popular and profitable Range Rovers and Jaguar F-Pace SUVs as it battles staff shortages caused by Covid outbreaks. Plans to build an electric version of the flagship XJ saloon at Castle Bromwich and make the plant a centre for electrification have been delayed by the pandemic and poor sales.

One source with knowledge of JLR’s strategy argues delaying the electric XJ has thrown up problems, as it was the first of three cars intended to share the same platform. “The question is whether the electric XJ is delayed or shelved,” they say. “The electric strategy depended on making all three to stack up.”

Currently, the company’s only all-electric car is the Jaguar I-Pace, making up a quarter of all Jaguar sales, and made by contract manufacturer Magna Steyr in Austria. Ending the Castle Bromwich debate by shutting it and consolidating Jaguar production – less than a quarter of the group’s total sales – would be a bold statement from Bolloré.

Farewell to the saloon?

Perhaps an even more extreme move would be killing off Jaguar’s saloons altogether. “How can you go up against BMW’s ultimate driving machine and win?” asks one insider. “Speth backed them and is linked to them, Bolloré is not.”

Production could be put into other plants; potentially the Chinese joint venture that already produces some of JLR’s range, the company’s giant new plant in low-cost Slovakia, or even Magna, which makes Jaguar’s E-Pace small SUV. But this would be a painful move that would send shock waves through the West Midlands.

Unions are unlikely to accept it. “We could close down the business quicker than management could,” says one veteran workers’ representative.

Still, Jaguar’s saloons might not have a future in an electrified world, according to Jim Holder, editorial director at Autocar and What Car?. “Electric kills low-slung saloons,” he says. “Big batteries need high-riding cars – SUVs – to fit them underneath. JLR’s path to redemption may be SUVs, but then there’s the problem of the company eating its own lunch.”

“Big batteries need high-riding cars – SUVs – to fit them underneath. JLR’s path to redemption may be SUVs, but then there’s the problem of the company eating its own lunch.”