The British car industry is ruled by Johnny foreigner, now’t wrung wit’ that like. But for how long? Land Rover is the remnant of a once-powerful and thriving British car industry. It is a Red Giant among a galaxy of automotive stars. But is bloated Jaguar Land Rover nearing its end? Regrettably not yet. The British car industry is kind-of thriving, for now, but one brand continues to struggle… Land Rover forever struggles. Jaguar too but we feel it’s Land Rover day today.

Land Rover seems to hop from one calamity to another, it experiences highs and massive lows. The products look good but are horrendously unreliable. They have been manufacturing vehicles for over 70 years and they still haven’t figured it out. When they returned to profit in 2019 it was on the back of 4 years of consecutive losses. The profits were miserly, just £156 million. That’s a pre-tax profit.

Those sorts of returns are not sustainable for the long term, not enough to re-invest for the future. So Land Rover has to take out loans which puts future profits at risk unless the company doubles annual sales. And they only made that £156 million because they cut costs. Land Rover continues to stumble then falls, then stands upright before repeating the stumble and fall.

Land Rover blamed a drop in demand from its key market, China. So to did the majority of the pliable motoring press. Conveniently forgotten is that Land Rover exported not only the iconic brand into China but also their iconic lack of reliability. Chinese Land Rover owners were so outraged they protested… in state-controlled China were any for of protest is brutally suppressed. That’s how bad Land Rover messed up in China.

However, their UK PR department had the biggest fall.

It always takes one individual to bring down the reputation of the majority but the Land Rover UK PR department is perhaps the worst we have encountered. In many ways, it’s similar to that neo-nazi Chelsea Football Club supporter being an uncomfortable minority who has become representative of the entire club and community. In all fairness the Land Rover UK PR department is in no way a neo-nazi hive and never will be, it’s just good old fashioned bigoted bullying.

The Land Rover UK PR press people are supposed to be ambassadors. But they failed to do that and failed to get the message out. Instead, they back slapped and enabled a bigoted bully, for what purpose we will never know. They were not horrified by this individual’s behavior and what it revealed but they were out-raged by our response to that behavior.

It seems personality is a valued commodity at Land Rover. Being a Land Rover ambassador is just a 9-5 job with a guaranteed pension pot at the end of the horizon. 

All these factors and much more are why Land Rover is/was the worst car brand of the last decade.