Thanks to a recently confirmed grant from the UK Government, Land Rover can now set its plans to build a new car based on its stylish LRX Concept in motion.
By Gareth Dean
The grant worth £27 million (about R378 million) will prove a much-needed shot in the arm for the British marque, which will make a final decision as to the commencement of this project at its Halewood plant (currently producing the Freelander 2 and Jaguar X-Type) later this year.
This grant has been offered as a separate package from the broader automotive support subsidy currently being formulated by the UK Government. The funding instead falls under the Government’s Grant for Business Investment scheme and will form an important contribution towards the overall £400 million cost of the project.
Should it be given the green light, the new car will be based on the company’s LRX Concept vehicle, first shown at the Detroit Show last year. The focus of this model will be efficiency, with the use of compact packaging and lightweight materials.
“We welcome the Government’s support for this project, which would form a key part of our future product plans and which we very much want to put into production,” said Phil Popham, Managing Director of Land Rover.
Although the project is still in a stage of relative infancy, Popham has made it clear that the new car will be a key addition to Range Rover’s line-up of luxury vehicles.
“Our engineering feasibility study has shown that we can very successfully deliver Range Rover levels of quality, drivability and breadth of performance in a more compact, more sustainable, package. Feedback from the most extensive customer research we have ever undertaken also fully supports our belief that a production version of the LRX Concept would further raise the desirability of our brand and absolutely meet all those expectations”, said Popham.
“It would be the smallest, lightest and most efficient Range Rover that we’ve ever built,”he continued. “The compact size, lighter weight and sustainability-focused technologies of the LRX Concept showed how Land Rover is planning to respond to the needs of a changing world.”
The new model would build upon Range Rover’s admirable levels of refinement and all-round capability, whilst introducing new powertrain options that will contribute towards the 20 percent decrease in CO2 emissions set out by Land Rover’s e-terrain technologies strategy.
