jim2RRs wrote:

That 4.0L Jeep inline 6 was the best engine they ever made.
My wife's has about 85,000 miles on it, and it's still clean enough to eat off of.

I'll tell you what is unique to the jeep cherokee, such a minor thing you don't even think about until you use it.

The screen washer jets.
The jets cover the complete screen with a fan type of spray with one short press of the washer button.
Not the usual 4 jets of water depending on the wipers to spread the water around.

I've owned lots of different cars from a bentley to a porsche, and none had washers as impressive as the jeeps.

The old single wiper Citroens had the worst washers ever. The washer jet was a pipe that run the length of the wiper. You didn't get a jet, you got a dribble. Absolutely hopless in winter.

With the jeep you didn't need heated front screen in deepest winter. Just quality screen wash with a -20 freezing point, one press of the washers, screen fully covered and two swishes of the wipers cleared any ice.

There is a great deal of needless knicker twisitng going on here.

UK LR manufacturing is NOT at risk. The factory in China is to satisfy demand in China - a potentially huge market and as others have pointed out it has massive import duties so if you want to participate you've got to built locally. In reality they should have done this several years ago but better late than never.

There are plans afoot for assembly facilities in India and Brazil as well, for similar reasons to the China plant (getting around import duties) and this will be entirely incremental demand for the brand, rather than cannibalising Solihull or Halewood.

Solihull and Halewood will continue to service the UK/Europe/US markets as before. And I suspect the premium products (big RR) will always be made in the UK and exported globally as the volumes wouldn't really make sense to build on seperate lines in other parts of the world.

The UK doom mongers should look at the investment that in going into the UK at LR and in the UK supply chain to keep pace with demand. £300m factory in Wolverhampton to build engines for one. Investment into press facilities and aluminium construction technologies for another.

The UK now builds more cars than it EVER has. (sure a lot is Toyota and Nissan but they chose to locate in UK and not France, for instance - ask yourself why)

This is a success story we can all be proud of.

Thankyou, RRG for the informative response - you're obviously in the know ?

As per my previous post on this subject - I believe it's all good news !

 Where do you go after one of these . . . ?

TugRR, as they say, "I have good sources". Part of my day job involves me knowing what's going on in UK manufacturing, including Auto OEMs and the Tier 1/Tier 2 suppliers. JLR and their associated supply chain is in very strong shape right now and I believe the suppliers will have a chance to follow JLR as they globalise, leading to further opportunities for these businesses.

Far from being the "final nail in the coffin" this is actually a once in a lifetime opportunity for JLR and some of their UK suppliers. They must grasp it wholeheartedly.

If you want even more good news: the (commercial) aerospace sector supplying everything from engines, wings, avionics, undercarriages etc is also in extremely strong shape. The whole world comes here for their motorsport engineering and production, from F1 down.

I could go on...

Tata Steel cutting 900 jobs in the UK... It's starting already

sorry for the intrusion, but if it happens to fiat as has happened here, nothing to worry about for the job ... it is logical that the production is moved to countries where labor is a bowl of rice (other than duty) but then you can get the products directly from the place of production .... then produce in china = delivery from China around the world

Thanks RRG, as TugRR said very informative. As you stated it's your job to know.
As with many people including myself we only get hyped up sound bites from the media and go off in the wrong direction.
I hope it all works out for the best. '88 RR Classic, '90 Classic, '93 Classic, '02 Discovery TD5, '55 Discovery 3, '01 P38 4.6, '06 L322 Vogue TD6, 2012 L322 Vogue TDV8, 2017 L405 Autobiography
Wife. '01 Freelander, '07 Freelander 2.