The biggest automotive plant to be built in Britain in more than 20 years opened yesterday with a promise to employ 1,400 workers building up to 400,000 Jaguar Land Rover engines a year.
Jaguar Land Rover unveiled its £500 million engine plant outside Wolverhampton with the pledge that it will start production next January.
The new engines will go straight into the new baby Jag, which is due to go into production in Solihull, also in the West Midlands, early next year. The smaller family car, a Jaguar to rival the BMW 3 Series, is due to be launched that summer.
The Wolverhampton plant will produce the group’s first own-built engines since the turn of the century and will ensure that all Jaguars, Land Rovers and Range Rovers carry British-built engines.
At present the group imports its four-cylinder engines from a Peugeot-Citroën and Ford plant in France. Bigger V6 and V8 engines for the more powerful Jaguar F-Types and XKs and Range Rovers are already made for the group by Ford at its plants in Dagenham and Bridgend.
The Wolverhampton engines are expected to be the cleanest and most fuel-efficient in the group’s gas-guzzling history, producing market-leading emissions of less than 100g/km — helping the group to comply with more stringent carbon pollution rules that are coming in next year.
The engines will go into the Range Rover Evoque and the Land Rover Freelander when they are upgraded from mid-2015. The Evoque alone would account for more than 100,000 engines a year.
According to Nigel Blenkinsop, Jaguar Land Rover’s engine operations director, eventually the plant will produce even more fuel-efficient, smaller three-cylinder engines and plug-in hybrids. “We see the internal combustion engine playing a major role well into the 2020s,” he said.
The group believes that 90 per cent of the plant’s 1,400 workers will come from outside the company. The 160 staff already working at the plant include former Ford, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce managers, assembly line workers from West Midland manufacturing and engineering companies, graduates from Loughborough and Bristol universities and apprentices from local colleges.
On a site the size of 14 football pitches, the company is planning two shifts, working five days a week, producing an engine every 36 seconds.
The Prime Minister, visiting the site for the first time, praised the company’s investment, which has received £10 million of taxpayer support through the Regional Growth Fund.
“What Jaguar Land Rover is doing here strongly epitomises what needs to be done,” David Cameron said. “There has been too much growth in services, there has been too much growth in the South and not enough in export. With 85 per cent of production going overseas, everything that is being done here is what we want. This shows Britain has an amazing high-tech, advanced manufacturing future.”
Mike Wright, Jaguar Land Rover’s executive director, said: “This is a huge strategic stepping stone for us and consolidates our business in the UK. With 2,000 people having worked on the construction phase, this is a truly great investment in this part of the world.” 2008 MY Supercharged
Rimini Red / Jet
four zone climate
remote park heater
and no ugly kid windows.
magnus satis quod turpis satis

Yes but what are "ugly kid widows" ?

^Factory window tints , you have to actively delete them if you have RSE . 2008 MY Supercharged
Rimini Red / Jet
four zone climate
remote park heater
and no ugly kid windows.
magnus satis quod turpis satis

Windows not Widows me think an edit needed!

Expression:
Ugly Kid Widow

Definition:
Woman, widowed by her husband who was driven to suicide after the birth of a third child in a row that proved too ugly to look at or take out into public .
Experience is the only genuine knowledge, but as time passes, I have forgotten more than I can remember
Volvo V70 P2 2006 2.4 Petrol 170bhp Estate SE
MG Midget Mk1 1962

Previous: L322 Range Rover TDV8 3.6 2008; L322 Range Rover TD6 3.0 2002; P38A Range Rover V8 1999

Two years that's been up . 2008 MY Supercharged
Rimini Red / Jet
four zone climate
remote park heater
and no ugly kid windows.
magnus satis quod turpis satis