The decline of Jaguar’s fortunes reached a new milestone this year after sales of the brand were overtaken by those of Alfa Romeo across Europe, new figures show.
The crossover point in both brands’ fortunes came at the end of July, when Alfa’s growing rebirth saw it overtake Jaguar with 16,145 units for the year, up 2%, against 15,449 for Jaguar, down a whopping 41%, the figures from Jato Dynamics show.
The switch in fortunes indicates a period of change for both premium brands, with Alfa Romeo benefiting from long-awaited investment and coherent brand strategy from new owners Stellantis after years of neglect.
That neglect left Alfa bumping along the bottom of the sales chart in Europe for years, which makes the new figures both heartening for Alfa fans to see the needle move, and heart-breaking for Jaguar aficionados, who have to watch the hard work by owners Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) to expand its range come undone. Now they’ll have to wait for the brand’s next rebirth to kick in from 2025.
The Italian marque's boost has partly come from the new Alfa Romeo Tonale compact SUV (pictured below) – a rival to the Jaguar E-Pace – which launched in June. The mid-year arrival for the car meant the larger Alfa Romeo Stelvio SUV was still Alfa’s biggest seller for the year across Europe with sales of 10,161, a small 6% increase on the year before, putting it ahead of the Alfa Romeo Giulia saloon.
The ignominy for Jaguar is heaped on further by the fact that it offers double the number of models Alfa does at six (compared with three). Jaguar's best-seller remains the British-built Jaguar F-Pace, down 38% at 5760 units across Europe. Among its models, only the second-placed Jaguar I-Pace electric SUV was able to stop the rot, with sales of 4193 matching those of the same period last year.
Jaguar’s problem is partly one of allocation of two commodities in short supply in JLR right now: parts and resources. JLR stopped production of the Jaguar XE and Jaguar XF for good at its Castle Bromwich factory, French analyst company Inovev said earlier this year. JLR denied this, saying production would return once supplies were back up to speed but certainly the figures speak of a factory just barely ticking over. Jaguar sold only 448 examples of the XE while the XF recorded just 382 sales across the seven months in Europe, according to the Jato numbers.
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