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Jaguar Land Rover and Chery investing in Chinese plant

While the European auto market for Jaguar and Land Rover is waning, Chinese car buyers can't get enough of the British marques. To meet that demand, Tata Motors, parent company of Jag and Land Rover, is partnering with Chinese automaker Chery Automobile Co.
The two announced plans to invest $1.75 billion to build a new plant and create a new, China-focused brand. 2014 is the target for completion of the factory. Jaguars and Land Rovers built at the facility will be the first ever produced outside the UK according to the Associated Press. The JV will be called Chery Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Company Ltd.
The announcement comes less than a month after JLR announced it would open a design studio in China. It's not clear from the reports whether the two announcements are part of the same JV or two separate plans.

The UK votes for Brexit and it will impact automakers

It's the first morning after the United Kingdom voted for what's become known as Brexit – that is, to leave the European Union and its tariff-free internal market. Now begins a two-year process in which the UK will have to negotiate with the rest of the EU trading bloc, which is its largest export market, about many things. One of them may be tariffs, and that could severely impact any automaker that builds cars in the UK. This doesn't just mean companies that you think of as British, like Mini and Jaguar. Both of those automakers are owned by foreign companies, incidentally. Mini and Rolls-Royce are owned by BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover by Tata Motors of India, and Bentley by the VW Group. Many other automakers produce cars in the UK for sale within that country and also export to the EU. Tariffs could damage the profits of each of these companies, and perhaps cause them to shift manufacturing out of the UK, significantly damaging the country's resurgent manufacturing industry. Autonews Europe dug up some interesting numbers on that last point. Nissan, the country's second-largest auto producer, builds 475k or so cars in the UK but the vast majority are sent abroad. Toyota built 190k cars last year in Britain, of which 75 percent went to the EU and just 10 percent were sold in the country. Investors are skittish at the news. The value of the pound sterling has plummeted by 8 percent as of this writing, at one point yesterday reaching levels not seen since 1985. Shares at Tata Motors, which counts Jaguar and Land Rover as bright jewels in its portfolio, were off by nearly 12 percent according to Autonews Europe. So what happens next? No one's terribly sure, although the feeling seems to be that the jilted EU will impost tariffs of up to 10 percent on UK exports. It's likely that the UK will reciprocate, and thus it'll be more expensive to buy a European-made car in the UK. Both situations will likely negatively affect the country, as both production of new cars and sales to UK consumers will both fall. Evercore Automotive Research figures the combined damage will be roughly $9b in lost profits to automakers, and an as-of-yet unquantified impact on auto production jobs. Perhaps the EU's leaders in Brussels will be in a better mood in two years, and the process won't devolve into a trade war. In the immediate wake of the Brexit vote, though, the mood is grim, the EU leadership is angry, and investors are spooked.

Jaguar F-Pace SVR to debut this week at New York Auto Show

It should come as no surprise that the folks back in England have been working on a hot new version of the Jaguar F-Pace. Today, just ahead of the 2018 New York International Auto Show, the British automaker confirmed that the Jaguar F-Pace SVR will debut this week. The new Jaguar I-Pace and Range Rover SV Coupe will make their North American debuts alongside the F-Pace. All we know about the F-Pace SVR is that it will be the fastest and most powerful version of Jaguar's best-selling product. We don't even have a teaser photo, as Jaguar Land Rover loves to play things close to the vest, so we're sharing some spy photos that we think might be the new model. Expect some version of JLR's 5.0-liter supercharged V8. We're hoping it's the 575 horsepower variant from the refreshed Range Rover Sport SVR. Expect 0-60 mph times in the low-4-second range and a top speed of at least 155 mph. The I-Pace and Range Rover SV Coupe both debuted earlier this month at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show. The I-Pace is an all-electric crossover with an estimated 240 miles of range. The SV Coupe is a limited-production two-door variant of the full-size Range Rover. It's meant to be a throwback to the original two-door Range Rover Classic. Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.