The British Are Coming – Maybe

According to Car & Driver, Jaguar Land Rover wants to colonize South Carolina, or at least a few hundred acres of it, for its first-ever U.S. factory.

While nothing has been confirmed, Jaguar Land Rover is making headway in other markets as it seeks to grow annual worldwide sales to 750,000 by 2020, an increase of 76 percent over last year’s record sales of 425,006. On Tuesday, the first Chinese-built Range Rover Evoque came off the line in Changshu, which aims to produce up to 130,000 Evoque and Land Rover Freelander models annually. Back home, Queen Elizabeth II is scheduled to open a new plant for the company’s Ingenium engines near Wolverhampton next week. These additions come atop JLR’s smaller assembly plants in India, Kenya, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Turkey. Brazil is slated for 2016. Saudi Arabia is another possible locale.

Jaguar Land Rover

The U.K.’s Sunday Times reports that the automaker has been “talking to several southern states, including South Carolina” about plans to open a facility that could churn out up to 200,000 cars per year. The Times said the Indian-owned British manufacturer also is considering sites in Mexico but “is thought to be leaning towards the southern states of the U.S.”

Staff