With Land Rover having done so well over 2012 and 2013, being voted as Luxury car of the year 2013 by What Car? And unveiling their new direction for model production the future is looking bright.
With the increase of emerging markets buying luxury vehicles, Land Rover are to open a manufacturing plant in Brazil after an agreement was signed with the State of Rio De Janeiro. There will be an investment of £240 million into the new plant that will produce 24,000 vehicles a year, with the first set of the vehicles to roll off the plant by 2016. Land Rover will be the first British manufacturer to open in Brazil, which will also support the significant growth in Brazil and the rest of the Americas. The plant will create 400 jobs within the first year.
Research and development of the in-car infotainment systems in Land Rovers will now be developed in collaboration with Intel and the vehicle brand will also open a research and development centre in Oregon, USA which is the first dedicated software research and development facility for Land Rover. This new partnership will accelerate the creation of in-car technologies for future Land Rover models.
This new facility opening in 2014 will employ 30 infotainment specialists including 16 highly skilled software engineers, complementing the infotainment team based at Land Rover’s Gaydon facility. The Oregon facility will include a variety of multimedia suites, innovation spaces, development laboratories and a vehicle workshop.
Land Rover Design boss Gerry McGovern revealed Land Rover’s three design pillars giving insight into the future for the brand at the 2013 LA Motor Show.Luxury, Leisure and Dual Purpose are the three pillars that will take the brand through 2015.
The Luxury pillar, which is considered to be Range Rover, will mean that now all luxury SUVs will wear the Range Rover logo. This pillar has been substantially worked on over the past 24 months with release of all three new models bearing the Range Rover brand. The Leisure pillar which includes the Discovery and the new Freelander replacement, which will also take the Discovery name. The Dual-purpose pillar is that of the Defender which will be replaced in 2015, which we have been seeing for a while now with shots of the DC100 concept.
There will also be another two models entering the range, one will sit between the Evoque and the Range Rover Sport and the second is said to be smaller than the Evoque.
SCDW 