You have to marvel at the meteoric rise in fortunes of Jaguar Land Rover. Since the Indian car maker Tata took control they have seen sales and market share grow substantially and with new models being continually launched to the market that success looks to be pretty sustainable.
Ironically the Freelander for example was seen by many of us in the business as a bit of a “nail” which would constantly breakdown and have issues which sometimes could seemingly never be rectified.
Despite this the loyalty of customers to the brand was astonishing. I clearly remember talking to a local builder who seemed to be in a different discovery every time I saw him. He explained that he seemed to spend more time in the service dept of his local Land Rover dealership than actually on the job. In fact he’d had to have 3 different models in as many years such were the problems he encountered.
The positive thing from his perspective however was the attitude of the staff who, clearly realising that they were likely to encounter many dissatisfied customers such was the terrible reliability of their product, made sure customer care became paramount.
The fact that despite all of the reliability issues customers kept going back for more was testament to the strength not only of the loyalty factor of the brand but the strong sense of customer service (which obviously didn’t extend to the manufacturing side)
Eventually someone clearly thought “imagine if we can harness the loyalty with cars which were actually reliable?” Result? The new breed of Land Rover and the launch of the Evoque which already has more than 5,000 advance orders and will have dealers rubbing their hands in glee at the growth opportunities.
The Evoque is a stunning looking car and even has a 3 door example which is sure to change the demographic of customer and aligned with a price that is certainly competitive the future looks bright for this sleeping giant.
We expect the Evoque to be a real challenger to BMW and Audi and it won’t be long before we see it bombing down country lanes and hopefully only visiting the aftersales centre for its annual service.
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