Thierry Bolloré, Jaguar Land Rover CEO, made headlines a few months ago when he admitted that reliability and quality issues cost the company 100,000 in sales per year. After detailing the “Reimagine” transformation plan, Jaguar’s boss hits back saying that 2021 results are better but there is still more work that needs to be done.
Since he took charge in autumn 2020, Bolloré made it clear that Jaguar Land Rover needs a reboot. His top priority was to improve the British company’s disastrous scores on customer satisfaction, quality, and reliability surveys. In order to fix that, he created the new role of “Executive Director of company quality and customer satisfaction” appointing Nigel Blenkinsop as a member of the board.
Thierry Bolloré, Jaguar Land Rover CEO
Results of the new strategy are already evident, with warranty costs decreasing by 1/3 compared to last year. Bolloré believes that the problem should be treated early in the design phase, by integrating more technology, improving the processes, and ensure better quality components.
Speaking to Autocar, Thierry Bolloré said: “This is the first pillar of Reimagine, our transformation plan. Our results have been unacceptable, but we know how to fix them. It’s not science, just hard work. Already the 2021 results are better, but we have more to do.” showing that the road to recovery needs time.
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Besides making the wild cats more reliable, the new CEO also plans on repositioning Jaguar to the market as a luxury carmaker, with a base price of £100,000 ($140,000). This will make it more of a Bentley rival instead of competing with mainstream premium brands like Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz.
Jaguar’s future sounds brighter but in order to get there, Bolloré needs to source a new architecture to base the entire all-electric range of the near future. According to the latest reports, this will include two electric crossovers and a sporty two-door coupe. As for the current model range, this will be largely phased out with the electric I-Pace SUV being the only one to overlap.
