Land Rover Freelanders will be assembled in India from 2011, Autocar India has learned.
Autocar’s sister publication understands that the Freelander will be assembled as a Complete Knocked Down (CKD) model in Tata Motor’s Pune plant.
See official pics of the new Land Rover Freelander
The move has been promoted by increasing popularity for Jaguar Land Rover models and SUVs in India, plus local assembly should help bring the Freelander’s list price down by around a third, which is just as well as the SUV is seen as expensive in India.
In Mumbai, where it is sold at an even greater premium, the list price could fall by as much as 40 per cent.
Read the full story on the new Land Rover Freelander
In its first year of sales in India last year, Land Rover sold 225 units; local assembly will allow Land Rover to be much more competitive in the booming SUV segment.
Audi’s SUV models in particular are gaining in popularity, and local assembly of the Audi Q5 recently started in India to cash in on its popularity.
JLR is also looking at locally assembling models in China for the Far East market.
See all the latest Land Rover Freelander reviews, news and video
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Re: Freelander set for India assembly
As usual, people don't read the article. These are being assembled there as kits, like Ikea flatpack furniture. Production of it stays here, they will only be assembling what they sell for import duty reasons. Not that moving full production there isn't a possibility, but it hasn't happened yet. Even though they're just starting with the Freelander, I wouldn't be surprised to see the other cars in the range to follow suit, after all 30-40% reduction on price is nothing to be sneered at.
Re: Freelander set for India assembly
Like China, India is very protectionist and has massive import tarriffs and local production gets round this, but only as part of a Joint Venture ... all very against the spirit of free trade, but hey it is working for them ... they export to us ... take all our money and then enslave us by lending it back, very clever. But back to the point, if JLR / Tata want to sell lots of Freelanders in India, they have to be made there. However no doubt the Indians will do a better job of making them than those guys in Solihull (is it any wonder there is barely any car making left in the Midlands when they STILL can't make cars properly) and all production will be moved to India. Land Rover and Range Rover products are still some of the most unreliable cars on the road depsite their massive price and this has to change. Perhaps the slighty odd reporting (ignoring the reason they actually have to make the cars in India to sell them at competitve prices due to the import tarriffs) is intentional from the JLR management to get their shoddy workers to buck their ideas up and finally learn how to glue the cars together properly without leaving old kit kats behind the dash and fixing wiring using chewing gum. Now they just need to work on the local suppliers providing shoddy plug in modules and the like. Strange how the guys who work for Jaguar just down the road can do it yet the Land Rover lot can't?
Re: Freelander set for India assembly
Exactly. There's lot of xenophobic nonsense floating around this. Fact is, JLR want to make more cars, more efficiently, and tap into the big growth markets. In India the only way to do this is build locally to avoid huge import duties.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see the 'old' Freelander being built in India, for India.
PS Bentley don't build at the VW Dresden (Phaeton) plant anymore. It was used for about a year to help extend capacity. Interestingly though they only built cars destined for European customers I believe. Any cars destined for UK / US were built in Crewe, in case of any problems with customers' perception of "britishness"