There’s no two ways about it, if this morning's news is true, this is a bleak day in the history of Jaguar Land Rover, with its wounds now set to be torn asunder for all to pick over.

First, some context: Jaguar Land Rover is not alone in facing a crisis, although the fact is the UK’s biggest car maker may add some shock for homegrown readers. In the coming days, weeks and months we anticipate other giants of the industry, including the mighty GM and Ford, to formally reveal plans of their own, on a far greater scale, in the face of their own challenges.

However, there’s no escaping the fact that, for Jaguar especially - given Land Rover's greater sales, standing and profitability - the cuts are a bitter blow, albeit the result of a strategy based on unfulfilled ambition that now looks to have relied too much on a virtuous circle of sales success, undone by circumstance and falling short.

Valid excuses aren’t hard to pick out - you don’t win by being cautious - but the cruel reality is that the likes of Volvo have risen, phoenix-like from near-doom, in the same market sector and with similar raw materials at their disposal, while upstart brands such as Tesla have leap-frogged the pecking order by being more ambitious still.

As you’ll read elsewhere, Jaguar’s model portfolio is on the ropes, in some cases potentially awaiting a hammer blow.

In sales terms the saloon portfolio is a disaster zone: the Jaguar XE is a relative flop, the Jaguar XF struggling and the Jaguar XJ barely has a pulse. No matter that each is a very fine car, comparable (and more) in our road testers’ eyes with the best; sales are sales.

The Jaguar F-Type sports car is as beautiful a car as there is on the road - and in those terms it serves its role as a halo model - but its sales figures cannot justify the investment.

Meanwhile, the Jaguar E-Pace and Jaguar F-Pace SUVs provide some cheer, but what’s apparent from the drop in sales of the latter is that many buyers are simply opting now to purchase the former. Cannibalising your own customers (not to say those of the Land Rover Discovery Sport) cannot make great business sense, especially if they are buying the smaller, cheaper model.

But while strong demand for the low volume and low profit Jaguar I-Pace offers scant relief, it does perhaps offer a hint at the future, as scooped by Autocar last year.

Analysts believe that a plan to reinvent Jaguar as an electric-only pioneer is well-advanced but not yet signed off. No doubt minds are very focused on that today. There are no guarantees, especially in the current climate: it’ll take brave souls to call whether it will be catastrophic or transformative to its fortunes.