Ford’s upmarket brands - Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin – have suffered a combined loss of more than £200m, dragging the US carmaker’s European operations into a deficit.

Yesterday Ford revealed second quarter losses for its Premier Automotive Group, which consists of the three UK marques plus Volvo, totalling $362m (£196.3m), compared to a profit of $166m (£90m) in the same period last year.

Ford blamed PAG’s poor performance on the weakness of the dollar and the cost of introducing new models. Land Rover is about to launch a new version of the Discovery, called the LR3 in the US, while Jaguar has introduced a diesel version of the S-type for the global market.

The only part of PAG that made a profit was Volvo.