Ford has injected £1.2 billlion into its luxury car subsidiary Jaguar Cars in the past few days to cover continuing heavy losses and a write-down of investments.

The payment means the US carmaker has pumped well over £4 billion into Jaguar since it bought the company in 1989 for £1.6 billion.

The injection, in the form of a sale of preferred shares to its US parent, coincides with filings this week at Companies House showing Jaguar made a pre-tax loss of £429.3 million in 2004.

In the previous year it made a loss of £601.1m.