JLR boss's public apology as 5,000 owners' cars are off road awaiting parts

Adrian Mardell, chief executive of Jaguar Land Rover, has said "we do need to apologise" after a parts logistics crisis has left almost 5,000 of its customers' cars still stuck at JLR dealerships awaiting repairs.

JLR has downsized its UK parts supply network from 18 warehouses to one 'super-centre', the Mercia Park complex in Leicestershire, operated by its logistics partner Unipart Logistics.

But since the "transition" started at the beginning of Q4 there has been a crisis in supplies of parts for Jaguar and Land Rover dealerships and authorised repairers, leading to cars being parked up awaiting parts and the JLR network ran out of loan cars for affected customers.

This crisis comes just months after JLR announced plans for its Jaguar, Defender, Range Rover and Discovery nameplates to become a 'House of Brands', with Jaguar and Range Rover delivering the highest standards of buying and ownership experience befitting consumers of luxury goods.

JLR says the situation is improving, but it is unlikely to be fully resolved until early 2024. There is still a backlog of parts orders.

"It was a planned transition but the transition is taking longer than we would originally have planned," Mardell told journalists at JLR's financial update, "and, just to be clear, that’s something that nobody wished for, and that’s something that, as an organisation with our partner we’re working with here, we obviously have responsibility for the change.”

The delays are something “we do need to apologise for", he said.

“To be very, very clear, this is something we are really unhappy about," he said.

The situation is being tackled at the highest level of JLR and Unipart Logistics and Mardell said he is in regular communication with Unipart, because “this is right at the top of the escalation for resolving what we need to do here".