With sport-utility sales in the dumps, you’d think Land Rover, the unit of Ford Motor Co. that makes only SUVs, would be getting nervous.
"When you’ve only got SUVs and you get some of the reactions that you do, there’s obviously a concern in your mind," Matthew Taylor, the managing director of Land Rover, said during an interview Wednesday in Dearborn.
But Land Rover plans to address the changing market.
Taylor said the division is trying to bring diesel engines to the U.S. market as soon as possible in an effort to improve the fuel economy of the Land Rover lineup, and it’s also thinking about offering an SUV smaller than its mid-size Freelander.
And Land Rover is far from panic.
These are good, profitable times for the brand Ford purchased five years ago for just under $3 billion from BMW AG under the leadership of former CEO Jacques Nasser. In fact, Taylor maintains that Land Rover, which doesn’t publicly share its financial results, is one of the success stories in the auto industry, turning from losses to "significant profits."
Click here for the full article