One of the oldest and most prestigious Manufacturers in the UK, Jaguar Land Rover have had their fair share of dramas over the years.
Once synonymous with quality, reliability and innovation, they now struggle with poor quality build issues, an over-worked and under-resourced dealer network and a skills shortage that can often mean no senior technician available in a dealership.
The past few years have seen their woes escalate with a growing number of vehicle failures and customers struggling to get a resolution. You only have to click onto the Financial Ombudsman decisions to see that the same issues arise again and again.
Diesel Particulate Filters (“DPF’s”), fitted to cars to make their emissions more ‘green’ are normally trouble free, but JLR didn’t pay enough attention at the design stage and put the unit too far away from the hot exhaust manifold, with the end result being cars whose DPF will fail again and again!
JLR used to cover these under warranty until it just got too costly, they were overwhelmed, and so they simply took the decision to blame the customer “driving style”.
Some quite ridiculous statements later and thousands of consumers were left on the thick end of £2000 bills every time it happened, sometimes as often as once a month!
They also have issues with reliability of their large V6 diesel powerplants, with a crankshaft vulnerability leaving owners with a potential bill of £15-20,000. A design flaw, the crank shells get starved of oil and wear out quickly, leaving the engine ruined. We recently obtained pictures of a crankshaft that had suffered this fate, and you can see how brutal the damage can be.
JLR are staying tight lipped over their defects despite their internal memos often being leaked, laying out the vulnerabilities and their knowledge of them for all to see. It seems it is cheaper to alienate their loyal customers and trash their once-great reputation by ignoring their responsibilities and simply blame the owners again and again.
