Reference Auto

With an eye to creating jitters in the luxury car market dominated by BMW and Mercedes along with Audi, Tata Motors plans to assemble the Jaguar XF 2.2 litre diesel saloon from its British brand Jaguar Land Rover or JLR and dent India’s luxury car market.

The locally-assembled car will be economically priced around Rs 44.5 lakh, which is the ex-showroom and pre-octroi rate.

With India being a price-sensitive market (the price issue sometimes even affects sale of luxury car brands), Jaguar XF 2.2-litre diesel will be the cheapest Jaguar car in India (and with a big brand name).

The Jaguar diesel comes in 2.2 litre i4 turbodiesel or 3.0 litre V6 turbodiesel engines. These engines help spur fuel efficiency and aid in controlling emission.

The new Jaguar car offers 187 bhp and a commendable 45.8 kgm torque and this helps make it a very powerful car. The XF can go from 0 to 100 km in just nine seconds.

The XF is the second car the luxury brand would be assembling locally, after the Freelander 2. JLR now sells the Jaguar XF 3-litre diesel for about Rs 51 lakh, and currently, it completely imports it.

The Jaguar XF with the 2.2 litre diesel engine will have a slew of safety and other features.

These are a rear view camera, a hi-tech navigation system, TV tuner, touchscreen, gear-shifting paddles, electric sun roof, full-sized spare wheel and the engine will come with an eight speed automatic transmission.

Its super efficient engine will see gearshifts done in a mind blowing 200 milliseconds. Also, lightweight and compact components have been used to improve overall efficiency.

A top JLR official said, “The XF is one of our highest selling cars already in India and that’s why we planned another variant. It was doing very well with the 3-litre diesel engine. So, we thought of giving customers a wider choice. This will attract more customers and scale up availability.”

The new XF will vie with the BMW 5 series cars along with Audi A6 2-litre diesel category. “The car is unique from other luxury brands as it will have a slew of features not present in any other car,” the official added.

JLR sold 2,393 cars last year, which is a growth of 32 per cent over the previous year.

The luxury car market grew 30 per cent during the previous calendar year. Although Audi’s market shot up by over 50 per cent, BMW and Mercedes sales remained flat owing to an overall slowdown in the automobile sector.

JLR now has 17 outlets in 15 cities and is looking at scaling it up to 20 by this year.

So, with the presence of the Jaguar XF diesel in a big way, Tata Motors is all set to dent the luxury car market in India by pricing the iconic British brand’s car in an astute manner.