Save the Cat: British automaker in distress
British company Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has unveiled a revived Freelander crossover, created in collaboration with Chinese Chery. Moreover, engineers from China play a leading role in this project. JLR is currently experiencing serious difficulties. Izvestia found out whether she would be able to preserve her identity with Chinese help.
The black stripe
The Freelander is an iconic model for Jaguar Land Rover. Introduced in 1997, it was a bold experiment for an off—road brand - small in size, a load-bearing body and a fully independent suspension. Meanwhile, for several years it has been the most popular four-wheel drive car in Europe and has sold more than 500,000 vehicles. The second generation of the crossover was produced until 2015.
The revival of the Freelander name coincided with the plight of the British company. Due to the production shutdown in August 2025 caused by hacking, Jaguar Land Rover was losing about 50 million pounds ($66.5 million) per week. The cumulative damage to the UK economy due to this incident cost $2.5 billion and affected more than 5,000 different organizations in the country. The slow recovery of production after the cyberattack, US duties and the relaunch of the Jaguar brand led to a 43% drop in JLR sales in the fourth quarter of last year and losses of $421 million.
The company's problems did not end there. On March 26, 2026, Jaguar Land Rover was forced to suspend production of some models in Solihull due to problems with the supply of components. The break, as promised, will last less than two weeks.
The future of the related Jaguar brand is hazy: on December 19, 2025, with the release of the last Jaguar F-Pace with a 575-horsepower V8 engine in Solihull, the era of cars with internal combustion engines ended. The brand decided to focus on luxury electric vehicles, which are less mass-produced, but are able to make a profit due to the high price. However, the rebranding started at the end of 2024 under the slogan Copy Nothing ("Copy Nothing") turned into a failure. A commercial with "gender-neutral" models, a new logo with squiggles, and the Type 00 concept itself, which not only looked strange, but was also painted pink and blue, were criticized.
The amount of claims was expressed by US President Donald Trump in Truth Social, who called the incident a "complete disaster."
"The CEO has just resigned in disgrace, and the company is in complete chaos. Who would want to buy a Jaguar after watching this shameful advertisement?" — wrote Donald Trump.
JLR CEO Adrian Mardell actually left his post, and then chief designer Jerry McGovern was rumored to be fired one day, despite previous achievements. Instead of Mardell, the company was headed by Patamadai Balaji, a native of India's Tata Motors, which owns JLR.
For the sake of the luxury electric Jaguar, new versions of the XF, F-Pace and F-Type were sent under the knife, but JLR is now forced to postpone the launch of the model, as its development took more time. In addition, the company was surprised by the low demand for expensive electric vehicles.
As a way out of the deplorable situation for JLR, they are considering a deal with Chery, under which the latter can start manufacturing its cars in the UK. This will save jobs and bring additional profits to the British manufacturer after the disastrous year 2025.
Freelander in Chinese
Chery is a long—time partner of Jaguar Land Rover, the joint venture involves not only the production of cars for the Chinese market, but also technical cooperation. So, British engineers helped bring to mind the T1X platform, on which Tiggo crossovers, as well as Omoda and Jaecoo brand models, were built. Now, a new Freelander will be built on a well-known cart, according to the Autocar publication.
Richard Molyneux, JLR's chief financial officer, told Automotive News that Chery engineers play a major role in the development of the Freelander. The battery was supplied by CATL, and Huawei was assigned to configure the intelligent all-wheel drive system, which also worked on the on-board electronics. The car is being created for the Chinese market and should match local tastes as much as possible — an electric power plant, large displays on the front panel.
The Freelander should transform from a model into a whole family of electric vehicles and hybrids. Moreover, the Chinese will pay for the use of the name. In the next four years, six new models are promised under the Freelander brand.
Eastern Partner
Jaguar Land Rover is far from the first among famous automakers to turn to the Chinese for help.
Mercedes has transferred the production of smart city cars to a Chinese joint venture with Geely and plans to use the Chinese platform for its compact models. BMW partnered with Great Wall to create a separate line of Mini electric models, while VW created a special AUDI sub-brand for the Chinese market. The British MG brand was preserved thanks to the Chinese, the Russian brands Moskvich and Volga are being revived with the participation of "eastern partners".
Swedish Volvo was able to successfully overcome the black line with the support of Geely. However, the excessive fascination with electric vehicles played a cruel joke with the company and led to serious losses.
— Geely took over the Volvo platform, some units, and gave the Swedes money to keep them working. It's a different story with Chery and Land Rover — a car that looks like a Freelander is created on the crossover platform, but it's unlikely that it will be possible to make large suspension moves and outstanding cross-country ability. It's just another crossover, of which there are many. Brutal crossovers are on trend right now. People want their car to at least seem capable of something. Here we can recall the story when the Chery SUV could not enter the stairs that the Range Rover was entering. The question is whether new buyers are willing to pay for off—road capabilities," said Maxim Kadakov, editor-in-chief of Za Rulem.
"They always miss"
The main advantages of Jaguar Land Rover have always been, firstly, historical authenticity, and secondly, the creation of cars based on the principle of professional tools, Egor Vasiliev, an auto expert, racer and former chief instructor of the Jaguar Land Rover Experience school, told Izvestia.
— Then there was a whole series of acquisitions and resales, a lot of money came into the brand and at the same time a rather consumer attitude towards the results of its activities. I also had experience communicating with factory employees, including in a private setting. They complained a lot about the completely changed priorities in the development of the company, moving away from a painstaking attitude to engineering, a painstaking attitude to quality in the direction of "more", more beautiful. But people still choose a modern car not so much by brand as by price. And, of course, in principle, Land Rover has created a fairly stable history for itself, due to the fact that these cars are both expensive and break down. And the most important thing is that they could not correct this story," said Egor Vasiliev.
He added that traditional buyers and connoisseurs of off-road qualities began to refocus on Toyota, which still offered "old-school" solutions combined with modern technologies. Then came the era of the Chinese automotive industry, which was able to offer consumers cars that meet the high standards of what off-road driving is, but are significantly cheaper. And, most importantly, using much more modern and advanced information technologies.
— The English car industry has given all its technologies to the Chinese, including design elements, but has not acquired anything in return. That is, he just sold out. As a result, we now have a large number of clones, cars that look very similar to these English models and have similar properties. — said Egor Vialyov.
The peculiarity of Land Rover was also that the company could never get into the current demand with its models and solutions, the expert notes.
— They always miss a little bit either forward or backward. And now it turns out that they are trying to launch models in a market that is oversaturated with analogues, and analogues in terms of technology. The world is shaking, and the transition to new technologies, unfortunately, now looks rather doubtful," Vasiliev believes.
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