The tally of awards was shared almost equally between the two brands. Leading the charge for Land Rover was Discovery 4 with over 28 global awards this year bringing its total to 144 since launch in 2004. Commenting on the awards Land Rover’s Global Brand Director John Edwards said: “The Discovery 4 offers an exceptional breadth of capability. It is now one of the most highly-decorated vehicles ever and we are thrilled that it continues to receive such great recognition across the industry.”
Other Land Rover nameplates also had a tremendous year with the Range Rover being voted the ‘Car of the Decade’ by readers of autocar.co.uk, the Range Rover Sport voted ‘Best 4×4’ by Auto Bild (Germany) and the Freelander 2 was voted ‘Best Compact SUV’ at the Auto Express Car of the Year Awards.
Jaguar’s new XJ which went on sale earlier this year and got off to a flying start receiving more than 20 international honours including ‘Best Luxury Car’ from China’s Auto News, ‘Annual Limousine King’ from Quattroroute (Italy), ‘Luxury Car of the Year’ from Top Gear (UK), Automobile Magazine’s ‘2011 Design of the Year’ and ‘Best Executive Sedan’ at the Bloomberg Awards (US).
And it was not just production cars that caught the eye of the auto industry elite. The C-X75 concept car was named ‘car of the show’ at this year’s Paris Automobile Show.
Adrian Hallmark, Global Brand Director at Jaguar said: “Jaguar embarked on reinvigorating the brand in 2006 and we are delighted that our three all-new Jaguars have been so well received across the world in that time. We have been delighted with the tremendous response from the media to the new XJ, winning more than 20 international awards this year.”
The motoring press are not the only collective who have heaped praise on the company in 2010. JD Power Associates in the U.S. named Jaguar as the leader in customer satisfaction having achieved the highest score in their annual Sales Satisfaction Index (SSI) StudySM – The brand also ranked as the highest luxury brand.
This followed news from What Car? – Britain’s biggest car buying guide – that Jaguar was named as a leading manufacturer in its owner satisfaction survey. Not only did the XF scoop the title of best executive car on its JD Power debut (UK survey), but the XF finished second overall and helped Jaguar to its position as third out of 27 manufacturers – an improvement of 13 points from 2009.
These awards further underpin a successful year for Jaguar Land Rover with earnings for the second quarter of the financial year at £238 million (after tax) and annual sales to November up 20.7% collectively.
