Jaguar F-Pace SUV won’t cannibalise Land Rover sales

The medium luxury SUV segment is expected to hit 1.4 million global sales per annum by 2020, up from around 700,000 in 2015. Jaguar expects that at least 90 per cent of buyers for its new SUV will be new to the brand, and one in three will be female buyers.

Speaking with CarAdvice at the launch of the new Jaguar F-Pace in Montenegro this week, Jaguar’s global director of public relations, Richard Agnew, said the market is large enough now for both brands to be successful with their respective SUVs.

“We don’t see it as an issue,” Agnew told CarAdvice when asked if the F-Pace will cannibalise sales from Land Rover or Range Rover models.

“If you look at the SUV market, it has taken over the car market in most big developed markets. If you look at how many different ways the car market is sliced and diced, and you apply that to the SUV market… and it’s such a different kind of car and it’s a different price point, as well, depending on where you are.”

In Australia, the Land Rover Discovery Sport is capturing more than 15 per cent of the luxury medium SUV segment, while the Evoque is sitting closer to 10. Together, they make Land Rover the best-selling brand in the segment, over rivals Mercedes-Benz and BMW.

With the F-Pace entering the same segment, it would seem logical that some of that 90 per cent conquest in sales to Jaguar would come from Land Rover, but not according to Agnew.

“There is a market for people that want Land Rovers and there is market for people that want Jaguars. The Evoque has all the all-terrain capability you expect a Land Rover to have, the F-Pace is designed to be road-focused and more performance-biased, and it hasn’t got much of the all-terrain features the Evoque has got.

“Even If you take the SUVs market down to the mid-market premium SUVs, there is going to be 1.4m buyers. If you look at the numbers and see what success looks like for us, there’s still plenty of customers out there for both brands to be hugely successful," Agnew said.

In regards to pre-orders and initial expressions of interest, the Jaguar F-Pace has already become the best selling Jaguar of all time. And, given its expected success, it will likely be the first of at least two SUVs from the Jaguar brand in the near future.

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