Jaguar dealer network expansion plans

Jaguar cars are currently sold through a network of 23 dealers around the country, but the prestige importer is on a mission to increase that number to 40 by December of next year.

Bringing Land Rover dealers on board is central to that strategy, which would provide Jaguar with much heavier street frontage exposure and retail availability in Australia – particularly in regional areas where Jaguar's profile has been practically invisible.

The plan was announced by JLR Australia MD, Matthew Wiesner, during the launch of the new XE earlier this week.

"Currently we've got about 23 dealers today that are Jaguar dealers," he said. "We've obviously got a lot more Land Rover dealers out there.

"But obviously, for us to make sure we have a much stronger share of Jaguar volume going through the dealer network we actually need to increase the reach of Jaguar to the market. Otherwise we're still going to be just so urban-centric...

"With cars like F-PACE coming... we become far more relevant from a regional perspective, as we head out to the end of the decade.

"By the end of '16 we want to make sure we've got about 40 of our JLR dealers as Jaguar dealers.

"There will be a few very remote locations that won't be Jaguar dealers, but generally speaking the majority of the network will become Jaguar/Land Rover dealers as of now."

Wiesner anticipates this expanded network to be mostly in place by the time the F-PACE SUV arrives around the middle of next year. This would put JLR and its dealers on a more or less equal footing with German prestige brands that sell both passenger cars and SUVs through their respective dealer networks.

It's arguably a quick fix that could have been implemented years earlier, but it also appears to have been an idea that had to await a product that would bridge the gap between Jaguar and Land Rover as two distinct brands. That product is the F-PACE.

In conversation with motoring.com.au subsequently, Wiesner advised that Jaguar was appointing three new metro dealers between now and the end of the first quarter next year. He also admitted it wasn't necessarily all plain sailing, getting the Land Rover dealers on board with selling the Jaguar brand.

"Initially, when I announced it back in March... I said: 'Right, we will have a Jaguar/Land Rover dealer network by the time we launch F-PACE'. To be fair to them, F-PACE brought... another degree of relevance and opportunity.

"So by the time we get to that point, we're not going to be Land Rover AND Jaguar dealers; we will be Jaguar Land Rover – that's it.

"You hear a bit of gasping and 'shock, horror'...

"There's a number of regional Land Rover dealers who are BMW dealers. Quite frankly... in most of those markets we outsell a lot of these German brands just with Land Rover.

"They [the Land Rover dealers] now understand the role of XE, they now understand better where we're going with Jaguar, what its role is. And the fact that we're developing a base for what they have today is incremental opportunity on top. The important thing is [if] that there are people who want to drive passenger cars, then we need to be in a position to offer them – whether it's in Dubbo, Sydney, Melbourne, Cairns... whatever it might be – and support them at the same time.

"Once they got their heads around that, no problem. In fact, now it's gone full circle, where we have a number of the regional dealers who are going: 'Right, in fact we need to get going now, because we want to be in the position to be ready when F-PACE arrives'.

"It's amazing how these things turn quite quickly."