TurningCircle
7 October 2026updated 09:24

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JLR's Quarter of Recovery: Wholesales Up as the UK Comes Back

JLR's Q2 wholesales jumped to 82,400 as the cyber-attack recovery flowed through, with UK volumes up 70%. China dragged, and Jaguar is nearly silent.

By The TurningCircle Team 4 min read

JLR's recovery quarter has landed. The company reported 82,400 wholesales for the three months to 30 September, up from 66,165 in the same quarter a year ago, an increase of roughly a quarter, as the flow-through from last year's cyber-attack finally reached the volume line. The release, published on 3 October, describes wholesale volumes as improving significantly year on year because of that recovery, and the regional numbers show exactly where the growth came from: a strongly recovering UK, a steady North America, and a China business in steep decline.

We set out the wider context of the group's pressures in our restructure coverage, and the quarter just reported is the first clean read of how the business is trading after that disruption.

Where the growth came from

The UK is the standout. UK wholesales rose by roughly 70% year on year, to 21,000 from 12,327 a year earlier, and UK retail sales rose to 18,500 from 14,171. Retail demand in the UK is running ahead of the pipeline, which is the pattern you want to see when a manufacturer has been rebuilding stock after a supply shock. North America wholesaled 27,100 units and, as the release notes, the US remains steady at about a third of total wholesales, a concentration JLR has leaned into deliberately. Europe was also up, to 13,200 from 10,491.

The quarter also grew against the one before it, which matters because year-on-year comparisons have been distorted by last year's cyber-attack. Total wholesales of 82,400 compare with 79,288 in the first quarter of FY27, so the recovery is continuing sequentially rather than simply lapping a weak base. Retails, at 79,000 including the CJLR joint venture, were slightly below the first quarter's 79,892, reflecting the depleted retailer inventories that the release says felt the incident's impact later in the prior financial year. Wholesales leading retails is what a stock rebuild looks like from the outside: factories running ahead of the showroom while dealers refill.

The mix tells its own story. Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and Defender accounted for 77.6% of wholesale volumes, up from 76.7%, continuing the group's steady migration towards its most profitable models. By brand, Range Rover retailed 43,300 units in the quarter and Defender 29,500, with Discovery at 5,400, per the same release. For a company rebuilding volumes after disruption, filling the lines with the highest-margin metal first is the sensible sequence, and the numbers show that is what happened.

Not every region grew. In the Middle East, the release notes that ongoing disruption affected wholesales quarter on quarter, down to 3,700 from 5,112 in the first quarter, though retail volumes of 5,300 suggest underlying demand is holding. Overseas markets edged up year on year, to 11,300 wholesales from 10,888. The recovery is therefore concentrated in the group's three richest markets rather than spread evenly, which is better than the alternative but leaves the emerging-market half of the business still working through disruption.

China is the drag

Not everything recovered. China Region wholesales fell to 6,100 from 11,370 a year ago, a drop of nearly half. The main driver is structural rather than cyclical: the Chery Jaguar Land Rover (CJLR) joint venture stopped building vehicles locally in June 2026, which removed the locally produced models that had anchored the region's volumes. The change shows in the joint venture's own line: CJLR accounted for 900 of the quarter's retail units, against 7,417 a year ago. JLR and Chery have repositioned the joint venture around a revived Freelander brand for China, with the first model, the Freelander 8, launched there in early September, so some of the lost volume should eventually return under the new name, but the transition means a period where China contributes far less than it did.

Jaguar's last quiet quarter

The starkest number in the release is the smallest. Jaguar wholesaled just 800 units in the quarter, and retail sales were 800 against 6,910 a year ago, a fall of 88%. That is not a collapse, it is the plan: the release states explicitly that the launch of the Jaguar Type 01 in New York on 6 October follows a planned wind-down of outgoing Jaguar models over the past year. The old range is effectively gone from showrooms before its replacement exists, which makes this the last quarter in which Jaguar is essentially a brand without a product line. The Type 01 reveal is days away now, and we set out what is confirmed and what is still rumour in our preview on the eve of the announcement.

What comes next

The one thing this release does not contain is money. Financial results for the quarter, revenue and profit, arrive in November, and the volume recovery will only then be translated into the number that matters for a company spending billions on new electric models. The volume data in the release is also provisional, and JLR publishes confirmed figures on its investor relations pages.

The picture as the quarter closes, then: a UK business trading strongly again, North America solid, Europe growing, China reset and waiting for a new plan, and a famous brand down to its last few hundred cars ahead of the most important launch in its history. Recovery, mostly, with one deliberate blank page.

Sources