British automaker Land Rover, recently taken over by Indian industrial giant Tata, told its employees Friday it will scale back production in light of an economic slowdown and the credit crunch.
A spokesman for Land Rover — a specialist in four-wheel-drive vehicles — declined to spell out the scale of the cutbacks in detail, besides stating that only a “small percentage” of its annual output would be affected.
It was a matter of adjusting supply and demand, and averting a costly backlog of unsold vehicles, he said, in light of “very difficult” market conditions in Britain and the United States.
From September until the end of the year, the Discovery and Land Rover Sport models will be assembled four days a week, rather than five, while night-shift production of top-end Range Rovers will be halted in October.
Formerly a part of US auto group Ford Motor Company, Land Rover was acquired in June by Tata along with the upmarket Jaguar car brand, in a deal that has so far seen no layoffs.
Land Rover employs around 5,000 people at its Solihull plant in the English Midlands.
