Defender Production Put On Hold

One of the UK’s biggest motoring success stories, the multi-award winning Land Rover Defender is currently paused on the production line due to global shortages of semi-conductor microchips.

The shortage, which has affected nearly all of the world’s biggest car manufacturers, has already impacted Jaguar Land Rover, with factories on pause at the company’s facilities at Castle Bromwich and Halewood, and now the iconic Defender is affected. The Land Rover factory in Nitra, Slovakia has a target of producing 150,000 of the SUV’s every year, but the shortage of microchips may significantly dent those ambitions.

A JLR statement said: "Like other automotive manufacturers, we are currently experiencing some Covid-19 supply chain disruption, including the global availability of semi-conductors, which is having an impact on our production schedules. As a result, we are adjusting production schedules in some of our plants to reflect this.

We continue to see strong customer demand for our range of vehicles. We are working closely with affected suppliers to resolve the issues and minimise the impact on customer orders wherever possible."

The new-look Defender has been one of the recent success stories for JLR, with demand creating a waiting list of more than a year for some deliveries. That wait may be even longer now following the microchip crisis which was created when the technology companies who produce the microchips switched to creating more profitable computer processors when car production halted during last year’s pandemic lockdowns.