Dealer banks on Sh22m upgraded Land Rover to rev up revenue

A local car dealer will Friday launch a Sh21.5 million upgraded model of the withdrawn Land Rover Defender as it seeks to grow its share of Kenya’s luxury car market.

The luxury Land Rover dubbed Defender 90 will be launched together with another brand labelled 110 series, which will retail at Sh11.86 million.

Inchcape Kenya, the local dealers of Jaguar Land Rover’s brands said it has imported 15 units for the new models and anticipates demand set to go up in coming months.

Hussein Ibrahim, Managing director Inchcape Kenya said the dealer is banking on the new models to rev up revenues after its sales of Range Rover and Jaguar units dropped in the six months of June.

“Our target clientele are those with the premium feel and outlook, captains of industries and top executives… we have confirmed the sale of four units even before the launch and the interest in the last four days has been immense,” Mr Ibrahim said.

“We see that our sales are already picking up and close to the numbers we had pre-Covid-19. We anticipate that by end of this month we will have sold eight of these units.”

All the 15 units have petrol-powered engines with the models that use diesel set to be shipped into the country from January. The launch of the luxury Defender 90 and 110 series comes four years after Jaguar Land Rover ended production of the famous Defender 4×4 models in the English city of Solihull.

Jaguar Land Rover ended 68 years of making the popular British model that sold over two million units after the European Union introduced new rules on gas emission in 2015, forcing the car maker to roll out the new version of the off-road model.