New Jaguar Land Rover Factory in Brazil to Open in 2016

Hey Zeke, from what I've read and have been able to surmise Tata is putting in something from 750 million to 1 billion reais in investments until 2020 and that 800 jobs will be created directly. The city and the state of Rio de Janeiro are also giving tax breaks to the tune of 2 billion reais. Like the TTAC Staff bot said, the factory will have an initial capacity for 24k cars. As they sell about 8k a year in Brazil, they have a long way to go to fill out that capacity. It's Land Rover's president for Latin America that is talking exports. He says that the factory has been planned and will be built in such a way as to permit further expansion. Export where? Certainly Mercosur countries. That means access to Argentina's market as well as Uruguay and Paraguay. Venezuela and Bolivia also have trading privileges with the bloc though they are not full members and Chile is an observer. As Chile has an agreement with NAFTA, Brazil and Argentina are not to keen on giving Chile greater access as that could be a backdoor for an "invasion" of American economic interests. The question remains, what car could they possibly sell to reach the plant's capacity? No word on what model will be produced there. The greatest LR-J seller here is the Evoque that barely reaches 1000 units a month. I believe it sells at around 200k reais. Interestingly, the Freelander is cheaper but sells even less. It costs about 150 k reais. Like you must know, BMW and Audi are building their factories here. Mercedes already has one that is a veritable white elephant that was supposed to sell 50k (original) Mercedes Class A. All talk is that these makers, plus Land Rover, will be building models that would be much closer to the 100k mark. What product would that be, no one knows, though it does seem a safe bet Audi will do a mix of A1s and A3s. Like BMW, no one really knows what Land Rover it could be. No one thinks it could be a Jaguar as that sells even less than Land Rover here.