Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has claimed the Range Rover isn’t the UK’s most stolen car in a blistering statement.
Speaking to the press after the company announced its latest financial results, the boss of the company Adrian Mardell claimed his business had been unfairly singled out by journalists.
The BBC reported that he claimed: “It is not ‘Britain’s most stolen vehicle’, as reported incorrectly.”
Mr Mardell added that he had a desire to correct what he believed was “misinformation [and] myth” about the number of thefts of his SUVs.
He pointed out that thefts of Range Rovers had fallen by 27 percent in 2023, compared to the year before and that the latest models had very good security.
His comments come days after reports from Bloomberg suggesting that the Range Rover Velar was one of the most stolen cars in the 12 months to March 2023.
Mr Mardell also addressed concerns over the ability of people to insure themselves on their cars after some customers were faced with insurance premiums of over £10,000.
He said: “There is no reason whatsoever why any insurance company should not gladly and readily insure those new vehicles. Zero reason, in any part of the country.
“The insurance industry clearly is not using the information and the data… they are very slow to respond to data.”
Responding to the case of one owner, a Land Rover spokesperson said the company had brought in new security measures “including a £10million investment in vehicle security; launching our new insurance offering; as well as working with the wider insurance sector to provide more insurance options for clients”.
Furthermore, they also said that increased insurance premiums were unfortunately affecting the whole insurance industry.
In a statement to Express.co.uk, JLR’s Managing Director Patrick McGillycuddy also touched on the topic of Range Rover thefts. He said: “The rapid decline in Range Rover thefts in the last year, demonstrates the strength of our latest vehicle security measures.
“These significant reductions are a result of engineering our new vehicles to be robust against all known theft methods through the latest anti-theft technology, endorsed by third-party experts like Thatcham.
“In fact, our latest data shows that only ten out of 12,200 of the latest model of Range Rovers have been stolen since January 2022.”
