Jaguar expands

By David Simpson , Business Correspondent

Jaguar Cars, the BL subsidiary privatised last year, is to spend £37 million on building a new engineering centre in Coventry to free its Brown's Lane site in the same city for increased vehicle production. The group believes that output of cars could rise progressively from 38,000 in 1985 to 60,000 by 1990, and that it will be necessary to convert Brown's Lane to a full production facility, switching its engineering design and testing functions to a new factory at the former Chrysler plant at Whitley.

The budgeted expansion is likely to create only a modest number of jobs, a Jaguar spokesman intimated yesterday, but will help guarantee employment for the company's present 10,500 workforce for several years to come. The jump in production over the next five years will be achieved thr ough regular increases of between 10 and 15 per cent a year , the spokesman said, with Jaguar expected to take output up to about 45,000 cars in 1986.