For Britain’s car industry, September brought a sharp reminder of its fragility in the digital age. A devastating cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) forced a total shutdown of the automaker’s three major UK factories Solihull, Wolverhampton and Halewood resulting in a collapse of national car production.
According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), just over 51,000 vehicles were built across the UK last month, a 27 percent drop from the same period last year. It was the country’s weakest September for car production since 1952 ... even lower than during Covid lockdowns.
JLR, which typically produces around 1,000 vehicles per day, halted operations for five weeks while engineers attempted to restore its IT systems. The attack, which struck in late August, also crippled parts of its global supply chain, freezing thousands of smaller UK-based suppliers.
The Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC) has estimated the total cost to the British economy at £1.9 billion ($2.5 billion), describing it as “the most financially damaging cyber event ever to hit the UK.” The CMC categorized it as a Category 3 systemic incident the first of its kind for a single company.
While other automakers like Nissan and Toyota maintained normal output, JLR’s paralysis tanked the country’s overall figures. Exports dropped 24.5 percent, hitting key markets in the EU, US, Turkey, Japan, and South Korea.
The fallout has sparked concern about modern automakers’ digital vulnerability. Ciaran Martin, former head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, warned: “This shows how quickly a single cyber incident can disrupt not only a company but an entire national industry.”
The UK government has since stepped in with a £1.5 billion loan guarantee to help stabilise JLR and its suppliers. Production is now gradually restarting, but analysts say full recovery isn’t expected until early 2026.
For now, Britain’s largest carmaker and the thousands of businesses that depend on it remain locked in a long, expensive fight to bring the lights back on.