By JOHN-PAUL FORD ROJAS, DEPUTY BUSINESS EDITOR
Sales at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) slumped at the end of the year after it was hit by a cyberattack that shut down production.
The car giant said wholesale vehicle volumes – sold via dealerships – sank by 43 per cent to 59,200 in the final three months of 2025.
Retail sales – cars sold directly to consumers – fell by 25 per cent to 79,600 compared with the same period in 2024.
It suggests that the cyber attack which hit JLR’s production lines – forcing it to shut down all of its factories in Britain and overseas – has cost billions of pounds in sales.
The firm, owned by India’s Tata Motors, was attacked on August 31 and it did not restart manufacturing until early October.
In a trading update published yesterday, JLR revealed that production ‘returned to normal levels only by mid-November post the cyber incident’.
Hacked: JLR said that the cyber- attack which hit production lines, forcing it to shut down all of its factories in Britain and overseas, has cost billions of pounds in sales
Disruption to sales extended even beyond that because of the time taken to distribute vehicles once they had rolled off production lines.
Trading was also hit by US tariffs, a slowdown in the Chinese market and the wind-down of old models before the launch of the new Jaguar.
In the UK, retail volumes fell by 13.3 per cent. They slid by 37.7 per cent in North America, 26.9 per cent in Europe and 18.4 per cent in China.
One report estimated that the fall in sales volumes in the latest quarter could represent a £3billion hit to revenues. However, that was played down by a source close to the company.
JLR will publish financial results for the October to December period, its third quarter, next month.
The cyberattack has already dragged on second-quarter figures, when the company swung to a £723million loss as revenues fell by £1.6billion to £4.9billion.
JLR also took a £196million hit from the costs related to the hack. The impact of the cyberattack, which spread through the company’s supply chain network and is thought to have affected more than 5,000 firms overall, was so great that it dented overall economic growth late last year.
UK car production plunged by 27 per cent in September largely due to the stoppage.
The crisis prompted the Government to step in with a £1.5billion loan guarantee to support JLR’s supply chain.
JLR’s latest trading update came as industry data showed a recovery in UK car sales to more than 2m last year for the first time since the pandemic.
But the report from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders revealed car makers were struggling to hit targets to move from petrol and diesel to electric cars.
