News : JLR opens new R&D facility in the Middle East

Range Rover (1)

Jaguar Land Rover further enhanced its Middle East test programme by opening a new engineering test centre in Dubai, UAE, to conduct extreme hot weather vehicle research, development and testing.

With temperatures in the desert typically reaching 48 to 50 degrees Celsius in the summer months, the new 11,120sq  ft facility in the Al Barsha area of Dubai, UAE will offer a comprehensive range of tests including durability, calibration and hot weather testing for heat and humidity.

The engineering team at the new centre, which replaces a smaller facility in Dubai, will also test powertrains, chassis and heat and ventilation systems, as well as the off-road and sand driving capability of Land Rover’s unique Terrain Response system.

Jaguar Land Rover has a network of five global test facilities: Nurburgring, Germany; Arjeplog, Sweden; Phoenix and International Falls, USA, and Dubai, UAE.

Jaguar Land Rover Director of Engineering Technical Services Martyn Hollingsworth said: ‘Jaguar Land Rover has ambitious plans for growth, and since 2008 we have been investing to enhance our engineering capability to help us deliver an unprecedented number of new and refreshed Jaguar and Land Rover models.’

He continued: ‘Our new facility in Dubai is four times the size of the previous test centre and will enable us to enhance our testing of future products and technologies.’

Jaguar F-Type (1)

Keith Adams

17 Comments

  1. Sound idea. Had the Firm done more thorough testing in years gone by, we’d have had less fiascos like K series HGF, and they might just have still been with us.

  2. The K Series was properly sorted at launch, it was only later that it was weakened and HGF was really an issue.

  3. Not sure about the K Series at launch. Had the privilege of selling early R8 and Rover Metro. The glow fell away after about 3 years when we started to discover that the cambelt wouldn’t last 96k miles after all and the head gaskets started to pop.

  4. The K series problems are well known and much discussed. Without wishing to offend anyone (one of my cars had HGF too), how about we park these issues and focus on the excellent progress being made by JLR. Let’s look forward and not backwards.

    Onwards and upwards JLR.

  5. Yes lets look forward because all this talk of growth and success at JLR currently is with ford engines and hardware. Lets look forward to tata and english engines, last time they did this wasnt it called the , ” city rover ‘ or shitty rover ??

  6. @9 – Stupid comment. The only thing Indian about JLR is the Chief Exec of the parent company. The cars are design in the UK and manufactured in the UK, from UK/European sourced components. You dont have much idea about how global business works have you?

  7. Truth is all of land rovers success of late has been built on Ford running gear and thats very cool but things are about to change !!!! Time will tell and I hope they do well!!

  8. @9 & 11 the AJV8 V8 Petrols are as English as they get – designed by Jaguar from the ground up.

  9. IM not sure there is really any connection between the Rover K Series and the JLR we know of today. It think the AJV8 is pretty much a Ford V8 fitted with twin cam heads and then also used in the Lincoln Continental. The small engines are also more or less developments on Ford engines too I understand. I might be wrong though. alex

  10. @14 the AJV8 was nothing to do with Ford, it was a 100% in house Jaguar design. Ford gave Jaguar the money to produce a VVT system and new heads for their as yet unreleased V8 (being designed to compete against the GM Northstar and new Lexus V8), Jaguar thought the “state-of-the-art” Ford engine was oversized and overweight with a pitiful rev ceiling so they pressed ahead with their own design in secret. Ford did their nut when they found out, but when they put the AJV8 on the dyno at Dearborn it embarrassed the new Ford design (which cost tens of millions to develop) by such a margin in every department – Ford commissioned Jaguar to produce a lower spec version for the Lincon. The rubbish Ford unit ended up being used for trucks. Ford tried to retrospectively claim credit for the AJV8 but the only input they had was to help “productionalize” it.

  11. JLR are investing for the long term. Something that has not happened in the British car industry since the late 60’s but even then money was tight and promising designs like the Stag were under developed and the Range Rover not developed into the world beater it is today. JLR desperatly need to produce cars in the 20-30K category to increase volumes. The new small Jag etc. It would be lovely to see a Rover crossover vehicle like TCV produced from £20k to compete with Qashquai and reestablish the Rover brand name.Lord Stokes did sanction the Range Rover which was bold and did coin the Maxi brand name which if the car had been a world beater from BMC would have prestaged the Golf by 6 years.

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