Jaguar Land Rover is targeting U.S. production with a Defender pickup, a strategy intended to lower import costs and accelerate the brand’s growth in America. The move follows a memorandum of understanding signed in May between JLR and Stellantis to collaborate on product development and U.S. production, and Automotive News reports the first vehicle born from that tie-up will likely be a Defender pickup truck.
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North America accounted for nearly 30 percent of JLR’s global sales last year, with the United States taking the lion’s share, and the company currently imports all of its models for that market. New import duties imposed in 2025 have raised the price of U.K.-built models by 10 percent and added 15 percent to E.U.-built vehicles, increasing the incentive for local assembly or U.S. development.
JLR has made clear it wants a much larger footprint in the United States. At an investor meeting in June, CEO PB Balaji said the company wants to expand its U.S. business to match its current global scale. The collaboration with Stellantis is aimed at helping JLR learn the preferences of American buyers and build vehicles tailored for that market.
JLR is not shifting existing Defender assembly out of Slovakia, the company plans to use the partnership to develop Defender variants for new segments. The first variant under consideration appears to be a pickup designed specifically for U.S. customers. Key technical details remain unresolved. If it follows the current Defender’s architecture the pickup could use a unibody platform, a construction that Stellantis does not use for its body-on-frame Ram pickups and the Jeep Gladiator, though Stellantis does build unibody SUVs such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango.
Powertrain choices and the vehicle’s size are unknown, and a Jaguar Land Rover representative declined to comment on product plans. Stellantis was contacted for comment and no statement was included in the reporting. Industry timelines suggest the project is in early stages and any Defender pickup is likely several years from production.
The partnership gives JLR a pathway to reduce tariff exposure while testing an American-built product that blends Land Rover’s luxury credentials with Stellantis’s U.S. manufacturing know-how, but the companies still must resolve engineering, platform and timing questions before a production decision is final.
