Tata Motors, the Indian car company that bought Jaguar Land Rover from Ford 18 months ago, has said that it may have to cut more jobs and close plants after it reported that the famous British marques made a pre-tax loss of £281 million in the past ten months.

Ravi Kant, Tata Motors’ vice-chairman, said that Jaguar Land Rover’s worldwide sales for the ten months to March 30 fell by 32 per cent from 246,000 to 167,000 vehicles.

Mr Kent, speaking in Mumbai, said: “At this moment, things are beginning to improve only marginally. There may be more job losses and more shut downs of plants if required."

While sales at Land Rover fell considerably, Jaguar was held up by a positive consumer response to the new XF sedan, the company said. Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles are expected to be sold in India from next week.

The UK figures accounted for most of the 255 billion rupees (£315 million) net full-year loss reported yesterday by Tata Motors — its first since 2001. The company made a net profit of 21.68 billion rupees for the year to March 30, 2008.

Jaguar Land Rover has made 1,750 people redundant since December from its UK workforce of about 15,000. Des Thurlby, human resources director, said this week that the figure would have been higher if the company had not imposed a shorter working week and pay freezes for some workers.

Tata’s sales have also been hit by the downturn, with the 2008-09 total including exports falling from 585,649 to 506,421. It remained India’s top maker of commercial vehicles with 265,373 units sold, down from 312,935, while the number of domestic passenger vehicles sold fell to 207,512 from 218,055.

The company said that it had responded the fall in sales by cutting costs “drastically” and aligning production more closely with demand.

Tata launched the world’s cheapest car, the Nano, at just 100,000 rupees (£1,300) earlier this year.

Times Recommends

• Lies and cover-up at MG Rover exposed by report
• High oil prices push manufacturing costs up
• Primark founder steps down as chief executive