Solihull is JLR’s oldest vehicle plant and the place every Range Rover has been built since the model launched in 1970. The 300-acre site sits on Lode Lane, about seven miles southeast of central Birmingham.
The British government built it in 1938 as a shadow factory, part of the pre-war programme that dispersed aircraft production away from the places an enemy would expect to find it. Rover took possession in January 1940 and spent the war assembling Bristol Hercules aero engines. Car work came afterwards: the Rover P4 from 1949, and before it the Land Rover, which entered production at Solihull in 1948 and stayed in one recognisable form or another until the last of the original Defenders was built in January 2016.
The plant has been through several product families since. The Discovery was built at Solihull from 1989 to 2018 before moving to Nitra in Slovakia, and the Jaguar F-Pace was assembled here from 2016 until 2025. What remains is the Range Rover family: the Range Rover itself, the Range Rover Sport and the Range Rover Velar. Over 10,000 people work in manufacturing operations on the site.
The plant passed to Tata Motors with the rest of Jaguar Land Rover in 2008. Its current products sit on the MLA-Flex aluminium platform, designed from the outset to accept combustion, plug-in hybrid and battery-electric powertrains, which is why the Range Rover Electric that went on sale in September 2026 could be added to the existing line rather than requiring a dedicated electric plant.
