Luxury carmakers join coronavirus shutdown

Bentley and Jaguar Land Rover are the latest companies to halt production.

By: Dominik Wilde

Mar 23, 2020 at 5:20am ET

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Bentley and Jaguar Land Rover have become the latest car makers to halt their manufacturing operations in the UK amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Jaguar Land Rover's UK sites will stop production from next week, as will its plant in Slovakia, while its factories in Brazil and India will continue for the time being. For the shuttered factories, production is expected to resume on April 20, pending any changes to the current situation.

Bentley's Crewe factory meanwhile will also cease production for the next four weeks, again with a plan to continue from April 20.

"We were all set up for a gangbusters 2020, the first two months of the year have been very strong ... and then the coronavirus hits us," Bentley CEO Adrian Hallmark told Reuters.

"Any ideas of glory and big profits that we had have been tempered significantly but having said that, we really don't know how it's going to play out."

News of the Bentley plant closure comes just days after Rolls-Royce announce a similar move. The BMW brand will close its Sussex plant on March 23 for four weeks.

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Rolls-Royce confirmed that the measure was to "secure the health and welfare of the employees," and it also said that non-production employees would continue to work either from home or the office, but would rotate shifts.

BMW stablemate Mini, along with Honda, Nissan, and Vauxhall have all also announced temporary closures.