Jaguar Land Rover Heritage is opening a classic center in Georgia
It'll service, restore and offer parts for JLR vehicles that have been out of production for 10 years or more.
For an increasing number of European automakers, the business of supporting their classic models is becoming big business. Brands like Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini and are all in on the classic parts and restoration game, but Jaguar Land Rover is going a step further by joining Mercedes-Benz in having a classic parts center in the US.
As a classic car owner myself, having high-quality readily available parts from a reputable source is a big deal -- and what source could be more reputable than the company that made the car in the first place? This has been a cornerstone of Mercedes' success with its Classic Center in Irvine, California and Jaguar is hoping to replicate it with a center in historic Savannah, Georgia.
The JLR classic center in Savannah will perform service and restoration on classic Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles when it opens next summer.
This center will be Jaguar Land Rover's first outside of Europe (the other two are in the UK and Germany) and will feature 42 bays for repair and restoration of classic vehicles by 75 factory-trained technicians. The center is slated to open in the summer of 2019.
In order to have your Jaguar or Land Rover worked on at a JLR classic center, it needs to have been out of production for 10 years, meaning that if you really wanted to, you could have the classic center restore your Jaguar S-Type or if you were patient, and wanted to wait until 2019, your Jaguar X-Type .
Obviously the bulk of restorations being done by the center will have slightly more monetary value, like E-Types and early Series Land Rovers, but the important thing is that it just got a little bit easier -- if not cheaper -- to own a classic British car in the US.
