Land Rover was launched in 1948 by the Rover Company, using a former Second World War ‘shadow factory’ at Lode Lane, Solihull, that Rover had acquired in the 1940s. The original Series I was conceived partly as a stopgap to keep Rover’s factory busy amid post-war steel shortages, using an aluminium alloy body to sidestep rationed steel. It rapidly outgrew that origin to become the company’s defining product.
Solihull has remained Land Rover’s principal home through the Series I, II and III, the Defender, Discovery and Range Rover lines. The marque became part of British Leyland, then Rover Group, then BMW, then Ford’s Premier Automotive Group, before Tata Motors acquired Jaguar Land Rover as a combined business in 2008. Since 2024, Jaguar production has also consolidated at the same Solihull site, following the end of internal-combustion Jaguar manufacturing at Castle Bromwich.