Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) plan to open its own car retail stores as it embarks on a process of “reimagining every aspect of our Jaguar business” has sparked uncertainty among its franchised car dealers.

In a recently advertised advert for a head of global retail operations the British OEM revealed that it would be opening its own global network of stores, ahead of a planned shift to a luxury-focussed offering, the move to an agency model in 2024 and an all-electric Jaguar range by 2025.

News of the new retail concept of a network of OEM-owned stores has sparked “anxiety” among franchisees who have invested heavily in the JLR’s Arch Concept corporate identity (CI) makeover.

One told AM: “At the moment we are business planning in the dark because we simply do not know what JLR have planned in terms of their network scale, their volume aspirations or their agency model plans.

“News of these OEM-owned stores has only added to that. It’s caused a considerable among of anxiety.”