It’s taken over per week, however JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) has lastly denied a report claiming Gerry McGovern has been fired from his place as chief artistic officer on the automaker.
In an e-mail, a JLR spokesperson instructed Automotive Information Europe: “It’s unfaithful that we now have terminated Gerry McGovern’s employment and we don’t intend to additional touch upon speculative tales.”
The spokesperson declined to say if Mr McGovern was nonetheless employed by the automaker. Mr McGovern remains to be listed as JLR’s chief artistic officer on the corporate’s company web site.
On December 3 Autocar India revealed a report with a number of nameless sources claiming Mr McGovern was sacked, and “escorted out of the workplace” at JLR’s Gaydon design studio, about 40 minutes south of Birmingham within the UK.
Given the shortage of response from JLR, and Autocar and Autocar India’s correct reporting earlier this yr on the retirement of then CEO Adrian Mardell forward of the official announcement, many took the report as factually correct.
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Within the aftermath of the Autocar India report, former staff instructed Hagerty Mr McGovern was an autocratic boss with an outsized ego and liable to suits of rage for every thing from misaligned badges to the clay room flooring not being spotlessly clear for his arrival.
His administration model is claimed to have created a tense and difficult work atmosphere resulting in a excessive turnover of employees throughout the design division.
In response to many accounts, Mr McGovern had an in depth relationship with the late Ratan Tata, an influential member of the Tata household and at varied instances chairman of the Tata Group that owns JLR. This relationship and his energy base inside JLR, reportedly, gave Mr McGovern a whole lot of sway over choices throughout the automaker, even these outdoors the design realm.
Due to his love of mid-century modernist design, he drove his group to create designs that embraced simplicity and minimalism, an ethos that’s most obvious within the Vary Rover lineup and the reborn Defender.
Mr McGovern started his profession at Chrysler after finishing his research on the Royal School of Artwork. He then went on to stints at Peugeot, Rover after which Ford.
On the Blue Oval he labored on the Lincoln Mercury division, earlier than being appointed as head of superior design at Land Rover. He stayed with the British agency after Ford bought Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata Motors in 2008, later rising to develop into Land Rover’s chief designer, and at last Jaguar Land Rover’s chief artistic officer in 2020.
It was on this position that Mr McGovern fronted the world’s media to disclose the Jaguar Kind 00 idea on the finish of 2024. The daring and controversial idea previews Jaguar’s new design language, which will probably be used on a collection of EV fashions designed to shift the model from chasing BMW to Bentley.
On November 1, 2025, PB Balaji changed Adrian Mardell as CEO of JLR. Mr Balaji is the primary particular person from Tata Motors to take the recent seat at JLR, and previous to changing into JLR’s CEO was chief monetary officer of Tata Motors.
