Jaguar Land Rover’s head of marketing and sales, Felix Bräutigam, has left the company amid an upheaval at the UK automaker under new CEO Thierry Bollore.
Bollore, a former CEO of Renault, in February unveiled a new business strategy for JLR to boost profitability including making the Jaguar brand all-electric and targeting Bentley and Porsche as rivals instead of BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz.
In an emailed statement on Monday, JLR said Bräutigam "has decided to leave Jaguar Land Rover to explore new opportunities."
Bräutigam joined JLR in November 2017 from Porsche under former CEO Ralf Speth. At Porsche, Bräutigam was head of Europe, responsible for 51 markets. His career began at General Motors and included stints at Saab, Vauxhall and Opel.
At JLR, Bräutigam oversaw the launch of the Jaguar I-Pace electric crossover and the new Land Rover Defender.
He changed the automaker’s sales approach in China, where its sales had collapsed, by cutting volume and reducing discounting.
"If we start a really dirty discounting game in China and buy market share in a relatively young market, what does that do to our brand?" he told Automotive News Europe in 2019.
Bräutigam defended Jaguar’s continued presence in the sedan market despite the crashing demand for the XE and XF because they were still important for China.
Jaguar Land Rover has revamped its business model under Bollore's new business plan called "Reimagine."
Jaguar will not replace its internal combustion engine models when they come to the end of their life cycle and instead focus on upmarket electric models costing the equivalent of 100,000 pounds ($140,000).
Bollore also wrote off 1 billion pounds of investment into the planned Modular Longitudinal Architecture electrified platform that had been designed to underpin the bulk of future Land Rover and Jaguar models.
Jaguar’s design boss, Julian Thomson, quit the brand in May. Thomson’s departure came after Land Rover’s former head of design, Gerry McGovern, was promoted in November to oversee design at the Jaguar and Land Rover brands.
