It’s taken over per week, but JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) has finally denied a report claiming Gerry McGovern has been fired from his position as chief creative officer on the automaker.
In an email, a JLR spokesperson told Automotive News Europe: “It’s unfaithful that we now have terminated Gerry McGovern’s employment and we don’t intend to further comment on speculative stories.”
The spokesperson declined to say if Mr McGovern was still employed by the automaker. Mr McGovern remains to be listed as JLR’s chief creative officer on the corporate’s corporate website.
On December 3 Autocar India published a report with multiple anonymous sources claiming Mr McGovern was sacked, and “escorted out of the office” at JLR’s Gaydon design studio, about 40 minutes south of Birmingham within the UK.
Given the dearth of response from JLR, and Autocar and Autocar India’s accurate reporting earlier this 12 months on the retirement of then CEO Adrian Mardell ahead of the official announcement, many took the report as factually accurate.
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Within the aftermath of the Autocar India report, former employees told Hagerty Mr McGovern was an autocratic boss with an oversized ego and liable to matches of rage for every little thing from misaligned badges to the clay room floor not being spotlessly clean for his arrival.
His management style is claimed to have created a tense and difficult work environment resulting in a high turnover of staff inside the design department.
In line with many accounts, Mr McGovern had a detailed relationship with the late Ratan Tata, an influential member of the Tata family and at various times chairman of the Tata Group that owns JLR. This relationship and his power base inside JLR, reportedly, gave Mr McGovern plenty of sway over decisions inside the automaker, even those outside the design realm.
Because of his love of mid-century modernist design, he drove his team to create designs that embraced simplicity and minimalism, an ethos that’s most apparent within the Range Rover lineup and the reborn Defender.
Mr McGovern began his profession at Chrysler after completing his studies on the Royal College of Art. He then went on to stints at Peugeot, Rover after which Ford.
On the Blue Oval he worked on the Lincoln Mercury division, before being appointed as head of advanced design at Land Rover. He stayed with the British firm after Ford sold Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata Motors in 2008, later rising to turn into Land Rover’s chief designer, and eventually Jaguar Land Rover’s chief creative officer in 2020.
It was on this role that Mr McGovern fronted the world’s media to disclose the Jaguar Type 00 concept at the top of 2024. The daring and controversial concept previews Jaguar’s latest design language, which will probably be used on a series of EV models designed to shift the brand from chasing BMW to Bentley.
On November 1, 2025, PB Balaji replaced Adrian Mardell as CEO of JLR. Mr Balaji is the primary person from Tata Motors to take the new seat at JLR, and prior to becoming JLR’s CEO was chief financial officer of Tata Motors.
This Article First Appeared At www.carexpert.com.au
