Jaguar Land Rover To Create 1,700 New Jobs China's Love Affair With JLR Updated: 8:09am UK, Tuesday 10 September 2013 By Mark Stone, China Correspondent in Beijing It's not possible to drive for more than about two minutes in central Beijing without seeing a Land Rover of some sort. They are everywhere: the Range Rover, the Range Rover Sport, the Evoque, the Discovery and the Freelander. Every car the company has to offer has sold staggeringly well across China. The latest offering - the British-built Range Rover Evoque - seems to have sold better than anything. Over the past few weeks I have counted scores of them. As I write this, from the passenger seat of our car (not a Range Rover sadly!) four sparkly new Evoques have driven passed. According to figures published by Jaguar Land Rover, vehicles sales in China last year were up 74% on the previous year. In 2012, the company sold 73,347 cars in China. Of them, 65,896 were Land Rovers. The rest were Jaguars. In December alone, more than 8,200 vehicles were shifted from Chinese forecourts. "Since we established our National Sales Company in China..... [the country] has already become our largest market worldwide, thanks to the market's positive reception of our products," said Bob Grace, President of Jaguar Land Rover China. The success in China is all the more remarkable given that they cost so much more here. After import tax is paid, a Range Rover Evoque will cost about RMB630,000 which is almost exactly £65,000. In the UK, you would pay £39,000 for exactly the same car. China now has an eye-watering number of very wealthy people. They have a love affair with luxury and even better if it's British. No wonder the company had just announced a £1.5bn investment and 1,700 new jobs. The company may now be Indian-owned, but its remarkable success in China is great news for the UK and a testament to British engineering.