SALES of Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR) models continue to improve, new figures from Indian parent company Tata Motors have shown.

During the second quarter to September 30, Tata said JLR continued to show “strong profitability”, adding that healthy sales volumes managed to generate a profit after tax of £238m.

It said both wholesale and retail volumes, covering factory and showroom sales, “improved favourably” compared with the corresponding second quarter in the 2009-10 financial year.

Improved market conditions and “continued overwhelming response” were behind the encouraging performance, Tata said.

Halewood’s JLR plant has had to increase its recruitment drive from 1,000 new staff to 1,500 to meet demand from pre-orders for the new Range Rover Evoque model which will be launched at the Knowsley site next July.

Halewood currently produces the successful Freelander 2 4x4 model which has proved to be popular in both domestic and overseas markets.

Tata also revealed that passenger vehicles, including the JLR and Fiat brands vehicles distributed in India, grew by 35.5% year-on- year in the domestic market to 82,564 units.