Jaguar Land Rover and Stellantis are weighing a Defender pickup built in the US, avoiding tariffs while key platform and timing decisions remain open.
Jaguar Land Rover has moved past the rumor stage. The British automaker has signed a memorandum of understanding with Stellantis to explore a Defender-branded pickup, and both groups are studying building the truck in the United States rather than shipping it from Slovakia.
The arrangement rests on a non-binding memorandum of understanding signed in May 2026. JLR CFO Richard Molyneux said the agreement would be finalized by the end of the current year, putting a real deadline on what had been vague talk of shared factory capacity.
JLR CEO Pathamadai Balachandran Balaji framed the deal in blunt commercial terms, saying collaborating with Stellantis would support the British automaker’s long-term growth plans for the United States and adjacent markets. That is a tariff story as much as a product story.
Every Defender sold in the US today, the 90, the 110, and the 130, comes out of a plant in Slovakia. Under the long-standing US tariff regime, imported passenger vehicles face a 2.5 percent rate, and more recent trade measures have added a 25 percent tariff to many EU- and UK-built models.
A pickup variant would face a steeper problem still. Imported trucks are hit with the 25 percent tariff that dates back to the old “Chicken Tax,” a levy that makes shipping a body-style Defender ute from Europe close to unworkable on price alone.
Building it stateside solves that math instantly, and it revives something JLR has not done in half a century. Land Rover’s US production ambitions are not new, but a truck variant echoes the old Series pickups the brand sold here until the early 1970s.
As reported by Automotive News, Stellantis is discussing a specific US plant for the project, with Belvidere, Illinois, floated as the likely site. Neither company has confirmed that location publicly, and Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa has stopped short of naming it himself.
Filosa confirmed only that the two groups are evaluating a collaboration tied to a particular factory, without identifying the site or the vehicles under discussion.
One detail in the outside reporting stands out, though. Some outlets have speculated that the Stellantis-JLR partnership could tap into existing Ram and Jeep hardware instead of a bespoke chassis. Neither Stellantis nor JLR has confirmed specific platforms, engines, or powertrains for any potential Defender pickup.
Whether that means a body-on-frame structure closer to a Ram 1500 or something more bespoke to Defender’s unibody roots is still unconfirmed. Reports on the Jaguar Land Rover US production plans make clear that the platform decision has not been disclosed, leaving it as the biggest open question in the whole deal.
Motor1 has reached out to Jaguar Land Rover for further comment on the agreement and potential US production plans, and we will update this story if the company responds.
Motor1’s Take: If the partnership proceeds, platform choice will decide how closely the pickup matches Defender’s off-road identity. Using Stellantis truck architecture could speed rollout. A bespoke chassis would protect the brand. It would also increase development time and cost.
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Source:
Automotive News
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