Jaguar Land Rover denies firing design boss

It’s taken over a week, but JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) has finally denied a report claiming Gerry McGovern has been fired from his position as chief creative officer at the automaker.

In an email, a JLR spokesperson told Automotive News Europe: “It is untrue that we have terminated Gerry McGovern’s employment and we do not intend to further comment on speculative stories.”

The spokesperson declined to say if Mr McGovern was still employed by the automaker. Mr McGovern is still listed as JLR’s chief creative officer on the company’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 in the UK.

Given the lack of response from JLR, and Autocar and Autocar India’s accurate reporting earlier this year on the retirement of then CEO Adrian Mardell ahead of the official announcement, many took the report as factually accurate.

CarExpert can save you thousands on a new car. Click here to get a great deal.

In the aftermath of the Autocar India report, former employees told Hagerty Mr McGovern was an autocratic boss with an oversized ego and prone to fits of rage for everything from misaligned badges to the clay room floor not being spotlessly clean for his arrival.

His management style is said to have created a tense and challenging work environment leading to a high turnover of staff within the design department.

According to many accounts, Mr McGovern had a close 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 within JLR, reportedly, gave Mr McGovern a lot of sway over decisions within the automaker, even those outside the design realm.

Thanks to 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 in the Range Rover lineup and the reborn Defender.

Mr McGovern began his career at Chrysler after completing his studies at the Royal College of Art. He then went on to stints at Peugeot, Rover and then Ford. 

At the Blue Oval he worked at 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 become Land Rover’s chief designer, and finally Jaguar Land Rover’s chief creative officer in 2020.

It was in this role Mr McGovern fronted the world’s media to reveal the Jaguar Type 00 concept at the end of 2024. The bold and controversial concept previews Jaguar’s new design language, which will 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 first person from Tata Motors to take the hot seat at JLR, and prior to becoming JLR’s CEO was chief financial officer of Tata Motors.