Jaguar Land Rover expects to post lower fourth-quarter profits than it did for the same period during the previous year, says chief executive Ralf Speth. This leaves the total of its full-year pretax earnings at around half of the 2.6 billion pounds ($3.6 billion) JLR made in 2014/15.

If you are the owner of a Land Rover Defender anywhere in Europe, consider yourself warned. According to police, thieves are stripping parts from Land Rover Defenders in the West and shipping them out literally just hours later, most often to Eastern Europe.

Many Land Rover fans, the motoring press, and even the English mainstream press continue to pay homage to the now-out-of-production Defender. The country is mourning the loss of a vehicle so iconically British, that it is instantly recognizable, akin to the famous double-decker bus or a black London taxi. At the same time, executives at Land Rover headquarters in Solihull, UK appear to be having an identity crisis with regards to the Defender’s replacement.

Jaguar Land Rover is investing millions of pounds into a research project intended to help autonomous vehicles of the future drive naturally like human drivers, rather than like robots.

A fleet of JLR vehicles will be driven regularly by employees of the London Borough of Greenwich, to ascertain and establish how a range of different drivers react in real-world driving situations such as heavy traffic, and bad weather.

Land Rovers and their owners once again descended in the vicinity of Waterville, Maine for the annual Maine Winter Romp, hosted by Bruce Fowler of nearby Benton. For many, Winter Romp is a “don’t miss” event that signifies the beginning of the East Coast US Land Rover rally calendar. Rover fans who have been cooped up all winter long, hiding from the snow and cold, can come out and get a break from their cabin fever. For those of us from warmer climes, it gives us a new low point from which to regard the remainder of the season’s cold temps. Those 20°F days in late February and March will seem like nothing after four or five days of standing outside in temperatures much closer to, or often well below, zero.

Jaguar Land Rover today reported its best ever January retail sales of 46,016 vehicles, a 24% increase from the same time last year. All of JLR’s markets saw an increase over last January’s numbers, 65% in Europe, 36% in the UK, 9% in North America, 5% in China, and 15% in all other markets.

It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over Deptartment: At the closing bell of the Defender assembly line last Friday, Land Rover announced a new Heritage Restoration Program. The program, which will be located in the same building as the current Solihull production line, will employ a team of Land Rover experts to oversee the restoration of Series Land Rovers.

January 29^th, 2016, 9:15 AM GMT, marked the end of production for the iconic Land Rover Defender. Made obsolete by ever more stringent environmental and safety legislation, the world’s most versatile vehicle has passed into the history books.

In January of 2015, as part of a year-long celebration of the impending demise of what many see as its flagship model, Land Rover opened its Defender assembly line in Solihull, UK, for public tours. Us mere mortals would finally be able to catch an in person glimpse of the manufacturing line where Land Rovers have been built since 1948.

Jaguar Land Rover has had a “landmark year”, reporting a 30% sales increase for December.

Though JLR did well overall, it's two brands went in opposite directions from each other. Land Rover had a 47% increase in December, while Jaguar saw a 29% decrease.

Land Rover is getting set to release its fifth-generation Discovery.

The new vehicle will be lower, sleeker and significantly lighter than the Discovery 4 (LR4 in the USA market) it replaces. Expect the launch to occur toward the end of 2016.

Land Rover’s Freelander 1 vehicles, manufactured between 1997 and 2006, are one of the brand's best-selling models. Now, Land Rover has declared them an official Heritage vehicle.

According to JLR, it’s Heritage division “specializes in cars, services, parts and experiences for classic Land Rover models.” The Freelander will be the eighth model to come under the scheme, alongside Series I, II and III, Range Rover Classic and P38, and Discovery Series 1 and 2.

Land Rover this week issued a Technical Service Bulletin to cover a potential water leak in 2015 model LR4, Range Rover Evoque, Range Rover Sport and Range Rover Full Size vehicles.

We received a note a few weeks ago from California-based reader and loyal Atlantic British customer, Scott Janovich. A few years ago we featured Scott’s Callaway P38 Range Rover that he found in a field and restored almost from the ground up.

Scott wrote to lets us know that despite many years of “laying hands” on Range Rover P38s, (he has three of them) his real passion lies with their earlier leaf-spring counterparts, i.e., Series Land Rovers.

As mentioned in our blog a few weeks ago, Bonham’s auction house in London put a very special Land Rover up on the auction block last week. Namely, the 2,000,000^th Defender, one of the last to be produced, as Land Rover will be stopping production on its most iconic model early in 2016.