Premier Automotive Group, the Ford luxury car division that includes Jaguar and Land Rover, powered its way to a record £201 million profit in the first quarter of the year, figures from Dearborn showed last night.
It contributed to a strong European performance that largely helped Ford to staunch the massive losses it racked up last year.
The group reported a first quarter net loss of $282 million (£141 million) compared with a deficit of $1.4 billion (£700 million at current exchange rates) in the same period in 2006.
Ford does not give figures for individual operating units, but industry insiders speculated that Jaguar, a serial loss-maker, was making progress in its struggle to return to profit.
Speculation that Jaguar could be offloaded has been rife ever since Ford announced its decision to sell Aston Martin, the smallest of the Premier Automotive Group (PAG) companies.
Ford, though, has consistently denied ever having such a plan, a situation reinforced yesterday when it said PAG had shown "improvements in all brands".
The latest available annual figures for Jaguar showed it made a loss in the UK of £533.7 million in 2005.
A £1 billion refinancing of the balance sheet by Ford has helped offset the costs of a major restructuring of its production operations that saw the closure of the historic Browns Lane site in Coventry and the transfer of production of the XJ saloon and XK sports car to Castle Bromwich.
The unit is also now beginning to see the benefit of a shift of focus away from chasing volume in favour of concentrating on selling higher margin more profita ble top of the range models.
Don Hume, a spokesman for Jaguar and Land Rover, said: "Clearly, Land Rover is still performing very strongly on a global basis.
"Jaguar also had a good quarter and exceeded our internal targets."
Ford Europe more than trebled its first quarter profit, returning $219 million (£109.5 million) compared with $65 million last time.
But problems continued to stack up for Ford North America, whose operations lost $614 million (£307 million), up from $422 million.
North America is the focal point of a massive financial rescue effort that will see Ford close 16 plants and cut 45,000 jobs.
The company has been hit by a slump in sales of its bread and butter, but fuel-thirsty, SUVs and trucks while having to meet soaring healthcare and pension costs.
It is regularly out-sold by Toyota, which last month finally overtook General Motors to become the world's biggest carmaker by volume.
GM has had similar problems to Ford, but is much further down the road to recovery than its Detroit rival.
Ford chief executive Alan Mulally said of the first-quarter numbers: "We are making progress on executing the four priorities of our plan. "I am pleased that the basics of our business are improving, but we still have a lot of work to do.
"The first quarter results came in somewhat stronger than expected, but there are many uncertainties going forward.
"We remain focused on improving our quality, productivity and business performance."
