This weekend, that vague hope has been shattered. The West Midlands automotive sector has been plunged into its worst crisis since the pandemic enforced the shutdown of British carmaking.

JLR's cyberattack has not just brought production lines in the UK, Slovakia, Brazil and India to a standstill; its computer systems have been rendered useless. And without the ability to perform diagnostic tests, cars cannot be serviced properly at dealerships. Online catalogues of spare parts are inaccessible, and new vehicle sales cannot be registered.

Factory workers have been told not to come to work tomorrow as JLR's two main assembly plants at Solihull and Halewood, and its engine manufacturing centre in Wolverhampton, stand idle.

It can now be revealed that they face a long stint on the sidelines as hopes of a quick end to the saga have all but evaporated. "We said don't come into work on Friday and Monday. That does not mean come to work on Tuesday," one well-placed source said.

Behind closed doors, JLR bosses have conceded that bringing its systems back online will take "a matter of weeks rather than days". And there will be a "long tail of work that will take even longer", the person added.

More concerning, the plight of JLR is just the tip of the iceberg for a West Midlands economy dependent on the company and its Indian owner, Tata Motors.

"Jaguar Land Rover is an anchor institution," said Raj Kandola, chief executive of the Birmingham Chambers of Commerce. "It's not just about the people it employs directly, it's the supply chains."

Kandola is right to speak of contagion. Suppliers Evtec, WHS Plastics, SurTec and OPmobility are among those known to have temporarily laid off their workforces -- just like JLR. This quartet alone employ more than 6,000 UK workers.

Evtec's Roberts said the fallout is far worse. "You're talking about many, many thousands of people who are currently waiting ... [to] get back to work," he said.

"We continue to work around the clock to restart our global applications in a controlled and safe manner following the recent cyber incident. We are working with third-party cybersecurity specialists and alongside law enforcement.

A spokeswoman for JLR said this weekend: "We want to thank all our customers, partners, suppliers and colleagues for their patience and support. We are very sorry for the disruption this incident has caused. Our retail partners remain open and we will continue to provide further updates."

Annus horribilis

The cyberattack that has brought JLR to its knees rounds off an annus horribilis for Britain's biggest carmaker -- though in truth, this started in November last year with the relaunch of the Jaguar brand.

With boss Adrian Mardell bemoaning that the Jaguar brand "wasn't always distinctive enough in the last decade", its "growler" logo -- the world-renowned Jaguar badge used for decades on grilles and bonnets -- was dropped to attract younger, richer, independently minded urban customers. The new cars, due to be launched next year, would be all-electric and more expensive, with Jaguar looking to compete with more upmarket brands such as Bentley and Porsche.

Donald Trump would later brand the switch "stupid", "seriously WOKE" and a "total disaster". It was a sentiment with which many Jaguar enthusiasts agreed.

Yet Trump's comments were far less potent than his actions. On March 27, the US president unveiled import taxes of 25 per cent on cars and car parts. In recent years, America has become JLR's biggest single market, with about a quarter of the vehicles it makes shipped across the Atlantic. And unlike many of its rivals, JLR does not have a factory in the US that it can use to avoid the tariffs on sales to American customers. "We had, and we have, no plans to build cars in the US at this point in time," Mardell insisted later.

Eleven days after the Trump edict, JLR paused shipments to the US. The suspension lasted until May 3, days before Trump shelved plans for import taxes on cars. On May 8, Britain and America announced a trade deal under which 100,000 cars a year could be sold at a 10 per cent tariff -- although this was four times higher than the pre-2025 rate of 2.5 per cent.

And yet on May 13, JLR unveiled its best return for a decade, raking in a £2.5 billion pre-tax profit in the 12 months to March. The performance was down to bumper sales of the Slovakian-made Land Rover Defender.

In early August, Mardell announced his shock decision to step down after just three years in charge. PB Balaji, finance chief at Tata Motors, was parachuted in as his replacement with plans to take JLR "to even greater heights".

But in the weeks after, the trajectory was downwards. In August it emerged that quarterly profits plunged 49 per cent in the wake of Trump's protectionism.

Then came the cyberattack.

'They can't give us a timeline'

David Bailey, professor of business economics at Birmingham University, said it is hard to overestimate the impact of last Sunday's breach. "This is pretty catastrophic for JLR. It comes hot on the heels of concerns about the electric vehicle transition and being hit by Trump tariffs," he argued.

"The hit to profits is going to be in the region of £5 million a day. And the longer this goes on, the worse this hit will be -- and the greater the likelihood that customers will go elsewhere."

But a rapid resolution seems unlikely. "They can't give us a timeline," said the boss of one big JLR dealer.

Switching everything off before turning it back on again is easier said than done, and in the meantime, dealerships are forced into workarounds using third-party technology. Some work can now be done in the dealers as a result. But if there was a need for a major recall, for instance, it would be hard to get the message to customers.

JLR is offering updates every few hours to its retailers and suppliers. There have been "slow incremental improvements", said one. But it is clear that Britain's biggest carmaker has been poleaxed by the cyberattack. Responsibility has been claimed by a group called "Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters". The organisation is affiliated with a hacker collective known as The Com, which is connected to Scattered Spider, the group behind the hacks of M&S, Harrods and the Co-op.

"They haven't [made] a car all week," said Roberts at Evtec. "And because of no production and the complete loss of the systems, we're all sort of manually driven at the moment. So the biggest suppliers in the West Midlands have already laid off their workforces temporarily."

Roberts added: "Quite a lot of them were told to report back on Tuesday, unless we give them updated information early next week ... And we're now waiting on JLR's feedback so the supply chain can react to it."

The feedback is unlikely to be positive, according to those close to JLR. Speculation is already building that production will be hit for "most of September". Company insiders worry it could be worse than that.

Roberts already fears that there is no quick fix. "Imagine trying to start up the Solihull assembly line on a brand new IT reset system. Every vehicle on that line has got its own Vin [vehicle identification number]. Every vehicle's got its own configuration," he said.

"You almost have to cleanse the line and start again, or you try to manually finish off these vehicles. And that's that, a big old process. That's not easy. If you've got to reset the whole system, it won't be a smooth start."

Andy Palmer, former operating chief at Nissan and ex-chief executive of Aston Martin, agrees. "Getting back up and running is really, really hard because you've got all of those sequence parts that you need to try to reorder into something that you can put together," he said.

The longer it takes to recover, the worse the financial pain. But move too quickly, and JLR could miss something and leave the door open for the hackers to return.

The hope is that the government will step in with financial support to cushion the impact on JLR's suppliers.

Fukushima precedent

There is a precedent in this regard. In 2011, ministers provided £150 million of funding to the automotive supply chain as Nissan and Honda's UK production lines ground to a standstill following the earthquake in Japan that caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

"I don't know the JLR cost base, but you lose a few hours on a production line ... that's an enormous amount," said Palmer. "It runs into billions, really, really quickly. So, more than any single company can withstand by themselves. So, yes, you probably end up with some form of [state] bailout."

The government said: "We are working closely with JLR to understand the challenges they and their suppliers are facing following this incident. We recognise the vital importance of JLR to the UK automotive sector, and particularly to the West Midlands and north west.

"We are continuing to monitor the situation closely and the National Cyber Security Centre is working with Jaguar Land Rover to provide support in relation to this incident."

In the meantime, it is not all doom and gloom. Sarah Hutchins runs the biggest independent supplier of Jaguar and Land Rover surplus stock in the UK from her base in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire.

"We can't access the parts catalogue," she explained. "It's very difficult to be able to answer customers' questions because you can't get access to the database. But equally, it's probably working a bit in our favour because where customers can't buy from the dealers at the moment, they're coming our way."

Even the previously optimistic government officials will have to concede that this is the thinnest of silver linings for a company and a sprawling supply chain that has been paralysed.