Jaguar Land Rover says a cyber-attack has "severely disrupted" vehicle production as well as its retail operation.

BBC News reports that the firm, owned by India's Tata Motors, says it took immediate action to lessen the effect of the hack and is working quickly to restart operations.

The BBC said the attack was detected while in progress on August 31, and the company shut down its IT systems in an effort to minimize the damage being done.

"JLR has been impacted by a cyber incident. We took immediate action to mitigate its impact by proactively shutting down our systems,” the automaker wrote in a statement.

"We are now working at pace to restart our global applications in a controlled manner. At this stage there is no evidence any customer data has been stolen but our retail and production activities have been severely disrupted."

The attack came at a popular time for U.K. consumers to take delivery of a new vehicle, as the latest batch of new registration plates became available on September 1.

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The Liverpool Echo reported that workers at the company's Halewood plant in Merseyside were told by email early on the morning of September 1 not to come to work, with others sent home.

It is not yet known who is responsible for the attack, but it is similar to recent crippling attacks on prominent U.K. retail businesses including the Co-op and Marks and Spencer, which sought to extort money.

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The halt in production is a fresh blow to the firm which recently revealed declining profits attributed to increasing in costs caused by U.S. tariffs.