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    Jaguar
    Jaguar
    Jaguar
    Ebook93 pages46 minutes

    Jaguar

    By Graham Robson

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    About this ebook

    Sir William Lyons enjoyed a seemingly unstoppable rise to fame and fortune in the motor industry, and the Jaguar brand that he introduced became world-famous. Yet it did not happen overnight. In the 1920s he was in Blackpool, styling motorcycle sidecars, and in the 1930s in Coventry developing the SS motor car, with the stand-alone Jaguar company not appearing until 1945. The company's success was aided by the amazing new XK engine of 1948, by motor racing success at Le Mans, and by the stunning styling of cars like the XK120, the Mk 2 saloons and the extraordinary E-Type. Graham Robson here explores the history of the Jaguar company and its many classic marques.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateSep 20, 2012
    ISBN9780747812609
    Jaguar
    Author

    Graham Robson

    Graham Robson, a motoring writer and historian with many awards to his credit, has always been close to the Healey family. He has published numerous motoring titles and commentates at leading events. He wrote The Ford Cortina, Austin-Healey and Jaguar for Shire

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      Book preview

      Jaguar - Graham Robson

      IN THE BEGINNING: SIDECARS AND REBODIED SPECIALS

      THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN the Jaguar car’s original ancestors – motorcycle sidecars built in Blackpool – and today’s luxury automobiles, is total. The story of Jaguar is a fascinating one that combines elegant styling, ambition, high performance and commercial good sense.

      Although the name ‘Jaguar’ was not applied to a car until 1935, the machinery that inspired it first took shape in 1922. William Lyons, born and raised in Blackpool, started work for Crossley Motors in Manchester in 1918 and then dabbled with various short-term jobs in Blackpool, before meeting William Walmsley. The two young men soon got together, in 1922, to start producing motorcycle sidecars in tiny numbers, and before long it fell to Lyons to bring artistic flair to the shaping of new products. Building up to ten sidecars every week, the new concern was called the Swallow Sidecar Company – which is why the first cars that they were soon to start producing were known as ‘SS’ machines.

      Over the next few years the business blossomed. First SS produced simple bodies, for fixing to other companies’ chassis; then they began to make their own chassis, and still the demand grew. By 1926 Lyons (who always seemed to have more entrepreneurial ambition than Walmsley) was looking to go beyond sidecars: they began to deal in coachbuilding, repainting, retrimming or otherwise modifying other companies’ cars, and they soon set about designing complete car bodies of their own.

      The first SS-bodied car – an Austin Seven – followed in 1927, having altogether sleeker lines than the machines being produced by Austin itself at Longbridge. First seen by the public in the specialist motoring press, in May 1927, the cute little aluminium-bodied Austin Seven was available as an open-top two-seater for £175, or as a closed coupé for £185. The Autocar suggested that ‘The latest, and certainly one of the most attractive-looking bodies arranged for this car, is the Swallow saloon-coupé, built by the Swallow Sidecar and Coachbuilding Co…’

      Business was brisk from the start, but Swallow had an immediate problem in that their cramped little works at Blackpool could not produce more than two cars a day, the varnishing shop being the limiting factor. By comparison, the company was already building up to one hundred sidecar bodies every week.

      Sir William Lyons, 1901–86, the founder of Jaguar.

      Lyons did not allow this to hold the company back, for he was thinking far into the future. Only months after the Austin Seven Swallow had been shown, the company produced its second offering, which was significantly larger (and therefore more costly): the Morris-Cowley Swallow, which sold for £210. The problem of space, however, soon came to a head when Lyons was introduced to Henlys Ltd, the big London-based motor traders, for they placed an immediate order for five hundred cars, and demanded delivery at the rate of twenty cars every week. Furthermore, they wanted to see a saloon version of the original style produced as well, which meant more work for Lyons, who was now becoming the styling genius he would remain for more than forty years.

      Soon the Blackpool premises were bursting at the seams, and the tight-knit little workforce was working huge amounts of overtime to keep up with demand. Lyons and Walmsley then concluded that they would have to move away from Blackpool. The centre of Britain’s motor industry at that time was unquestionably Coventry, and Lyons spent much time there searching for new premises. A suitable site was eventually found in the shape of a disused shell-filling factory in Whitmore Park, Foleshill, Coventry.

      This was the style of the original Swallow sidecars for which William Lyons was responsible.

      When the factory was ready in 1928, the company invited all its Blackpool staff to move south (which most of them did), took on more workers in Coventry itself, and was up and running only days after the complex move of cars, part-built cars, components and equipment

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