Jaguar Cars Ltd. is a British luxury car manufacturer, headquartered in Whitley, Coventry, England. A wholly owned subsidiary of the Indian company Tata Motors Ltd., it is operated as part of the Jaguar Land Rover business.
Jaguar was founded as the Swallow Sidecar Company by Sir William Lyons in 1922, originally making motorcycle sidecars before evolving into passenger cars. The name was changed to Jaguar after the Second World War to avoid the unfavourable connotations of the SS initials. Following a merger with the British Motor Corporation in 1968, subsequently subsumed by Leyland, which itself was later nationalised as British Leyland, Jaguar was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1984, and became a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index until it was acquired by Ford in 1989.Jaguar has, in recent years, manufactured cars for the Prime Minister, the most recent delivery being of a XJ model on 11 May 2010. The company also holds Royal Warrants from HM Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Prince Charles.
Jaguar cars today are designed in Jaguar Land Rover’s engineering centres at the Whitley plant in Coventry and at their Gaydon site in Warwickshire, and are manufactured in Jaguar’s Castle Bromwich assembly plant near Birmingham.
Brief History Of Jaguar
The Swallow Sidecar Company was founded in 1922 by two motorcycle enthusiasts, William Lyons and William Walmsley. In 1935 the SS Jaguar name first appeared on a 2.5 litre saloon, sports models of which were the SS 90 and SS 100.
Cash was short after the Second World War and Jaguar sold to Rubery Owen the plant and premises of Motor Panels, a pressed steel body manufacturing company which had been acquired in the late 1930s when growth prospects had seemed more secure. Nevertheless, Jaguar achieved relative commercial success with their early post war models; times were also tough for other Coventry-based auto-makers and the company was able to buy from John Black’s Standard Motor Company the plant on which Standard had built the six-cylinder engines it had been supplying to Jaguar.
Jaguar made its name by producing a series of extremely eye-catching sports cars, such as the XK 120 of 1949, developed into XK 140 and XK 150, and the E Type (or XKE in the US) of 1961. These were all successful and embodied Lyons’ mantra of “value for money”. They were also highly successful on the international stage of motorsport, a path followed in the 1950s to prove the engineering integrity of the company’s products.
Jaguar’s sales slogan for years was “Grace, Space, Pace”, a mantra epitomised by the record sales achieved by the MK VII, IX, Mks I and II saloons and later the XJ6.
The core of Bill Lyon’s success following the Second World War was the Twin Cam Straight Six Cylinder Engine—a design conceived pre-War and realised while design staff at the Coventry plant were dividing their time between fire-watching (Coventry being a main industrial centre was a prime target for the Luftwaffe) and designing the new power plant.
To place this in context, benchmark for pre-war racing and competition engines was the “Double Knocker”, or Twin Cam engine: Jaguar’s new engine was a hemispherical cross-flow cylinder head with valves inclined originally at 60 degrees (inlet) 45 degrees (exhaust) and later standardised to 90 degrees for both inlet and exhaust.
As octane ratings of fuel were relatively low from 1948 onwards, three different pistons configurations were offered: Domed (High Octane), Flat (Medium Octane), and Dished (Low Octane).
The main designer, William “Bill” Heynes, ably assisted by Walter “Wally” Hassan was determined to design the Twin OHC unit. Bill Lyons agreed over misgivings from Hassan. The sheer concept of applying what had hitherto been considered a racing or low-volume and cantankerous engine, needing constant fettling into reasonable volume production everyday saloon cars was brave.
And the subsequent engine was the mainstay powerplant of Jaguar, used in the revolutionary XK 120, Mk VII Saloon, Mk I and II Saloons and XK 140 and I50 as well as the stunning E Type, itself a development from the race winning and Le Mans conquering C and D Type Sports Racing cars refined as the short-lived XKSS, a road-legal D Type.
Few engines have demonstrated such ubiquity and longevity: the Twin OHC “XK Engine”, as it came to be known, was used in the Jaguar XJ6 saloon from 1969 through 1992, and employed in a J60 variant as the power plant in such diverse vehicles as Scorpion tanks, the Scimitar armoured personnel carrier, Fox Milan reconnaissance and Fox Scout armoured vehicles, the Ferret, and the Stonefield four wheel drive all-terrain lorry. Properly maintained the standard production XK Engine would achieve 200,000 miles of useful life.
Two of the proudest moments in Jaguar’s long history in motor sport involved winning the Le Mans 24 hours race, firstly in 1951 and again in 1953. The 1955 victory was somewhat overshadowed by the tragic events that occurred. Later in the hands of the Scottish racing team Ecurie Ecosse two more wins were added in 1956/57.
In spite of such a performance orientation it was always Lyons’ intention to build the business by producing world-class sporting saloons in larger numbers possible than the sports car market could support. Jaguar secured financial stability and a reputation for excellence with a series of elegantly styled luxury saloons that included the 3 & 3½ litre cars, the Mark VII, VIII, and IX, the compact Mark I and 2, and the XJ6 and XJ12. All were deemed very good values, with comfortable rides, good handling, high performance, and great style.
Combined with the trend-setting XK 120, XK 140, and XK 150 series of sports car, and nonpareil E-Type, Jaguar’s elan as a prestige motorcar manufacturer had few rivals. The company’s post-War achievements are the more remarkable considering both the shortages which rove Britain, raw materials still being allocated by the Ministry of Supply, and the state of metalurigcal development of the era.
In 1951 Jaguar leased Browns Lane from the The Daimler Motor Company Limited, which would quickly become its principal plant. Daimler – not to be confused with Daimler-Benz or Daimler AG – was purchased outright from the holding company BSA in 1960. From the late 1960s, its marque was used as a brand name for Jaguar’s most luxurious saloons.
