History

Jaguar: The Complete History

The history of Jaguar from the Swallow Sidecar Company in 1922 to the end of the E-Type and the Lyons era in 1975, with a shorter account of the company since. Fully sourced.

Introduction

Jaguar began in 1922 as a two-man sidecar business in Blackpool. Within forty years it had won Le Mans five times, built the XK120 and the E-Type, and was exporting most of what it made. This is the story of how that happened, told chronologically, with the deepest attention on the years from 1922 to the mid-1970s, when Sir William Lyons ran the company and the E-Type was in production.

The later chapters, from British Leyland to Ford, Tata and today's all-electric reinvention, are told more briefly. They matter because they explain what became of the company Lyons built.

How this history is sourced. Every date and figure here has been checked against more than one source wherever possible. The principal sources are the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust's own records and biographies, period reports in Motor Sport, Grace's Guide, AROnline and the owners' clubs. Where respected sources disagree, the text says so rather than picking a number at random. Corrections are welcome through the contact page.

1922 to 1945: from Swallow sidecars to the first Jaguar

Two neighbours in Blackpool

William Lyons was born in Blackpool on 4 September 1901. His father, also William, was an Irish musician who ran a music shop selling and repairing pianos. After school Lyons served part of an engineering apprenticeship at Crossley Motors in Manchester, then sold cars for a Blackpool dealer. He was a keen motorcyclist.

In 1921 the Walmsley family moved into 23 King Edward Avenue, Blackpool. Lyons lived next door at number 24. William Walmsley, ten years older and a wounded veteran of the Cheshire Yeomanry, was building motorcycle sidecars: elegant, octagonal aluminium bodies on an ash frame, shaped like a bullet. Lyons ordered one, saw the potential, and proposed a partnership.

The Swallow Sidecar Company, 1922

The business started in September 1922, the month Lyons turned 21. Each of their fathers guaranteed £500 of a £1,000 bank overdraft. Lyons later described the beginning as "three men and a boy". The partnership deed was signed on 21 November 1922 and backdated to 11 September.

The roles were clear from the start. Walmsley ran the making; Lyons ran the selling, the advertising and the money. They worked from 5 Bloomfield Road, then from 1926 a larger building in Cocker Street. Some of the earliest staff stayed for decades: Harry Teather joined in 1923 aged 14 and became purchasing director, and Alice Fenton, who joined as office junior in 1925, became the company's first female director.

Coachbuilding: the Austin Seven Swallow

In 1927 the partners moved from sidecars into car bodies. Their Austin Seven Swallow, announced in May 1927, put a stylish two-seater body with a distinctive rounded nose on the humble Austin chassis, at a price ordinary buyers could reach. The London dealer Henlys placed an order for 500, with the first delivery in January 1928.

Swallow bodies followed on Morris, Fiat, Standard, Swift and Wolseley chassis. The Wolseley Hornet Swallow of 1931 was Lyons' first six-cylinder sports car. The pattern that would define Jaguar was already visible: striking style, sound mechanical parts bought in, and a price that looked like a mistake.

Coventry, 1928

Blackpool was too far from the motor industry and too small. In October 1928 Swallow leased part of a former First World War shell-filling factory at Foleshill, Coventry, and bought the freehold a year later. Only about 30 staff moved south. Lyons recalled output rising "from 12 a week to 50 before Christmas".

SS: the first cars of their own

Lyons wanted more than bodies on other firms' chassis. John Black of the Standard Motor Company agreed to build a special low chassis exclusively for Swallow, with Standard engines. The result was the SS1, launched at the London Motor Show at Olympia in October 1931, alongside the smaller SS2.

The SS1 was long, low and dramatic, and it cost £310. A newspaper described it as the car with the "£1,000 look". What "SS" stood for was never settled: Standard Swallow and Swallow Special were both suggested, and Lyons himself said he did not know.

S.S. Cars Ltd was registered in October 1933. Walmsley, content with the business as it was and unwilling to see it go public, resigned in November 1934, and Lyons bought his shares. The company was floated on the Stock Exchange in January 1935, with Lyons as chairman and managing director at 33.

The Jaguar name, 1935

In April 1935 William Heynes joined from Humber as chief engineer. Harry Weslake redesigned the Standard six-cylinder engine with overhead valves, lifting it to around 100 bhp. The new range needed a new name.

On 21 September 1935, at a trade lunch at the Mayfair Hotel in London, Lyons showed the SS Jaguar 2½-litre saloon. Guests were asked to guess its price; their average guess was £632. The real price was £395.

Lyons later said the name was chosen in memory of the Armstrong Siddeley Jaguar aero engine, with permission from Armstrong Siddeley. A popular story, that a publicist drew up a list of animal names and Lyons picked Jaguar from it, appears only in secondary sources.

The SS100 and the 1930s range

The SS Jaguar 100 two-seater, launched alongside the saloon, became the defining sports car of the decade. The 2½-litre car gave 100 bhp; the 3½-litre version of 1938 gave 125 bhp and cost £445. Only around 310 were built, and the leaping cat mascot first appeared on it.

The cars soon proved themselves. Tommy Wisdom, with his wife Elsie navigating, won a Coupe des Glaciers in the 1936 International Alpine Trial in the SS100 known as "Old No. 8". J. Harrop's SS Jaguar made the best performance of the 1937 RAC Rally, and SS Cars took the manufacturers' team prize.

In 1938 the saloons and dropheads moved from wood-framed coachbuilt bodies to all-steel construction, a bold step for a small British maker. The same year Walter Hassan, formerly of Bentley, joined as chief experimental engineer, and Claude Baily came from Morris Engines. The engineering team that would create the XK engine was now in place.

War work and the XK engine

During the Second World War the factory stopped making cars. It repaired Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bombers and made parts for the Wellington, Stirling, Lancaster, Spitfire, Mosquito and Meteor. It built more than 30,000 lightweight trailers, nearly 16,000 parachute trailers and over 10,000 sidecars.

On Sunday nights Lyons, Heynes, Hassan and Baily took their turn fire-watching on the factory roof. They used the time to plan a new engine. Experimental units followed: the XG, a four-cylinder engine tested in 1943, and the XF, a twin-overhead-camshaft four first run in November 1944. The twin-cam layout was chosen. It became the XK engine.

From SS to Jaguar, 1945

After the war, the initials SS carried an unbearable association. At the company's annual meeting on 23 March 1945, shareholders agreed to rename S.S. Cars Ltd as Jaguar Cars Ltd. Lyons explained that "unlike S.S. the name Jaguar is distinctive and cannot be connected or confused with any similar foreign name". The sidecar business that had started it all was sold in early 1946.

Lyons himself could not draw. He styled his cars by eye, working with craftsmen who built full-size panels on wooden frames until the line looked right. Colleagues described him as charismatic, fair and autocratic, with a tight grip on cost. Those habits would shape everything Jaguar did for the next thirty years.

1945 to 1955: Jaguar Cars, the XK engine and Le Mans

Export or die

Jaguar Cars Ltd restarted production with its pre-war designs, sold simply as the 1½, 2½ and 3½-litre saloons. The name "Mark IV" was only applied to them later. Steel was rationed by the government, and allocations went to firms that earned dollars abroad. Jaguar committed itself to export, and by 1950 more than 80% of its output was going overseas.

The Mark V saloon followed in October 1948, with independent front suspension and hydraulic brakes. Around 10,500 were built before production ended in 1951. It was a stopgap: the engine the team had planned on the factory roof was nearly ready.

The XK engine

The XK was a twin-overhead-camshaft straight six of 3,442 cc. A twin-cam engine in a production car was then the preserve of racing machines and very expensive exotics. Heynes, Hassan and Baily, with Weslake advising on the cylinder head, produced an engine that was powerful, smooth, handsome under the bonnet, and capable of being built in volume.

Its first public success came in a borrowed car. In September 1948 Goldie Gardner's streamlined MG record car ran on a Jaguar-built two-litre four-cylinder version of the engine on the Jabbeke highway in Belgium, reaching about 176 mph. The four-cylinder engine never reached production. The six did, and it powered every Jaguar of the next two decades.

XK120: the show car that became a legend

The XK120 was unveiled at the Earls Court Motor Show in October 1948. It was meant to be a showcase for the new engine, with perhaps 200 built with hand-made aluminium bodies. Demand made that plan impossible.

The name promised 120 mph, and Jaguar proved it in public. On 30 May 1949, test driver Ron "Soapy" Sutton took a standard XK120 down the Jabbeke highway at an average of 132.6 mph over the flying mile with the windscreen removed, and 126.4 mph with the hood and screen up. Motor Sport called it the highest speed yet reached by a production car.

Production of aluminium-bodied cars began in mid-1949. Around 240 were built before steel bodies took over in April 1950, allowing output to rise. A fixed-head coupe followed in 1951 and a drophead coupe in 1953. By the time production ended in 1954, just over 12,000 XK120s had been built, the great majority for export.

The XK120 won on its first outing, Leslie Johnson taking the production car race at Silverstone in August 1949. At Dundrod in September 1950, the young Stirling Moss drove Tommy Wisdom's XK120 to win the Tourist Trophy in torrential rain, his first major international victory. At Montlhéry in August 1952 an XK120 coupe, LWK 707, ran for seven days and nights at an average of just over 100 mph, covering more than 16,800 miles.

In America the XK120 became a Hollywood car. Clark Gable bought one of the first left-hand-drive cars in 1949 through Charles Hornburg's Los Angeles business. Max Hoffman in New York was Jaguar's importer from around 1948.

Mark VII and Browns Lane

The Mark VII saloon, launched at Earls Court in October 1950, put the XK engine into a large, fast, comfortable car aimed squarely at America. Motor Sport called it "the sensation of the Show". It could reach over 100 mph, and from 1952 export cars could be ordered with an automatic gearbox. With the 1954 Mark VII M, more than 30,000 were built.

The Foleshill works could not cope. In 1950 Jaguar agreed to lease the former Daimler No. 2 shadow factory at Browns Lane, Allesley, on the edge of Coventry. The move was made department by department and was not complete until November 1952. Browns Lane would be Jaguar's home for more than fifty years.

The team that won Le Mans

The people who would define Jaguar's racing years arrived in this period. Frank "Lofty" England joined as service manager in 1946 and became the team manager behind its Le Mans wins. Malcolm Sayer, an aerodynamicist from the Bristol Aeroplane Company, was interviewed in 1950 and joined in early 1951. Norman Dewis came from Lea-Francis as chief test engineer around the start of 1952.

Three XK120s ran at Le Mans in 1950 as a trial. The Johnson and Hadley car was running high in the order when its clutch failed in the 21st hour. The lesson was clear: to win, Jaguar needed a lighter, more aerodynamic car.

C-Type: the first Le Mans win, 1951

The XK120C, soon called the C-Type, used the XK engine and running gear in a light tubular frame under an aerodynamic aluminium body shaped by Sayer. At Le Mans on 23 and 24 June 1951, Peter Walker and Peter Whitehead won by nine laps. Moss set the lap record before his car retired. It was Jaguar's first Le Mans victory, at the first attempt with a purpose-built car.

Jaguar then worked with Dunlop on disc brakes, a technology from aviation. In the 1952 Mille Miglia Moss ran a disc-braked C-Type with Dewis as his passenger, until steering damage ended their run. On 29 June 1952 Moss won a sports car race at Reims, the first race win for a car using disc brakes.

The 1952 Le Mans was a failure. A hurried new long-nose body and a revised cooling system overheated, and all three works cars retired early. In 1953 Jaguar returned with disc brakes and triple Weber carburettors. Tony Rolt and Duncan Hamilton won, with Moss and Walker second and another C-Type fourth. It was the first Le Mans won at an average of more than 100 mph.

D-Type and XK140, 1954

For 1954 Sayer and the engineering team produced the D-Type, with an aluminium monocoque centre section, a front frame carrying the engine, and a dry-sump version of the XK. Its tail fin and smooth body were the product of wind-tunnel testing. At its first Le Mans in June 1954, Rolt and Hamilton finished second to a much larger Ferrari, about 90 seconds behind after 24 hours. A D-Type won the Reims 12 Hours three weeks later.

The XK140 replaced the XK120 in late 1954, with more power, rack-and-pinion steering and more room inside. The road cars and the racing cars now shared one engine, one design team and one reputation. The next five years would test all three.

1955 to 1961: triumph, tragedy and the compact saloon

Le Mans, 1955

For 1955 the D-Type was lengthened, with a longer nose and revised engine giving close to 300 bhp. On the Mulsanne straight it could exceed 190 mph. The works cars faced Mercedes-Benz and Ferrari in what promised to be one of the great races.

At about 6.26pm on 11 June, near the end of lap 35, Mike Hawthorn's leading Jaguar moved across to enter the pits and braked. Lance Macklin's Austin-Healey swerved to avoid it, into the path of Pierre Levegh's Mercedes. The Mercedes was launched into the crowd opposite the pits. Levegh and more than 80 spectators were killed, and well over 100 were injured. It remains the worst accident in the history of motor racing.

The organisers kept the race running, fearing that stopping it would cause panic among the huge crowd. Mercedes withdrew its cars in the night. Hawthorn and Ivor Bueb won for Jaguar. The official inquiry found no driver responsible, but Macklin never accepted that verdict, and the question of who caused the accident is still argued over. In the aftermath several countries banned circuit racing; Switzerland's ban lasted until 2022.

For Lyons, June 1955 brought a personal loss as well. His only son, John, was driving a Jaguar support car to Le Mans when he was killed in a head-on collision with a US military vehicle in France. There was now no son to succeed him at Jaguar.

The 2.4 saloon: Jaguar's first monocoque

In September 1955 Jaguar announced the 2.4 Litre saloon, the car later known as the Mark 1. It was the first Jaguar built without a separate chassis, using a unitary steel body made by Pressed Steel. It brought Jaguar style and the XK engine, in a short-stroke 2,483 cc version, to a smaller and more affordable car. The 3.4 Litre followed in 1957, aimed at America, and disc brakes became available late that year.

Sir William, 1956

Lyons was knighted in the 1956 New Year Honours for services to British industry and the export performance of the company. That January, Ronnie Adams, Frank Biggar and Derek Johnston won the Monte Carlo Rally in a Mark VII M.

At Le Mans in July 1956, the Edinburgh team Ecurie Ecosse won with a D-Type driven by Ron Flockhart and Ninian Sanderson. The works team had a poor race. In October Jaguar announced its withdrawal from works racing. It continued to support private teams, above all Ecurie Ecosse.

The Browns Lane fire, 1957

On the evening of 12 February 1957, fire broke out in the tyre stores at Browns Lane. It spread through about a quarter of the factory, including stores, the test department, parts of the assembly lines and the despatch area. Several hundred cars were destroyed. Among them were cars being completed as the XKSS, a road-going version of the D-Type; only 16 XKSS were finished.

Lyons and his workforce pushed cars out of the burning buildings. The response afterwards became part of Jaguar legend. Within 36 hours the factory was working in a limited way, and production was under way again within two weeks.

Le Mans, 1957: the fifth victory

In June 1957 Ecurie Ecosse D-Types finished first and second at Le Mans, Flockhart and Bueb ahead of Sanderson and Lawrence. Private D-Types took third, fourth and sixth. It was Jaguar's fifth Le Mans win, following 1951, 1953, 1955 and 1956, and its third in a row.

XK150 and the big saloons

The XK150 arrived in May 1957 with disc brakes, first as a fixed-head and drophead coupe and then, in 1958, as an open two-seater. More powerful 3.4 S and 3.8 versions followed. Around 9,400 were built before production ended in 1960, making it the last of the XK line.

The Mark VIII of 1956 refined the big saloon, and the Mark IX of October 1958 brought the 3.8-litre engine, four-wheel disc brakes and power steering as standard.

Saloon racing and the loss of Hawthorn

The compact saloons were formidable on the track. In the first British Saloon Car Championship in 1958, Tommy Sopwith's 3.4 tied on points for the title before losing a run-off.

Mike Hawthorn won the Formula One world championship in 1958 and retired at the end of the season. On 22 January 1959, aged 29, he was killed when his own Jaguar 3.4 crashed on the Guildford bypass in heavy rain.

The Mark 2, 1959

The Mark 2, launched on 2 October 1959, transformed the compact saloon. Larger windows, a wider rear track and four-wheel disc brakes as standard made it more modern, safer and better-looking. With the 3.8-litre engine it could reach 125 mph. The Mark 2 became a symbol of the 1960s: favoured by businessmen, racing drivers and police forces, who used it on the new motorways.

Buying Daimler, 1960

By 1960 Jaguar had outgrown Browns Lane, and the government refused permission to extend it. Lyons' answer was to buy the Daimler Company from BSA, mainly for its large factory at Radford in Coventry. The deal was agreed with BSA's Jack Sangster in May and completed in June 1960, for a total of about £3.25 million. Radford became Jaguar's engine plant, and Daimler's name would soon appear on luxury versions of Jaguar's saloons.

The acquisition also brought Edward Turner's Daimler V8 engines and the glass-fibre Daimler SP250 sports car. In 1960 Jaguar built more than 20,000 cars in a year for the first time.

Towards the E-Type

Behind closed doors, a successor to the D-Type and XK150 was taking shape. Heynes set the brief and Sayer drew the body. A prototype, E1A, was built in 1957 with an aluminium structure and independent rear suspension. A second prototype, E2A, ran at Le Mans in 1960 for the American Briggs Cunningham, retiring with engine trouble. The production car was almost ready.

1961 to 1975: the E-Type years

Geneva, March 1961

The E-Type was revealed to the press on 15 March 1961, at the Parc des Eaux-Vives in Geneva. The launch car, the gunmetal fixed-head coupe 9600 HP, had been driven overnight from Coventry by Jaguar's PR manager Bob Berry and arrived with minutes to spare.

Demand for demonstration drives was so great that Lyons called for a second car. Norman Dewis was at the MIRA test track with 77 RW, the first roadster. He was sent home, handed a ferry ticket, and drove through the night to Geneva. Lyons greeted him with: "Thought you'd do it, Dewis."

The E-Type looked like nothing else on the road, and the price made it extraordinary. In Britain the roadster cost £1,480 before tax and the coupe £1,550, a fraction of the price of an Aston Martin or Ferrari. The road testers achieved the promised 150 mph, or within a whisker of it, though the press cars were later admitted to have been carefully prepared. Road & Track called it "sensational". A remark often attributed to Enzo Ferrari, that it was the most beautiful car ever made, has never been fully confirmed.

The E-Type develops

The original 3.8-litre E-Type was followed in October 1964 by the 4.2, with more torque and a new all-synchromesh gearbox. A longer 2+2 coupe arrived in 1966. In 1963 Jaguar built a small run of Lightweight E-Types for racing, with aluminium bodies and fuel-injected engines; a dozen were completed.

American safety and emissions rules began to shape the car from 1967. The transitional "Series 1½" cars lost their glass headlamp covers, and US versions lost power to new carburettors. The Series 2 of 1968 and 1969, designed to meet the American rules, brought wrap-around bumpers and larger lights below them.

Mark X, S-Type and 420: a crowded saloon range

The Mark X, launched at Earls Court in October 1961, was a very large luxury saloon aimed at America. It was the first Jaguar saloon with independent rear suspension, a wider version of the E-Type's. It never reached its sales targets. Renamed 420G in 1966, it was built until 1970.

The compact saloon range grew complicated. The S-Type of 1963 added independent rear suspension and a longer tail to the Mark 2 body. The 420 of 1966 gave the S-Type a new nose and the 4.2-litre engine, and its Daimler Sovereign twin brought badge-engineered luxury. The Daimler 2.5 V8 of 1962 put the Daimler V8 into a Mark 2 body. In 1967 the Mark 2 itself became the cheaper 240 and 340.

At one point Jaguar was offering five different saloon families. Lyons had a plan to replace them all with one car.

Growing the group

Lyons expanded Jaguar beyond cars. He bought Guy Motors, the Wolverhampton truck and bus maker, in 1961, Coventry Climax, the engine maker, in 1963, and the diesel engine firm Henry Meadows in the mid-1960s. Coventry Climax brought back Walter Hassan, and with him Harry Mundy, both of whom would be crucial to Jaguar's V12.

The merger, 1966

In 1965 the British Motor Corporation bought Pressed Steel, which made Jaguar's bodies. Jaguar's supply now depended on a rival. Lyons was also in his mid-sixties, with no son to succeed him.

On 11 July 1966 Lyons agreed to merge Jaguar with BMC, forming British Motor Holdings. Lofty England became deputy managing director the same year.

The independence did not last. In January 1968 BMH merged with the Leyland Motor Corporation, run by Sir Donald Stokes, to form British Leyland. Jaguar was now one part of the world's sixth-largest vehicle maker.

XJ6, 1968

The XJ6 was launched on 26 September 1968. Lyons wanted a saloon with the comfort of a limousine and the handling of an E-Type, and he got it. It had 2.8 and 4.2-litre XK engines, and the 4.2 cost £2,258 at launch. It replaced the 340, the S-Type and the 420, and it won Car magazine's Car of the Year award.

Lyons used an early XJ6, PHP 42G, as his own car for its first two years. More than 98,000 Series 1 XJs were built, including Daimler and V12 versions.

The V12

Jaguar's V12 had its roots in the XJ13, a mid-engined Le Mans prototype built in 1965 and 1966 with a four-camshaft V12. The XJ13 never raced. Hassan and Mundy turned the racing design into a smoother, simpler single-overhead-camshaft road engine of 5.3 litres.

The V12 was launched in the E-Type Series 3 on 29 March 1971. It gave 272 bhp and made the E-Type a fast, refined grand tourer, now built only as a roadster and a 2+2. In Britain the V12 roadster cost £3,123. The engine went into the XJ12 saloon and the Daimler Double-Six in 1972, which Jaguar promoted as the fastest saloon in the world.

On 21 January 1971, while being filmed for the V12 launch, the XJ13 crashed heavily at MIRA with Norman Dewis driving. He was unhurt, and the car was later rebuilt. Malcolm Sayer, who had shaped the C-Type, D-Type, E-Type and XJ13, died in 1970.

Lyons retires

Lyons stepped down as managing director in 1967 and retired as chairman in 1972, having run the company for fifty years. He retired to Wappenbury Hall in Warwickshire. Lofty England succeeded him, and was in turn succeeded by Geoffrey Robinson around the turn of 1973 and 1974. Walter Hassan retired in 1972.

The last E-Type, 1974

E-Type production ended in June 1974 with a final run of 50 V12 roadsters, 49 in black and one in British Racing Green, each with a plaque bearing Lyons' signature. The very last, HDU 555N, was built on 12 June 1974 and kept by Jaguar; it is now in the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust collection.

Around 72,500 E-Types were built in fourteen years. Motor Sport reported in 1975 that 85% had been exported, and that 49,032 had gone to the United States.

British Leyland and the Ryder Report, 1975

British Leyland was in financial crisis. On 26 March 1975 the government received Sir Don Ryder's report, which recommended heavy investment and a single integrated car business. The government became the majority shareholder, and British Leyland was in effect nationalised. Jaguar was absorbed into the Leyland Cars division. The leaping cat was removed from the factory gates.

Geoffrey Robinson resigned in 1975, unable to accept the plan to merge the marques. Inside Jaguar, engineering chief Bob Knight led a quiet campaign of non-cooperation that kept Jaguar's engineering independent. It was the one part of the Ryder plan never carried out.

On 10 September 1975 Jaguar launched the XJ-S at the Frankfurt Motor Show, the V12 grand tourer that replaced the E-Type. Sayer had begun its shape before his death, and Jaguar's in-house stylists finished it. It marked the end of the era that Lyons, Heynes, Sayer and the men on the factory roof had begun thirty years earlier.

1975 to today: decline, revival and reinvention

The British Leyland years

The late 1970s were Jaguar's lowest point. Build quality suffered, strikes were frequent, and the company had little control over its own future. Michael Edwardes became British Leyland's chief executive in 1977. The Pininfarina-revised XJ Series 3 of March 1979 was handsome, but its launch was marred by quality problems.

John Egan and independence, 1980 to 1989

In April 1980 John Egan arrived to run Jaguar, and found the workforce on strike at the gates. He cut the workforce by around a third, confronted the quality problems and turned the company round. The XJ-S gained the more efficient HE V12 in 1981 and the new 3.6-litre AJ6 engine in 1983. In 1984 Tom Walkinshaw's TWR team won the European Touring Car Championship in an XJ-S, including the Spa 24 Hours.

Jaguar was privatised in the summer of 1984, its shares heavily oversubscribed. Sir William Lyons died at Wappenbury Hall on 8 February 1985, aged 83, having seen his company independent again. The XJ40 saloon followed in October 1986.

Jaguar also returned to Le Mans. In 1988 the TWR-run XJR-9LM, driven by Andy Wallace, Jan Lammers and Johnny Dumfries, ended Porsche's seven-year winning run to give Jaguar its sixth Le Mans victory, 31 years after its fifth. The XJR-12LM won again in 1990.

Ford, 1989 to 2008

In November 1989 the government lifted its protective "golden share" early, and Ford bought Jaguar for £1.6 billion. Under Ford, Jaguar gained investment and modern production methods. The XJ220 supercar of 1992, with a claimed 213 mph, the XK8 of 1996 with the new AJ-V8 engine, the S-Type of 1999 and the X-Type of 2001, built at Halewood, all followed. Jaguar raced in Formula One from 2000 until Ford sold the team to Red Bull at the end of 2004.

Browns Lane, Jaguar's home since the early 1950s, closed as an assembly plant in 2005. Production moved to Castle Bromwich in Birmingham.

Tata, 2008 to 2020

In June 2008 Tata Motors of India bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford for US$2.3 billion. Under designer Ian Callum, Jaguar found a new look: the XF saloon of 2007, the aluminium XJ of 2009 and the F-Type of 2012, which marked Jaguar's return to the two-seat sports car. The F-Pace of 2016 was Jaguar's first SUV.

The electric I-PACE of 2018 won both European Car of the Year and World Car of the Year in 2019. Jaguar Classic built new "continuation" Lightweight E-Types, XKSS and D-Types to complete runs planned in the 1950s and 1960s, and in 2017 showed the E-Type Zero, an electric conversion of a 1968 E-Type.

Reimagine, 2021 to today

In February 2021 Jaguar announced that it would become an all-electric luxury brand. The XE, XF and F-Type ended production at Castle Bromwich in June 2024; the last F-Type went to the Jaguar heritage collection. The last petrol Jaguar, an F-Pace, was built at Solihull on 19 December 2025.

In November 2024 Jaguar unveiled a new identity under the slogan "Copy Nothing", followed in December by the Type 00 concept car. Both divided opinion sharply. In 2025 the parent company, now called JLR, suffered a cyberattack that halted its factories for around five weeks.

Jaguar chose New York on 6 October 2026 to reveal its first car of the new era, the Type 01, an electric four-door grand tourer built at Solihull, with sales expected in 2027.

Whatever comes next, the company Lyons built from a Blackpool sidecar works remains one of the most recognised names in motoring, and the E-Type remains its most famous car.

Timeline

The Lyons era at a glance, from the founding of Swallow to the launch of the XJ-S.

Year	Event
1922	Swallow Sidecar Company founded in Blackpool
1927	Austin Seven Swallow announced
1928	Swallow moves to Coventry
1931	SS1 launched at Olympia
1935	SS Jaguar name first used; SS Cars floated
1945	Company renamed Jaguar Cars Ltd
1948	XK120 and the XK engine unveiled
1951	First Le Mans win, C-Type
1952	Move to Browns Lane completed
1953	Second Le Mans win, C-Type
1955	Le Mans win and disaster; 2.4 saloon launched
1956	Lyons knighted; Ecurie Ecosse wins Le Mans
1957	Browns Lane fire; fifth Le Mans win
1959	Mark 2 launched
1960	Jaguar buys Daimler
1961	E-Type launched at Geneva; Mark X launched
1966	Merger with BMC to form British Motor Holdings
1968	British Leyland formed; XJ6 launched
1971	V12 E-Type Series 3
1972	Lyons retires as chairman
1974	Last E-Type built
1975	Ryder Report; XJ-S launched

After 1975: privatisation in 1984, Lyons' death in 1985, Le Mans wins in 1988 and 1990, Ford ownership from 1989, Tata from 2008, and the all-electric reinvention from 2021.

Sources

The main sources opened for this history, grouped by chapter. Wikipedia was used only as a lead and cross-checked.

1922 to 1945

1945 to 1955

1955 to 1961

1961 to 1975

1975 to today