Jaguar Cars and History

Founded in 1922, the automotive business entity now commonly known as Jaguar was originally called the Swallow Sidecar Company, with its home in the north-west coastal town of Blackpool.

The original Swallow Sidecar Company was founded by two motorbike enthusiasts, William Walmsley and William Lyons. The company changed its name in 1922, the named shortened to SS Cars Ltd, with the business now located in Coventry.

The now commonly known Jaguar Cars Ltd was formed in 1945, with the old business named of SS loosing popularity due to the Second World War.

The change of name, and the introduction of several highly success luxury cars in the fifties, saw the company stamp its mark on the market. In 1960, 38 years after Swallow Sidecar Company was founded, Jaguar Cars Ltd bought Daimler Motor Company, which was formally owned by the Birmingham Small Arms Company.

This had not been the first time the two companies' paths had crossed, with Jaguar shifting its production to the former Daimler Motor Company factory, located on Browns Lane, in the early fifties.

The purchase of Daimler Motor Company from the Birmingham Small Arms Company saw the Daimler name used as a branding name for many of Jaguars most elegantly styled cars in the sixties. 1966 saw the merger of Jaguar Cars Ltd and the British Motor Company to form the British Motor Holdings company.

2 years later saw yet another merge, with the newly created British Motor Holdings merge with Leyland, a company which had already bought Triumph and Rover, resulting in the British Leyland Motor Corporation. British Leyland Motor Corp ran into financial difficulties, leading to the official report from the UK government regarding the future of the large and powerful company.

The Ryder report, produced by Sir Don Ryder who was the head of the National enterprise Board, recommended vast capital expenditure from the government, coupled with an injection of working capital. The report outlined a fundamentally sound business, although the company had washed up on shores due to poor management and organisation structure within the company.

The nationalisation of the company was said to be in the best interest of the company, and the UK as a whole, with up to one million workers at risk if the government allowed the company to collapse.

When the Conservative party came into office, headed by Margaret Thatcher, the government's policy and philosophy shifted, with the reduction in state intervention, the increase in capitalism and free markets.

It was therefore decided that Jaguar would be floated on the stock market as a separate company, in a privatisation by the UK government.

Ford purchased Jaguar in 1999, being a part of the Premier Automotive Group. Fast forward to the summer of 2007, and Ford announced its wish to sell off Jaguar and Land Rover, with both Jaguar and Land Rover both sharing many established distribution networks.

After several companies offering interesting in purchasing Jaguar, it was declared Tata Motors of India was the preferred bidder by Ford. By early 2008 the deal had been successfully completed, with Tata now owning Jaguar, Daimler, Lanchester and Rover.

By Andy Webbed