Jaguar History – What is the Story behind the Jaguar Cars?

Jaguar has long been the quintessential British luxury brand, an icon of old world sophistication and elegance. Jaguar is able to draw on a long and impressive history in order to give the current lineup the sort of heritage that other brands either don’t have, or haven’t been as successful in drawing from. To really understand Jaguar as a brand, more so than most other brands, you really have to dig into the history. So we put together a guide to the history of Jaguar, where it’s been, where it’s going, and how the current line-up is simply a continuation of the epic story of Jaguar.

Jaguar Early Years

Jaguar didn’t start out as a car company, it didn’t even start out with the name Jaguar. First founded in 1922 as the Swallow Sidecar Company, the work was focused, as you can probably guess from the name, on building motorcycle sidecars. The business grew quickly, and by 1930, the company had expanded into coachbuilding for cars as well, prompting a name change to Swallow Coachbuilding Company. The transition from coachbuilder to a fully realized carmaker happened quickly as well, along with another name change to SS Cars in 1934. It was in 1936 that SS Cars debuted its latest model, the Jaguar, a car that so perfectly embodied what the company was aiming to achieve,that it would eventually take over as the brand name.

As was the case with most car companies in the world at the time, SS Cars production shut down because of the Second World War, in 1940. When production started back up in 1945, it was decided that a name change was in order, and Jaguar Cars Limited was born.

The follow-up to Jaguar’s wins at Le Mans was the legendarily cool E-Type, a road car that took what Jaguar had learned from racing and made it into a comfortable and effortlessly stylish sports car. This served as a halo model, and Jaguar during this period was selling so many cars that it became necessary to rely on third-party coachbuilders to supply the bodies for these cars, as demand was simply too high for Jaguar to keep up otherwise.

Jaguar was acquired by Ford in 1990, which provided an infusion of cash and manufacturing infrastructure that allowed Jaguar to update and expand its lineup, buoyed by the halo effect of the XJ220 supercar. Ford would eventually acquire Land Rover as well, but sold both brands to Tata in 2008. In 2013, Jaguar and Land Rover would together split off from Tata and become Jaguar Land Rover, which brings us to today.