Jaguar Cars, Ltd. is an automobile manufacturer of luxury and executive cars operating under the Jaguar marque. The company's headquarters are in Coventry, England, where it was founded by Sir William Lyons in 1922. It has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Motors, Ltd. since 2008, where it is operated as part of Jaguar Land Rover group.
Following several subsequent changes of ownership since the 1960s, Jaguar was listed on the London Stock Exchange and became a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, which ended when Ford acquired Jaguar in 1999. The company holds Royal Warrants from HM Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Prince Charles.
The name is pronounced "jag-u-ar", except in North America where it is often pronounced "jag-wahr"; the term "Jag" is used to refer to the cars colloquially.
Founded as the Swallow Sidecar Company in 1922, by two motorcycle enthusiasts, Sir William Lyons and William Walmsley, the SS Jaguar name first appeared on a 2.5 litre saloon in 1935. The Jaguar name was given to the entire company in 1945 when the SS was dropped due to lack of popularity from WWII.
The distinctive "leaping Jaguar" mascotJaguar made its name in the 1950s with a series of elegantly-styled sports cars and luxury saloons. The company bought the Daimler Motor Company not to be confused with Daimler-Benz, in 1960 from Birmingham Small Arms Company BSA. From the late 1960s, Daimler was used as a brand name for Jaguar's most luxurious saloons.
Jaguar merged with the British Motor Corporation BMC, the Austin-Morris combine, to form British Motor Holdings BMH in 1966. After merging with Leyland, which had already taken over Rover and Standard Triumph, the resultant company then became the British Leyland Motor Corporation BLMC in 1968. Financial difficulties and the publication of the Ryder Report led to effective nationalisation in 1975 and the company became British Leyland, Ltd. later simply BL plc.
In the 1970s the Jaguar and Daimler marques formed part of BL's specialist car division or Jaguar Rover Triumph Ltd until a restructure in the early 1980s saw most of the BL volume car manufacturing side becoming the Austin Rover Group within which Jaguar was not included. In 1984, Jaguar was floated off as a separate company on the stock market one of the Thatcher government's many privatisations.
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