AUTOS: Cream for a Fast Cat

At London’s Motor Show last week, the cars that drew the biggest crowds were the racy, low-slung sport models. None got more attention than Jaguar’s fast, sleek XK120, which for three years has held the world’s speed record (132.6 m.p.h.) for passenger cars. But it was more than speed that made Britons admire the Jaguar; as the Manchester Guardian noted proudly, the Jaguar is “doing a roaring dollar trade.” It is now one of the British motor industry’s biggest dollar earners.

The U.S. demand is so great that Jaguar Motors Ltd. last week opened a sprawling new 1,000,000-sq.-ft. plant at Coventry to boost production from 720 to 1,000 cars a month. Jaguar is aiming three-fourths of this production at the dollar market. Moreover, it is concentrating on its Mark 7 sedan angled especially toward American and Canadian tastes and powered with the same motor as its speedy XK-120 roadster. Where Jaguar sold 2,886 cars in the U.S. last year, this year it will sell 4,000 at around $4,000 each, next year expects to sell 6,000. And Jaguar has 240 new U.S. dealers anxious to augment its existing 205 as soon as increased production permits.

Sidecar to Swallow. U.S. owners like the Jaguar for its power (160-h.p. engine) and speed, the way it hugs the road and the hand-tooled precision of its parts. They buy three times as many Jaguar sedans as sport models, dote on such things as a steering wheel that is adjustable to the height of the driver.

The sleek Jag was born in a motorcycle sidecar. Jaguar’s creator is a Lancashire-born mechanic named William Lyons, 50, who in 1922 opened a small shop in Blackpool to make hand-built cycle sidecars “for the discriminating few.” As he prospered, Lyons decided he could improve on Britain’s towering, square-rigged auto bodies, moved to Coventry and opened the Swallow Coachbuilding Co., Ltd. In 1931, he turned out his first car, the Swallow Special (quickly known simply as the “S.S.”), built on a British Standard’s chassis. The Daily Mail called it “the £360 car with the £1,100 look,” and Lyons was on his way. He sold 2,000 the first year, doubled his sales by 1935 despite Depression. World War II diverted him to making motorbikes and armored sidecars, but all during the war he worked on the XK-120 design. Because Hitler had given the initials SS an evil ring, he changed his car’s (and his company’s) name to Jaguar.

His six-cylinder, two-seater Jaguar speedster was an immediate success, started right in winning road races. Last July, for the third time in as many years, a Jaguar won the 2,000-mile Alpine Rally, a mountain race so grueling that out of 95 starters only 23 finished. A month later, on France’s Monthlery track, a production-line Jaguar covered 16,851.73 miles in seven days & nights of continuous driving at an average speed of 100.31 m.p.h. Later, another Jaguar set a night-driving speed record of 83.09 m.p.h. at Goodwood, England’s twistiest, most arduous track.

Rank & Fashion. Lyons spends most of his time in the Coventry works, is usually on the floor from 9 a.m. “until the work is finished, even if it’s midnight.” In Britain’s often unimaginative industrial hierarchy, bustling Bill Lyons sticks out, looks and talks more like a Detroit auto builder. A three-time visitor to the U.S., he has picked up Yankee ways, pops out press releases that would make a sedate company like Rolls-Royce quiver in embarrassment. Sample: “Mr. Clark Gable has [owned four] Jaguars; Mr. Adam Gimbel has two … To visit the New York showroom is to court the possibility of rubbing shoulders with many notabilities of rank and fashion . . .”

Lyons himself mainly rubs shoulders with the highly paid, highly skilled workers in his huge plant. No detail escapes his cost-conscious eye. When a foreman built himself a partitioned office for his paper work, Lyons tore it down. “A foreman should be on the floor,” he said, “pushing blokes to do things.” Added Lyons: “If I let him have his office, he’ll soon want a girl to do typing for him. Next it will be another girl to assist the first one; before you knew where you were, you’d have six people in each department, sitting on their can for no bloody reason at all.” Motormaker Bill Lyons understands better than anyone else that only by top efficiency can he possibly compete with U.S. cars on their home ground.