History of JLR
Founded as the Swallow Sidecar Company in 1922,by two motorcycle enthusiasts, 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.
The distinctive 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, in 1960 from Birmingham Small Arms Company . From the late 1960s, Daimler was used as a brand name for Jaguar’s most luxurious saloons.
Jaguar merged with the British Motor Corporation , the Austin-Morris combine, to form British Motor Holdings 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 in 1968. Financial difficulties and the publication of the Ryder Report led to effective nationalisation in 1975 and the company became British Leyland Ltd.
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 car manufacturing side of BL becoming the Austin Rover Group within which Jaguar and Daimler were not included.
In 1984, Jaguar was floated off as a separate company on the stock market — one of the Thatcher government’s many privatisations. The Ford Motor Company made an offer to purchase the company in September 1989 which was accepted at an Extraordinary General Meeting in January 1990 and Jaguar was removed from the London Stock Exchange listings on 28 February 1990. In 1999 it became part of Ford’s new Premier Automotive Group along with Aston Martin, Volvo Cars and, from 2000, Land Rover; Aston Martin was subsequently sold off in 2007. Since Ford purchased Jaguar in 1989 it has yet to earn a profit for the Dearborn-based auto manufacturer.
On 11 June 2007, Ford announced that it planned to sell Jaguar, along with Land Rover and retained the services of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and HSBC to advise it on the deal. The sale was initially expected to be announced by September 2007, but was delayed until March 2008. Private equity firms such as Alchemy Partners of the UK, TPG Capital, Ripplewood Holdings , Cerberus Capital Management and One Equity Partners of the US, Tata Motors of India and a consortium comprising Mahindra and Mahindra and Apollo Management all initially expressed interest in purchasing the marques from the Ford Motor Company.
On March 26, 2008, Ford announced that it had agreed to sell its Jaguar and Land Rover operations to Tata Motors, and that the sale is expected to be completed by the end of the second quarter of 2008. Included in the deal were the rights to three other British brands, Jaguar’s own Daimler, as well as Lanchester and Rover.
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