William Lyons

Sir William Lyons, known as Mr Jaguar, co-founded the Swallow Sidecar Company with fellow motorcycle enthusiast William Walmsley in 1922. What began as a motorcycle sidecar business grew under Lyons into a car manufacturer, and after the Second World War the company was renamed Jaguar Cars Limited to shed the wartime associations carried by its old initials. Lyons had no formal engineering training, but he exercised close personal control over the styling of every model the company built, working from full scale mockups refined by hand with his craftsmen until the proportions satisfied him. Cars produced under his direction established Jaguar's reputation for combining strong performance with distinctive design at prices well below rival luxury manufacturers, and the company grew from a sidecar workshop into one of Britain's best known car marques under his leadership. He was born on 4 September 1901 and died on 8 February 1985, having led the company he founded for more than four decades.