The background of the brand Jaguar forms the conclusion to our fascinating series about the backgrounds of different car brands. They chose a proud animal as their corporate logo like Ferrari and Lamborghini did. But what’s the story behind it?
Origins
The Swallow Sidecar Company marks the beginning of Jaguar’s history. Originally, it was a motorcycle sidecar manufacturer broadening their work to car body repairs before finally getting into the production of entire car bodies. From 1929, they produced car bodies for the chassis manufacturer Standard Motor Company.
In 1931, they released their first car called Swallow. However, it was built on a chassis made by Standard. The two companies couldn’t agree on whether Swallow or Standard would be mentioned first in the model name. Therefore, the vehicle was called SS 1. In 1935, the successor SS 90 was released. It was criticized for making a great visual impact without providing sufficient horsepower. As a reaction to this, the SS Jaguar Series was created which lead to a jump from 70 HP to 102 HP. As many products in the thirties used to bear animal names in their description, the addition of “Jaguar” seemed appropriate.
