William Lyons
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Sir William Lyons (born 1901, died 1985) was, with fellow motorcycle enthusiast William Walmsley, the co-founder in 1922 of the Swallow Sidecar Company, maker of motorcycle sidecars, and which became Jaguar Cars Limited after the Second World War. He was knighted in 1956.
He was born in Blackpool on September 4th 1901 son of William Lyons from Ireland, who ran a music shop, and Minnie Lyons (maiden name Barcroft) daughter of a mill owner. After attending Arnold School he decided not to follow his father into the musical instrument business and obtained an engineering apprenticeship at Crossley Motors in Manchester where he also studied at the technical school. He left Crossleys in 1919 to work as a salesman at the Sunbeam dealers Brown and Mallalieu back in Blackpool. In 1921 William Walmsley moved in to the next door premises converting ex army motor cycles to civilian use and making his sidecars and William Lyons bought one. On his 21st birthday the two men formed a partnership and Swallow Sidecars was born. The company specialised in the manuafacture of stylish sidecars, but from 1927, produced increasing numbers of low cost coach-built cars, such as the Austin Swallow. The business succeeded beyond their expectations and following several moves to successively larger premises in Blackpool they moved to Coventry in 1928. William Walmsley left the company in 1934 and it changed its name to SS Cars Ltd.
The first car sold under their own brand was the SS1 of 1931. The company name changed to SS Cars Ltd. in 1933, and the first "Jaguar" model was offered in 1935. The company changed its name to Jaguar after WW2 because of the unfortunate connotations of the "SS" name.
In 1966 Jaguar merged with the British Motor Corporation (BMC) to form British Motor Holdings and in 1967 Lyons retired as managing director but remained as chairman of Jaguar Cars. He finally retired in 1972 and kept sheep and cattle on his farm at Wappenbury.
He married Greta Brown in 1924 and they had one son, John Michael born in 1930 and two daughters Patricia born in ???? and Mary born in 1937. His son was killed in a road accident in 1955 while driving a car to the race at Le Mans. Sir William died at his home in Warwickshire on 8th February 1985 and his wife Lady Lyons died in 1986. Patricia married the race and rally driver Ian Appleyard and was his co-driver in his XK120 in the 1951 and 1952 International Alpine Rally.
During his time as managing director of Jaguar, Sir William kept a very tight reign on the company, and in particular, was responsble for the styling of every new model introduced, (except for the C-type, D-type, E-type and XJ-S which were designed by Malcom Sayer). This was more remarkable, as Sir William could not draw, and did his design mainly using full scale 3-D mockups, which were continually adjusted by tradesmen working under his instructions.
References
Sir William Lyons: The Official Biography by Philip Porter and Paul Skilleter. Publisher: Haynes Group. ISBN 185960840X
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