William Lyons was born in Blackpool in 1901, the son of an Irish immigrant who ran a musical instrument shop. After an engineering apprenticeship at Crossley in Manchester and a spell selling Sunbeams, he met William Walmsley, who made motorcycle sidecars. On his 21st birthday in 1922 Lyons formed a partnership with him as Swallow Sidecars, with “three men and a boy”. From 1927 it made increasing numbers of coachbuilt cars, particularly the Austin Seven Swallow, and in 1928 Lyons moved the company to Coventry.
The SS1 arrived in 1931 and the company became SS Cars in 1933. The first car named Jaguar appeared in 1935, and after the war Lyons dropped the SS name for Jaguar. He and his engineering team under William Heynes, including Walter Hassan, produced the XK engine in 1948, launched in the XK120, and a string of Le Mans winners.
Lyons was not a trained engineer but was responsible for the styling of every new Jaguar, using full-scale three-dimensional mock-ups adjusted by craftsmen under his instructions. He was knighted in 1956 for exports, merged Jaguar with BMC in 1966, retired as managing director in 1967 and remained chairman until 1972.
