The company that became Jaguar was founded in 1922, originally a producer of sidecars for motorcycles before a different iteration of the company made a car with Jaguar in the name in 1935. That company was SS Cars, which became Jaguar Cars in 1945, which eventually became a part of British Leyland, which was partly nationalized in 1975. Jaguar became its own company again in 1984, before it was bought by Ford in 1990. Ford bought Land Rover in 2000, and Tata Motors, the Indian manufacturer, bought Jaguar and Land Rover in 2008, and has owned Jaguar Land Rover ever since, now known mainly as JLR.
Jaguar made quite a lot of cars in that time, too, the most prominent of those being the E-Type. built from 1961 to 1974, one of the most famous cars ever made by any manufacturer, period. One of them was recently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The XJ220, the concept of which was first unveiled in 1988, became a supercar icon of the early 1990s. The Jaguar F-Type, launched in 2013, was a modern grand tourer that did its best to restore some of the marque’s faded glory.
Today, Jaguar is defined by its SUVs, including Jag’s first SUV, the F-Pace, and the E-Pace and I-Pace crossovers. The F-Type is also still around, and so is the Jaguar XF, the brand’s luxury midsize sedan whose current generation was first introduced in 2015. Jaguar Land Rover is in the midst of a great transition to electric vehicles, like virtually every other automaker in the world, with some stops and starts along the way. Perhaps none of the current models will even exist when Jaguar finally does go all electric; expected first is a new all-electric grand tourer in 2025, followed by an all-electric SUV and all-electric sedan in 2026.
Jaguar is hoping to write new chapters in its already fascinating history. Let’s look at eight things you need to know about this storied automaker.
Jaguar Made a Sports Car Before It Was Jaguar
Jaguar Cars wasn’t known as such until 1945, and before that it was known as SS Cars, so named for the Swallow Sidecar Company. SS Cars made the first version of the SS Jaguar in 1935 and the SS Jaguar 100 in 1936, the 100 intending to represent its top speed, which was actually 101 mph. The styling, then and now, is as classic as it gets, though the SS Jaguar 100 was later succeeded and eclipsed by the XK120 in 1948, whose owners included Clark Gable.