Black Country Guy swallowed by Jaguar
WE have found this interesting photograph in the Bugle collection. It was taken on May 5, 1962, and its shows Sir William Lyons outside the Jaguar works in Browns Lane, Coventry, with an impressive line-up of all the vehicles his company makes.
At the back are Daimler buses and cars, then a line of sleek Jaguar saloons and E-types, but perhaps the most interesting are the Black Country-built buses and lorries on the right – made by Guy Motors.
Set up
In 1914 Sydney Guy left the Wolverhampton firm Sunbeam and set up his own business at Fallings Park. Before the year was out he was manufacturing his own lorries.
Over the years the company developed a well-respected range of buses and lorries, surviving two world wars and the Great Depression. Sadly, things took a turn for the worst in the late 1950s. Guy produced their innovative Wulfrunian bus design but production was
pushed through before it was fully tested, leading to reliability problems that severely harmed the company’s reputation. The company’s South African operations were also costing the firm many thousands of pounds every year. In
1961 Guy Motors went into receivership.
The business was acquired by Sir William Lyons. He started his Swallow Sidecars business in Blackpool in the 1920s, moving to Coventry in 1928 and renaming the firm SS
Cars in 1931. The SS Jaguar was their most famous pre-war model and after the war the firm was renamed Jaguar Cars, to avoid Nazi connotations.
In 1966 Lyons’s businesses merged with the British Motor Corporation (Austin, Morris
and other famous marques) to form British Motor Holdings, which in 1968 merged with Leyland to form British Leyland, bringing Guy Motors under the control of the illfated corporation.
Despite the success of models
like the Big J, Guy was competing with other brands in the British Leyland group. Production of Guy-badged buses ended in 1972 and the Fallings Park works closed down in 1982, with more than 700 workers losing their jobs.