MYTH BUSTER
Debunking the most common old wives’ tales
‘SS’ STOOD FOR 1 ‘SWALLOW SIDECARS’
William Lyons’ SS Cars was around from 1933 to 1945, after which it metamorphosed into Jaguar. It’s commonly believed that ‘SS’ stood for ‘Swallow Sidecars’, its predecessor co-founded by Lyons in 1922. However, StandardTriumph boss, John Black, believed it signified ‘Standard Swallow’ because his company supplied chassis and engines to SS. Lyons didn’t admit this when the firm was still using other suppliers such as Austin, Wolseley and even Fiat, but he did concur with Black once these had been dispensed with.
THE NAME CHANGED 2 AFTER WW2
Actually, the change from SS to Jaguar came about during the war, but a precedent had been set before that. ‘SS’ obviously had extremely unpleasant connotations, thanks to the Nazi’s hated Schutzstaffel military arm. SS Cars’ rather Germanic winged logo probably didn’t help matters, either. Thus, it was agreed at a 23 March 1945 board meeting, six months before the conflict officially ended, to re-name the company as Jaguar Cars Ltd. The Jaguar designation had been applied to models from October 1935 – i.e. SS Jaguar 90 and 100 – so the re-christening wasn’t a great leap of imagination.
THEY USED 3 STANDARD ENGINES
The basic engines for the SS1, SS2, SS90 and SS100 did originate from Standard. But these Standard units weren’t, um, standard. The SS90 had an aluminium cylinder head and twin carburettors and the SS100 went even further with a conversion from sidevalve to overhead valve thanks to a new aluminium cylinder head by SS Cars’ William Heynes and engine consultant, Harry Weslake. With twin carburettors, this helped boost power from 70bhp to 100bhp. Richard Gunn