Jaguar
Having successfully bodied many makes of car teh company started selling it's own SS cars in 1931, all based on chassis supplied by The Standard car Co. The SS2's were smaller engined and teh SS1's (Saloon , Tourer, Airline etc) were just stunning looking and at a fraction of the cost of what customers were expecting - a talent William Lyons excelled in. The sportier SS90 which led to the SS100 in 2 1/2 litre (actually 2663cc) and 3 1/2 litre were very popular as they had real performance in a straight line, yet cost no more than, for example, a sporting Riley!
Post war, the factory no longer being used for munitions and aircraft work revived the older models but the name SS was sidelined in favour of Jaguar for obvious reasons! Wally Hassan and Lyons had discussed what a post war Jaguar should be, while being on Fire watching in Coventry, and Lyons wanted a twin overhead cam engine which eventually became the 3.4 litre XK120 (and 140 / 150) in 1948 which powered everything from Mk5 to Mk8, to C and D types. This engine became 3.8 litre as developed in the USA by Alfred Momo which was and option in theMk2's, Mk9 and Mk 10's as well as the series one E types. By 1964 the engine had been stretched to 4.2 litres in the Series 1 E types and Xj6. Then came the 5.3 litre V12s introduced in the 1971 Series 3 E type and the XJ12 in 1972. After the last of the V12 E types came the XJS in 1975 and by 1993 nearly 80,000 were produced.
