Where the XK140 sits in Jaguar's story

The XK140 was announced in October 1954, six years after the XK120 and six and a half years before the E-Type. It was built while Jaguar was winning Le Mans, withdrawing from works racing, launching its first monocoque saloon and losing a quarter of Browns Lane to fire. None of that is XK140 history in the narrow sense, but all of it shaped the car and the company that built it.

This page is a short version of that story, told from the XK140's point of view. The full history of the company from 1922 to the present day, and a comparison of the Jaguars built between 1948 and 1975, are on the Jaguar E-Type Archive, a companion site in the same family of independent archives. Both are linked at the foot of this page.

Blackpool, 1922 to 1928

William Lyons was born in Blackpool on 4 September 1901. In 1921 the Walmsley family moved in next door to the Lyons family on King Edward Avenue, and William Walmsley, ten years older, was building elegant octagonal aluminium motorcycle sidecars. Lyons ordered one, saw the potential, and proposed a partnership. The Swallow Sidecar Company began in September 1922, the month Lyons turned 21, on a £1,000 overdraft guaranteed by the two fathers.

In 1927 Swallow moved into car bodies with the Austin Seven Swallow, a stylish two-seater body on the humble Austin chassis at a price ordinary buyers could reach. Henlys of London ordered 500. Blackpool was too far from the motor industry, and in October 1928 the firm moved to a former shell-filling factory at Foleshill, Coventry.

SS and the Jaguar name, 1931 to 1945

The SS1 of October 1931 was the first car that was Swallow's own, on a low chassis built for it by the Standard Motor Company. It cost £310 and was said to have "the £1,000 look". S.S. Cars Ltd was registered in 1933, Walmsley left in 1934, and the company was floated in January 1935 with Lyons as chairman and managing director at 33.

William Heynes joined as chief engineer in April 1935, and on 21 September 1935 Lyons showed the SS Jaguar 2½-litre saloon at the Mayfair Hotel in London. Guests were asked to guess the price. Their average was £632; the real figure was £395. The SS100 two-seater launched alongside it. Walter Hassan arrived from Bentley in 1938 and Claude Baily from Morris Engines. With Harry Weslake advising on cylinder heads, the team that would design the XK engine was in place.

On 23 March 1945 the shareholders agreed to rename the company Jaguar Cars Ltd. The initials SS had become impossible.

The engine planned on the roof

During the war the Foleshill factory repaired Whitley bombers and built aircraft parts, trailers and sidecars. On Sunday nights Lyons, Heynes, Hassan and Baily took their turn fire-watching on the roof, and used the time to plan a new engine. Experimental four-cylinder units followed, the XG in 1943 and the twin-cam XF in November 1944. The twin-cam layout won, and became the 3,442 cc XK six.

The XK engine's first public outing was in a borrowed car. In September 1948 Goldie Gardner's streamlined MG record car, fitted with a two-litre four-cylinder version, reached about 176 mph on the Jabbeke highway in Belgium. The four never went into production. The six powered every Jaguar for the next two decades, including WPK38.

The XK120, 1948 to 1954

The XK120 was shown at Earls Court in October 1948 as a showcase for the engine, with perhaps 200 aluminium-bodied cars intended. Demand ended that plan. On 30 May 1949 Ron Sutton took a car down the Jabbeke road at 132.6 mph with the screen removed and 126.4 mph with the hood and screen up, which Motor Sport called the highest speed yet reached by a production car. Steel bodies replaced aluminium in 1950, a fixed-head coupe came in 1951 and a drophead in 1953.

The XK120 won its first race, at Silverstone in August 1949, in Leslie Johnson's hands. Stirling Moss won the 1950 Tourist Trophy at Dundrod in Tommy Wisdom's car, his first major international win. In August 1952 the coupe LWK 707 ran at Montlhéry for seven days and nights at an average of just over 100 mph. The XK120's own page on this archive gives the production figures in detail.

Le Mans and Browns Lane, 1950 to 1954

The Mark VII saloon of October 1950 put the XK engine into a large car built for America, and Foleshill could not cope with the demand. Jaguar leased the former Daimler shadow factory at Browns Lane, Allesley, and moved department by department; the move was complete by November 1952. Browns Lane was Jaguar's home for more than fifty years.

Three XK120s ran at Le Mans in 1950 as a trial. The XK120C, soon called the C-Type, followed in 1951 with the XK engine and running gear in a light tubular frame under an aluminium body by Malcolm Sayer. Peter Walker and Peter Whitehead won Le Mans with it in June 1951 by nine laps. Jaguar then developed disc brakes with Dunlop; Moss won at Reims on 29 June 1952, the first race win for a disc-braked car. In 1953 Tony Rolt and Duncan Hamilton won Le Mans in a C-Type with discs and triple Webers, the first win at over 100 mph average.

The D-Type of 1954, with its aluminium monocoque centre section and dry-sump XK, finished second at Le Mans that June, about 90 seconds behind a much larger Ferrari after 24 hours.

The XK140's years, 1954 to 1957

The XK140 replaced the XK120 in October 1954, with 190 bhp as standard, rack-and-pinion steering, telescopic rear dampers and three inches more legroom from moving the engine and bulkhead forward. What changed, and how to identify a car, is set out on this archive's XK140 pages. The road cars and the racing cars now shared one engine, one design team and one reputation.

That reputation was tested almost at once. At Le Mans on 11 June 1955 Mike Hawthorn's leading D-Type pulled across to the pits and braked; Lance Macklin's Austin-Healey swerved into the path of Pierre Levegh's Mercedes, which was launched into the crowd. Levegh and more than 80 spectators died. Hawthorn and Ivor Bueb won a race that nobody wanted to have won. Lyons' only son, John, was killed the same month driving a Jaguar to Le Mans.

In September 1955 Jaguar announced the 2.4 Litre saloon, its first car without a separate chassis. Lyons was knighted in the 1956 New Year Honours. Ecurie Ecosse won Le Mans with a D-Type in July 1956, and in October Jaguar withdrew from works racing. On 12 February 1957 fire destroyed about a quarter of Browns Lane and several hundred cars, among them cars being completed as the XKSS, of which only 16 were ever finished; the factory was building again within two weeks. In June 1957 Ecurie Ecosse D-Types finished first and second at Le Mans, Jaguar's fifth win in seven years. The last XK140 was built the same year.

After the XK140, 1957 to 1961

The XK150 of May 1957 brought four-wheel Dunlop disc brakes, a one-piece curved screen and a wider body; it is the subject of its own page here. The Mark 2 saloon of October 1959 put disc brakes on the compact saloon as standard. In 1960 Jaguar bought Daimler for its Radford factory, and built more than 20,000 cars in a year for the first time.

On 15 March 1961, at Geneva, Jaguar showed the E-Type. The roadster cost £1,480 before tax, and the road testers found 150 mph or very nearly. It was the car the XK120, the C-Type and the D-Type had been leading towards, and the XK line ended with the last XK150 in 1960.

The XK sports cars in figures

Read the full story

The Jaguar E-Type Archive carries the complete company history, from the Swallow sidecar to the electric Type 01, and a comparison of more than twenty-five Jaguar sports cars, saloons and racing cars built between 1948 and 1975, with a chart of which models were on sale at the same time. Both open in a new tab.

• Jaguar: The Complete History, 1922 to today
• Jaguar Cars Compared, 1948 to 1975