Coys Auction - True Greats
Royal Horticultural Halls
Elverton St
Westminster
London SW1
Tuesday 7 December 2010
The early 1930s was not the best time to launch a new car company; famous makers were collapsing all around as the Depression took hold, but William Lyons was a shrewd judge of human nature. He knew he could succeed if he gave the motoring public what it wanted and he had a fair idea what that was. He took the view that it was no more expensive to make a beautiful car than it was to make an ugly one and his company, Swallow Sidecars, already had an enviable reputation for making very pretty bodies on fairly modest proprietary chassis.
In 1936, only five years after beginning production, SS startled the motoring public with the Jaguar 2½ litre saloon, the company’s first car to feature overhead valves. The engine was the robust seven-bearing six-cylinder unit built by Standard, but with a new cylinder head designed by Harry Weslake and Bill Heynes. With 104bhp smoothly deliver