ALLAN CROUCH
Following on from his book S.S.I and S.S.II Cars, Allan Crouch studies the models that succeeded them: the 1½ and 2½ Litre of 1936-37, the SS 100 sports car, the 1½, 2½ and 3½ Litre of 1938-48, and the Mark V of 1948- 51. Apart from the 1½ Litre models, what was common to these cars was the six-cylinder engine, based on a Standard sidevalve unit for which Harry Weslake designed an overhead-valve cylinder head giving very respectable power outputs.
These engines endowed the cars, starting with the 1936 2½ Litre, with performance that placed them straight into the class occupied by much more expensive machines such as the Bentleys and Lagondas of the time. Combined with flowing body styling inspired by William Lyons himself, the result was some strikingly attractive and desirable machines at extraordinarily keen prices.
The author, as a volunteer researcher in the Jaguar Heritage Archive, has spent years compiling a database of all the cars manufactured through the period, establishing a complete history of their production. This he has put to good use in the preparation of this definitive work, which examines the cars, their development and their features in unprecedented and probably unsurpassable detail, to satisfy the most demanding enquirer. Competition history, sales, exports, coachbuilt cars, one- offs, colour schemes, production changes, production numbers, chassis numbers and rally entrants are all included.
Containing some 250 colour photographs of outstanding surviving examples of the cars, along with images from the archives, this is truly the most in-depth study ever published of William Lyons's memorable family of cars of this period.
