Friday 29 April 2011

JAGUAR

Jaguar  is a British luxury car manufacturer, headquartered in Whitley, Coventry, England. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Indian company Tata Motors Ltd. and is operated as part of the Jaguar Land Rover business.
Jaguar was founded as the Swallow Sidecar Company by Sir William Lyons in 1922, originally making motorcycle sidecars before evolving into passenger cars. The name was changed to Jaguar after the Second World War to avoid the unfavourable connotations of the SS initials. Following a merger with the British Motor Corporation in 1968, subsequently subsumed by Leyland, which itself was later nationalised as British Leyland, Jaguar was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1984, and became a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index until it was acquired by Ford in 1989. Jaguar has, in recent years, manufactured cars for the Prime Minister, the most recent delivery being of a XJ model on 11 May 2010. The company also holdsRoyal Warrants from HM Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Prince Charles.
 


BMW

BMW

BMW entered existence as a business entity following a restructuring of the Rapp Motorenwerke aircraft engine manufacturing firm in 1917.
After the end of World War I in 1918, BMW was forced to cease aircraft engine production by the terms of the Versailles Armistice Treaty.The company consequently shifted to motorcycle production in 1923 once the restrictions of the treaty started to be lifted, followed by automobiles in 1928–29.
The circular blue and white BMW logo or roundel is portrayed by BMW as the movement of an aircraft propeller, to signify the white blades cutting through the blue sky — an interpretation that BMW adopted for convenience in 1929, twelve years after the roundel was created.
The emblem evolved from the circular Rapp Motorenwerke company logo, from which the BMW company grew, combined with the blue and white colors of the flag of Bavaria, reversed to produce the BMW roundel. However, the origin of the logo being based on the movement of a propeller is in dispute, according to an article posted in 2010 by the New York Times, quoting "At the BMW Museum in Munich, Anne Schmidt-Possiwal, explained that the blue-and-white company logo did not represent a spinning propeller, but was meant to show the colors of the Free State of Bavaria.