„This was because I kept an open shop, no limits, but they all wanted to come to me, the kind of men who wouldn’t be forced by the trade unions – they were too good at their job. One day, the union man once said to me, ‚One day I’ll have you.’ ‚What do you mean, you’ll have me?’ ‚We shan’t have you working all these hours.’ I said, ‚It’s necessary for the industry – I don’t get the work unless I can do it yesterday, and you never know when a job is going to go wrong, so to put it right and get it finished by the same date, you’ve got to work all hours.”

This logical, no-nonsense stance was one which Lyons, above all others, appreciated. Firstly, he knew from bitter experience how things could go wrong on the body side – in 1937 the company had nearly gone down through poor quality from suppliers – and started on the road to becoming self-sufficient when he purchased Motor Panels. But this had to be sold when, after the war, Jaguar was short of cash. Lyons also had little regard for conventional working hours and despaired at the short-sightedness of those unions and workers who insisted on adhering to out-dated working practices.

This is why, during the late 1940s, Abbey Panels became, in effect, Jaguar’s in-house styling prototype department. Many will be familiar with photographs of the styling mock-ups through which Lyons evolved his final styling master. These were not fashioned by Jaguar people, but by Abbey Panels men!