In his new book about cars, Giles Chapman explores the people who loved their cars – including the late Queen, and a clever design that helped accommodate her on royal tours

For a person who probably travelled more chauffeur-driven miles in her lifetime than anyone else on earth, Queen Elizabeth II loved every opportunity to get behind the wheel herself.

Whether rattling along in the most rugged 4x4s or zipping about in leather-limed luxury, she was an accomplished and skillful driver. One of her all-time favourites is said to have been a powerful, V8-engined Rover P5B and, just a few months before her sad passing in September 2022, she was still enjoying driving her Jaguar X-type estate around the Windsor estate.

But the royal limos have often had peculiarities, as they need to accommodate the royal on her tours abroad.

Giles Chapman has written a book that is available now ( 
Image:
Giles Chapman Library)

This means that the design of the vehicles has generally been unusually tall so that the monarch can easily be seen on the back seat, helped by a glass roof panel. Even if it’s overcast on an official visit, the adoring crowds must be afforded a good look.

Surprisingly, comfortable cloth upholstery is usually specified over the more obvious luxury of leather.

On trips abroad, the Queen was often obliged to stand upright in the back of a converted saloon to wave to onlookers.

In 1960, for example, Italy’s President Gronchi commissioned a special open-top Lancia Flaminia for the Queen’s much-heralded state visit. In 1965, for an important visit to Munich, a similar Mercedes-Benz 600 soft-top was provided. In both cases, Elizabeth II had to hold on to the roof rail and hope her hat wouldn’t be blown away.

When she and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Mauritius in 1972 to open Parliament there, Jaguar cut the roof off an XJ6 so the couple could be paraded upright through the streets.

But Land Rover parade vehicles at military ceremonies must have been the worst of all; their suspension systems are notoriously bouncy!

Our late monarch was a great fan of both Land Rovers and Range Rovers. And if she ever heard a suspicious noise coming from under the bonnet, she probably knew what was wrong; during the Second World War, and as Princess Elizabeth, she was enrolled in 1944 in the British Army’s Auxiliary Territorial Service, and learned how to drive – and fix – heavy Bedford military trucks.

When at home at Sandringham, she insisted on a proper ‘estate’ car. And quite a flashy choice she made, too, selecting a powerful Vauxhall Cresta PA (followed later by its PC successor) which offered as much space as it did pace.

That Cresta PA is still there at Sandringham, complete with its tongue-in-cheek number plate: MYT 1. It’s part of a small and little-known car museum, tucked away in a stable block behind the main house, showing that Royal family members have been keen car enthusiasts for almost as long as the motor car itself has existed.

The Prince Of Wales, later King Edward VII, was introduced to motoring by his friend and MP John Douglas-Scott-Montagu in 1898, who took the prince out for a spin in his Daimler. A similar car was then ordered and delivered to Sandringham in 1900, where it too is on display today. The four-seater bodywork was custom-made by London’s Hooper & Co, a company holding a warrant to build horse-drawn carriages for the royal household since 1830. (All cars in those early days were sold in bare-chassis form, and the buyer then chose his or her own bodywork supplier).

When a second Daimler was ordered in 1902, Daimler clinched a warrant too, and a pattern was set for the next six decades. Hooper-bodied Daimlers became the default cars at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, usually painted in a distinctive dark chocolate brown or maroon with red pinstripes. There were some 80 in total.

The relationship with the Royal family was of immense importance to Hooper, and in the end it fell to one man, the urbane Osmond Rivers, to act as the diplomatic go-between.

As I explain in my new book Three Million Miles In A Volvo And Other Curious Car Stories, Rivers started with the company at age 15 as a humble trainee draughtsman in 1910, and worked his way up to become chief designer and a director by 1948. His ‘Empress line’ series of cars set new standards for sleek, luxurious style – eventually being copied by carmakers such as Cadillac – and he pioneered many gadgets never before seen on British cars, such as electrically-powered folding roofs and retractable cocktail cabinets, and even a concealed scent-sprayer and an umbrella hidden inside the driver’s door.

The Women’s Auxiliary Air Force chose a Daimler DE27 as a wedding present for the young Princess Elizabeth and her fiancé in 1948, and the body was of course built by Hooper.

Meanwhile, after her coronation in 1953, Elizabeth II would often drive her young children Charles and Anne around the Windsor area in a Hooper-bodied Daimler Regency Empress.

The new Daimler DK400 model of 1953 proved gutless and unreliable, leading to an eight-month delay in delivery of Hooper’s limousines.

Then Daimler boss Sir Bernard Docker and his wife Lady Norah were involved in a tax scandal in 1956, which led to his sacking. They were inextricably linked to Daimler through a series of famous cars, designed by Osmond Rivers, with flashy features such as gold-plated bumpers and zebra-skin upholstery.

It’s thought the Palace quickly became disenchanted with Daimler, and by extension Hooper. The fall from grace was so rapid that in 1959 Hooper & Co was wound up, and Osmond Rivers had to destroy his own life’s work.

Classic car writing expert Giles Chapman has written about a collection of fascinating people and their cars
“Over the years we made many thousands of drawings,” Rivers said afterwards, “coupled with the full-size layouts of many complicated, attractive and well-known post-war cars. These were all put on the fire in December last year and you can imagine, perhaps, how I felt when I saw [them] go up in flames.”

The Duke of Edinburgh had long preferred Rolls-Royces to Daimlers anyway, and the Windsors acquired their first example in 1950. A Phantom IV limousine for official duties followed in 1954, and then the latest Phantom V in 1961. This 3-ton behemoth really did travel the world with the Queen on her regular commonwealth tours: it had its very own garage aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia, into which it could be eased once the bumpers were removed, and it was in active service right up to 2002 when the craft was decommissioned.

In that year, too, the Palace changed allegiance when it took delivery of two unique Bentleys for state occasions. These are the cars that King Charles has inherited from his mother, and that have just been announced as candidates for conversion to run on biofuels.

Prince Charles passed his driving test in 1967, after which his parents bought him an MGC; Princess Anne did the same in 1968, and received a Reliant Scimitar GTE.