Queen of the road
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 skilful 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 around the Windsor estate. Our late monarch was a great fan of 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, as Princess Elizabeth, she was in the British Army’s Auxiliary Territorial Service and learned how to drive – and fix – 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 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
Giles Chapman &, right, his book on driving too is on display today. The fourseater bodywork was custom made by London’s Hooper & Co, a company holding a warrant to build horsedrawn carriages for the royal household since 1830. All cars in those early days were sold in bare-chassis form, and the buyer then chose their own bodywork supplier.
When a second Daimler was ordered in 1902, Daimler clinched a warrant too, and a pattern was set for six decades.
Hooper-bodied Daimlers became the default cars at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.
The relationship with the
Royal Family was of immense importance to Hooper, and in the end it fell to one man, the urbane designer Osmond Rivers, to act as the diplomatic go-between.
Apr th
s I explain in my new book Three Million Miles In A Volvo And Other Curious Car Stories, Rivers started with the company aged 15 as a lowly 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 Do new standards for sleek, luxurious in style – eventually being copied by wh car-makers such as Cadillac.
The Women’s Auxiliary Air Force be chose a Daimler DE27 as a wedding an sh th
19
resent for Princess Elizabeth in 1948, he body of course built by Hooper. After her coronation in 1953, Elizaeth II would often drive her young hildren Charles and Anne around the Windsor area in a Hooper-bodied aimler Regency Empress.
For the Hooper/daimler partnerhip as favoured supplier, though, hings began to go wrong.
The new Daimler DK400 model of 953 proved gutless and unreliable. Then Daimler boss Sir Bernard ocker and his wife Lady Norah were volved in a tax scandal in 1956, hich led to his sacking.
It’s thought the Palace quickly ecame disenchanted with Daimler nd, by extension, Hooper. The fall from grace was so rapid that in 1959 Hooper & Co was wound up. The Duke of Edinburgh had long preferred Rolls-royces anyway, and the Windsors acquired their first one in 1950.
A Phantom IV limousine Roller for official duties followed in 1954, and then the latest Phantom V in 1961.
This three-ton behemoth had its own garage on royal yacht Britannia.
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.
In 1961 the Queen was seen in a Lancia Flaminia that President Giovanni Gronchi of Italy commissioned for her state visit.
When she and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Mauritius in 1972 to open parliament, Jaguar cut the roof off an XJ6 so the couple could be paraded upright through the streets. The Queen, though, never had a driving licence. British driving licences were ultimately issued in her name, so doing the paperwork would have been farcical. Nor does amonarch’s car need any number plates – another unique concession.