Rolls-Royce versus Daimler

It is quite fitting that the Silver Jubilee Motor Parade, which Her Majesty the Queen will graciously attend, at Windsor on May 7th, will consist of Rolls-Royce cars, including Silver Ghosts. Fitting because the RREC first thought of this unique motor tribute to the Royal Family in Jubilee Year and also because from the 1950s Royalty has used Rolls-Royce cars. Prior to that, however, as Brian Smith’s great book “Royal Daimlers”, reviewed on page 275 reminds us, the Daimler was thy Royal Car. We hope and expect that the Daimler & Lanchcster CC will have entered appropriate Daimlers for the Silver Jubilee happenings at Ascot on May 8th and that such entries will have been accepted.

Meanwhile, it is amusing to read, in “The Hyphen in Rolls-Royce” by Wilton J. Oldham (Foulis, 1967), that when the original Rolls-Royce “Silver Ghost” was in M. Hanbooty’s ownership his chauffeur came upon a Police Rover in trouble near Nantwich. The Inspectors were to have used it to inspect the Police guard on the route of the Royal Party during their visit to Newcastle and Stoke, the year being 1913, and the King’s arrival was imminent, so Mr. Henning, the R-R’s chauffeur, took them on in “The Silver Ghost”. He explained afterwards that he would have been given a good position by the Inspectors, in return for his help, from which to see the Royal car pass. But he refused and drove on, because, he said, he did not want to show the King up “by standing up in a superior car to His”. A nice Rolls-Royce/ Daimler distinction! There is a picture in “Royal Daimlers” of the Royal car in Cheshire in 1913, with the driver and passengers of an Alfonso Hispano-Suiza, one of whom was, I believe, a contributor to The Autocar acknowledging the King’s passage. The Royal car which Henning regarded as inferior to “The Silver Ghost” was I think one of the 57 h p. Daimlers.—W.B.