A Lanchester conundrum

Sir,

I am writing to you concerning the Daimler Conundrum. By strange coincidence, one of our Australian members recently sent me a photocopy of the West Australian dated March 29th, 1978, in which there was an article on the Churchill Daimler, with a side-view of the car with, presumably, the then new owner and his family inside. There is also a close up of the radiator mascot, a silver bulldog. The car was found on blocks in a garage in Gloucester by a Company Director, Denis Allen, of Crewe, who restored it.

Anent conundrums, a number of our Club members have been trying to solve the mystery of the Lanchester 14 De Ville Convertible of 1952. Several publicity photographs exist of this car but we can find no one who remembers seeing the car(s) and I wonder if one of the many readers of MOTOR SPORT has any knowledge of the car. The mystery is compounded by the existence of a photograph of the car bearing the registration MHP 102, but this number was, in fact, carried by a perfectly ordinary Lanchester 14 saloon. An article in our April magazine suggests that the an did not go into production and the bodies ordered from Carbodies were used up on the Daimler version.

Ruislip, Middlesex
Bob Whyte,
Editor,
The Driving Member.