Gottlieb Daimler, Bad Cannstatt, Germany 1886- -1890

Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, Bad Cannstatt, Germany 1890 - 1901

Gottlieb Daimler had a broadly based engineering background before establishing his own business with his long term friend and colleague Wilhelm Maybach. They had been experimenting with "high speed" petrol engines for some years and a prototype was fitted to a motorcyle type 2-wheeled vehicle with outriggers and then in 1886 a motor car. The Daimler designed engines were also used extensively in boats.

The demand for motor cars was not great and Gottlieb Daimler was more interested in the engines themselves as a means of propulsion for all forms of transport and so it was not until 1886 that a purpose built chassis was fitted with a Daimler engine. This early car was called the Stahlradwagen ( for: steel wheel car) and was displayed at the Paris World's Fair in 1889.

The Daimler company was refinanced in 1890 primarily to make low-speed stationary engines for military and other uses. Daimler who was 56 years old and Maybach who was only 42 were more interested in developing the "high speed" engine and Maybach in particular in the motor car and so in 1892 they set up their own experimental workshop in the conservatory of the empty Hotel Hermann in Cannstatt.

It was during this period that Maybach developed the carburettor as a means of atomising the fuel which allowed much higher engine speeds to be attained. There is some doubt as to whether any complete cars were made at this time although records show that the factory built a few cars to the design of Max Schroedter with vertical twin engines of 760cc and then increased to 1,060cc. About a dozen of these tubular steel chassis frames were supplied by NSU employing chain drive to the rear wheels.

By 1895 Daimler and Maybach were invited back to the factory to oversee the production of a new car. This was called the Riemenwagen (for: belt drive car) and was available with five different engine sizes ranging from 760cc up to 2,190cc all with vertical twin cylinders. About 150 were made up to 1897 when it was replaced by the Phoenix model.

The Phoenix was a much more modern design and employed the "systemé" Panhard with the engine mounted at the front (Daimler and Levasseur were close friends). There was chain drive to the rear axle through a 4-speed gearbox from the 1,060cc twin and 1,845cc four cylinder engines. Larger engines were made available for competition work and a 5.5-litre 24hp 4-cylinder version, designed by Maybach, was campaigned by Emile Jellinek at the 1899 Nice Speed Week and won the Nice-Castellane Hillclimb in the touring car class as "Monsieur Mercédès". In 1900 two-seat racing versions of the Phoenix were entered for the Nice-La Turbie Hillclimb driven by Jellinek, Wilhelm Bauer and the Barons de Rothschild (Arthur & Henri) unfortunately Bauer was killed. The racing Daimler Phoenix was also successful at the Semmering Hillclimb and the Salzberg-Linz long distance trial driven on both occasions by Ritter von Stern.

Jellinek, who was the Daimler agent for Nice, concluded that the Daimler was not really suitable for competition with it's high chassis and short wheelbase. He therefore negotiated to take 36 cars, modified to his own design on the understanding that he would have the sole rights for France, Belgium, Austria, Hungary and the USA. It was also agreed that these cars would be named after his 11-year old daughter Mercedes. It was an inspired decision and by 1902 all Daimler cars were called by the Mercédès name.

Daimler Motor Co. Ltd., Coventry, UK 1896 - 1904

Daimler Motor Co. (1904) Ltd., Coventry, UK 1904 - 1910

Daimler Co. Ltd., Coventry, UK 1910 - 1972

Jaguar, British Leyland UK Ltd., Coventry, UK 1972 - 1975

Leyland Cars, British Leyland UK Ltd., Coventry, UK 1975 - 1978

Jaguar-Rover-Triumph Ltd., Coventry, UK 1978 - 1980

Jaguar Cars Ltd., Coventry, UK 1980 to date

The story of the British Daimler company goes back to 1888 when a young Fredrick R. Simms met Gottlieb Daimler who was 30 years his senior. Simms, who was born in Hamburg, was very impressed with Daimler's early petrol engines and in 1891 negotiated a licence to sell Daimler engines in Britain. Simms and Daimler became firm friends from their first meeting and Simms was a member of the Board of Directors of Diamler Motoren Gesellschaft from 1890 to 1892. Simms changed the name of his company to the Diamler Motor Syndicate in 1893 and although the majority of the engines were sold for marine use Simms was already very involved with the new Automobile industry. In 1895 he was offered £35,000 for the company, by H J Lawson the first motor financier. Simms and Gottlieb Daimler, who was a co-director, accepted the offer and were surprised when, only a month later, Lawson floated the company as the British Motor Syndicate for £150,000 on the stockmarket. Lawson had a grand plan to buy up motor patents and then licence them to manufacturers, but he needed to demonstrate these "inventions" and so the Daimler Motor Company was formed in 1896. From an old mill building at Foleshill in Coventry he undertook the manufacture of Daimler and M. M. C. cars in addition to the Léon Bollée tricar under licence.

These early British Daimlers, which first appeared in 1897, were quite different from the German cars and owed much more to the "systemé" Panhard with vertical twin front engines of 1,526cc driving the rear axle with chains through a 4-speed gearbox. The steering was by tiller.

The chassis were assembled at the "Motor Mills" and then sent by rail to Mulliner's coachworks at Northampton for their bodies. They were already becoming quite popular as there were 89 chassis sold in the first 12 months of production. Reliability was a great selling point at this time and so the run from John O'Groats to Land's End at an average speed of 10mph by Henry Sturmey in October 1897 attracted considerable attention, as did the three Gold Medals in the Auto Club of Great Britain and Ireland (now the RAC) Richmond Trials in 1899.

A special 4-cylinder version was made to order for Professor Boverton Redwood using two twins mounted in tandem. By the end of the year several replicas had been sold which prompted the company to build a proper 4-cylinder engine of 3,050cc rated at 12hp designed by Sidney Straker (who went on to build the Straker-Squire cars) in 1899. One of the first customers for the new 4-cylinder Daimler was The Hon. John Scott-Montague who was a member of parliament and enthusiastic motorist having served an engineering apprenticeship on the railways. He was the father of the present Lord Montague who established the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu in his memory.

Montague entered his Daimler for the 1899 Paris-Ostend race and finished third, being with Charles Rolls the first British drivers to enter one of the famous inter city races so popular in the early days of motor racing and subsequently promoted by Gordon Bennett.

In 1900 Montague was one of the organisers of the Thousand Miles Trial and was rewarded with a Bronze Medal for his Daimler of which a further 11 were also entered. He was also a Chairman of the Parliamentary Automobile Committee and a trustee of the Motor Vehicle Users' Defence Organisation, which pledged to fight legal oppression (where are they today!).

His most helpful service to the Daimler company was introducing Edward, the Prince of Wales, to motoring with a 20 mile country drive after a lunch at Highcliffe Castle in August 1900. The result of this chance encounter with the motor car led to along standing relationship between Daimler and the British Royal Family which lasted over 50 years.

In 1899 there was a limited production of 50 voiturettes built to a design by J S Critchley in order to house a batch of surplus 4hp engines. These little cars were sold at aprice of £200 which was half that of the regular Daimler models. It was a very simple belt driven car and, unusually, the belt was tensioned by moving the whole engine back and forth in the chassis.

By 1900 Chritchley had resigned and it was Straker who was responsible for the design of the 20hp 4-cylinder car announced in 1901. In the meantime the management had recruited Percy Martin to rationalised the product range from the haphazard collection of models and bring some order to the engineering department. Martin was to remain with the company until 1934.

By 1902 the new range consisted of an 8hp twin and 12hp, 16hp and 22hp fours. The latter had a 5,733cc engine driving the rear wheels by chain. These large 4-cylinder side valve engines had their cylinders cast in pairs and ignition was now by magneto although the old hot tube ignition system was retained as a standby. By 1903 the twin cylinder cars were almost extinct and the company had adopted a policy which was to satisfy the upper end of the market. This may have been influenced by the receipt of an order for two 22hp cars from King Edward VII.

In 1904 there was a new 3.3-litre model known as the 16/20hp and a large 5.7-litre 28/36hp which was the first to have the characteristic Daimler radiator with fins at the top. As the up- market policy took shape the cars became longer and bigger to accommodate the requirements of customers demanded ever larger limousine bodies. In 1905 there was the 35hp with an engine capacity of 8,462cc and the largest Daimler of all, the 45hp was built, which boasted a 4-cylinder engine of 10,431cc and must have required amazing strength from the unlucky chauffeur who had to swing this monster by it's starting handle. Only 20 of these cars were made in 1905 and two were sold, one each to King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, in 1908.

Although some chassis were supplied to outside coachbuilders Daimler had their own in-house department which was unusual.

The period from 1904 to 1908 was when "size mattered" and the large 4-clinder side valve Daimlers were very competitive.

In 1904 Instone made second fastest time of the day at Sunrising hillclimb, only beaten by a Gordon Bennett race Napier. There were five fastest times at major events in 1905 including Brighton Beach in America and in 1906 they won at Atlantic City and Wilkes Barre. The Daimlers were serious competition to makes such as Darracq who managed to outpace them at Blackpool.

The works entered for the Herkomer Trophy Trials in 1905 and in 1906 were rewarded by Gold Medals for Mrs. Manville and Lord Montague. They also entered the Coppa d'Oro in Italy and three cars ran in the 1907 Targa Florio as de Luca (made under licence in Italy) and driven by Hémery, Ison and Le Blon.

1908 saw a radical change of direction for Daimler when they dropped all the side valve 4-cylinder engines in favour of the Knight sleeve valve patent. These engines had a double sleeve valve arrangement which worked between the pistons and the cylinder walls in place of the normal poppet valves. The main benefit of this patented design was it's quiet running for which it became known as the "Silent Knight". The designer was an American named Charles Yale Knight and the royalties for his patent were high. This coupled with the cost of redesigning their entire range of cars with shaft drive brought Daimler to the brink of bankruptcy by 1910.

There were three cars in the model line up, a 22hp of 3,764cc, a 38hp six of 6,280cc and a 48hp six of 9,236cc and they sold quite well with nearly 2,000 orders in 1910.

The company was amalgamated with BSA (the Birmingham Small Arms Co.) in 1910 and this was reported in the Financial Times as "-- one of the most important ever effected in the motor industry". It certainly gave Daimler the financial backing required to become one of the best British car manufacturers and by 1912 they had moved into a new factory in Coventry, the Radford Works. The old Motor Mills remained in use but were destroyed during an air raid in 1941.

The model range for 1911 remained very similar, but was expanded to four 4-cylinder and two 6-cylinder cars the largest being the 38hp six of 6,246cc. There was also the massive 57hp six which although listed, never went into regular production, however King George V acquired eight of these cars between 1909 and 1924. Daimlers were bought by the aristocracy, whereas the Rolls Royce was driven by "pickle kings"!

Being part of an armament manufacturer meant that Daimler became involved in the production of a wide range of military vehicles and aircraft during the First World War. Some 4,000 trucks and 1,000 ambulances were produced as well as shells and aero engines. They even made the DeHaviland DH10 aircraft.

After the war the six-cylinder engine became the standard wear apart from a brief appearance by the 4-cylinder 20 in 1922. There were now small six-cylinder Daimlers of 1,541cc and front wheel brakes by 1924 and the model range had expanded to 23 different combinations of engine size and wheelbase. Some of the smaller engines were fitted to BSA cars. In 1927 came the Double Six Daimler which featured a V-12 engine made from two blocks of the 25/85hp engine set at 60 degrees on a common crankcase with separate cooling , ignition and carburettor for each bank. This 7,126cc engine gave 150bhp and could propel the heaviest model at 80mph, but if one could afford the car a fuel consumption of 10 miles per gallon was probably unimportant! By August 1927 the much smaller Double Six 30 of 3,744cc was announced and in 1930 it was the first Daimler to be fitted with a fluid flywheel and epicyclic gearbox. The V-12 cars were easily distinguished by a vertical strip in the centre of the radiator. The model lingered on into 1935 with increased engine capacity and the very last few were made with poppet valves up to 1938, two being delivered to the British Royal Family.

1930 saw the start of another major shift in the design of Daimlers with the acquisition of Lanchester in December. Having pledged that the two marques would retain their identity they almost immediately set about rationalising the model range. The advantage for Daimler was a new market for quality mid-range cars at around £310 as opposed to the £450 for the cheapest Daimler. The first of these was the 6-cylinder overhead valve 1,805cc Daimler Fifteen, an enlarged version of the 1,203cc Lanchester Ten. It was the first Daimler since 1909 to revert to poppet valves and used the fluid flywheel and epicyclic gearbox and about 6,100 were made up to 1936 by which time the engine had increased in capacity to 2,003cc. The volume of cars had reached a point by 193 where it was no longer possible for Daimler to continue building all their own bodies and so the saloon Fifteens were contracted to Mulliner and the tourers to Martin Walter.

The 1935 Lanchester Light Six and the BSA Light Six were very similar, as were the 1936 Lanchester Eighteen and the Daimler Light Twenty where the only difference was the radiator grille. The Fifteen grew into the DB17 in 1937 with an engine capacity of 2,166cc and increased again in 1938 to 2,522cc in the DB18 with independent front suspension and underslung chassis frames.

The larger Daimler models were supplemented by four sizes of straight-8 in 1934 with the introduction of the V26 at 3,764cc and followed by the 4.5-litre of 4,624cc. King George VI had ten of which two were fitted with armour plating and four with Lanchester radiators. The total production of these was about 470. There was also Light Straight-8 of 3,421cc which became the 4-litre of 3,960cc and about 300 of these were attractively bodied by all the well known British coachbuilders for owner drivers.

The Second World War was a busy time for Daimler and apart from producing 6,665 of the 4x4 Scout Cars and 2,764 of the armoured version they also made over 50,000 Bristol aero engines.

There was a much reduced range of cars after the war with the pre-war DB18 restyled to provide more luggage space the DE27 with a 4,095cc engine derived from the wartime armoured car and the DE36 with a 5,460 straight-8 engine. The latter was the largest production car in the world and the last British car to feature a straight-8 engine. It was the only chassis capable of carrying the limousine and laudaulet coachwork demanded by heads of state and 25 were ordered by the British Royal Family alone. There was a smaller version, the DE27, which provided a suitable chassis for limousine hire and funereal work and was the basis of the D27 ambulance.

No account of Daimler in the 1950s could be complete without mentioning the Docker Daimlers. Sir Bernard Docker who became chairman in 1940 was the son of F Dudley Docker, the BSA director appointed to the board of Daimler in 1910. Encouraged by his wife Norah, Sir Bernard commissioned a series of flamboyant bodies on the Daimler chassis, one was even gold plated. This ostentation was considered at the time to be in very bad taste, particularly as the country was still constrained by food, clothes and petrol rationing.

The old DB18 was usually bodied as a saloon, but there were dropheads by Tickford and the Barker Special Sports Coupé with hydro-mechanical brakes. These were replaced in 1950 by the Consort which used the improved brakes and a hypoid bevel rear axle instead of the Lanchester underslung worm drive. In 1953 a cheaper version was announced at £1,066 and was therefore called the Conquest. This proved to be a popular model and it's short stroke 2,433cc engine could be tuned to give 100bhp when it became the Conquest Century. It shared it's pressed steel body with the Lanchester Fourteen and employed torsion bar springs to it's independent front suspension. About 10,000 of these were made including 65 attractive sports roadsters.

Large Daimlers continued with the DK400 with a 4,617cc engine and limousine body by Carbodies, but only 132 were made and 69 Sportsman Saloons with the same engine. The One-O-Four with a 6-cylinder engine of 3,468cc and the Majestic with 3,794cc and all round disc brakes were more popular.

The Majestic Major was the first Daimler to use a V-8 engine and this 4,561cc unit was exceptional. It was designed by Edward Turner and used a hemispherical combustion chamber with inclined valves operated from a camshaft high up between the two banks of cylinders. Turner had previously worked on motorcycles with Triumph and Ariel and this influence was apparent. The smaller V-8 engine of 2,645 for the sporting SP250 and the larger Majestic Major engine were designed with the same bore spacing so that they could be manufactured on the same production line. It is very easy to insert the larger engine in the SP250 and the performance is stunning! The front suspension of the Majestic Major was one of the last designs by Lawrence Pomeroy Junior and employs long lower wishbones that almost meet in the centre line of the chassis. The handling and performance of this large car are quite outstanding. On test at MIRA the larger engine gave 240bhp compared to under 200bhp for the 7-litre Oldsmobile Toranado. The SP250 was praised for the oversquare V-8 engine (76.2 x 69.85) but it was less attractive in the handling department and the fibreglass body was considered rather cheap but 2,645 were made, the American version with an automatic gearbox in place of the 4-speed manual.

When Daimler was bought by Jaguar in June 1960 it succumbed to the same fate as Lanchester 30 years before and almost immediately lost it's identity. The last real Daimler was the DS420 limousine which replaced the Majestic Major in 1968 and unfortunately lost the superb chassis and engine. It was also the last home of the 4.2-litre twin overhead camshaft Jaguar engine.

The small V-8 Daimler engine had however found it's way into the Mk II Jaguar body shell and from 1962 to 1969 it was known as the 2.5-litre/V-8-250. This was a very good car and over 17,000 were built.

All subsequent Daimlers have simply been part of the Jaguar model range.

There is an active Daimler and Lanchester Owners Club whose details can be added if they contact us.

Bibliography:

Daimler Century, by Lord Montague of Beaulieu and David Burgess-Wise, published by Patrick Stephens 1995.

The Daimler Tradition, by Brian Smith, published by Transport Bookman, 1972

The Daimler Double Six, by William Boddy, published by Profile Publications, 1966

Britain's Motor Industry-the First Hundred Years, by Nick Georgano,

Publised by G T Foulis & Co., Sparkford, 1995.