When Jaguar took over the Daimler Company in 1960, it was primarily because the former desperately needed additional production facilities for its own products. It would have been foolish, however, to overlook the bonuses it had been handed with the deal.

For a start, there was the Daimler name itself. Jaguar held a stranglehold on its own corner of the market, but its products had a hard time selling into more traditional markets, where Jaguar was seen as something of a ‘Flash Harry’ car. The addition of the Daimler marque to its stable could give the company a valuable entree to an upper-class clientele.

Then there were the existing Daimler products. Few of the Daimler cars (the SP-250 sports car, and the Majestic and Majestic Major range of saloons and limousines) held any appeal to Jaguar per se, but the Edward Turner-designed V8s were well worth a second look. As it turned out, the larger 4.5-litre engine was dismissed as a likely Jaguar powerplant (see Majestic Major history), but the jewel-like 2.5-litre V8 was ideal for the curvaceous and sporty Mk2 Jaguar body.

The resultant Daimler 2½-litre V8, released in late 1962, was not quite as quick as the 3.4- and 3.8-litre Jaguars, but it more than made up for this in its turbine-like smoothness and torque. It enabled Jaguar to offer buyers a quieter, smoother car, coupled with additional improvements in the cabin which made the Daimler an altogether more refined machine (only automatic transmissions were available until a very few cars were equipped as manuals after 1966), and placed it firmly at the top of the Jaguar-Daimler range. The model was upgraded along with the Jaguar range in 1967, and renamed the V8-250, continuing in production until 1969.

Enthusiasts argue about what car may be considered the last of the ‘true’ Daimlers, but the V8 saloons are generally accorded this tribute; the body styling may have been all-Jaguar, but the engine was still uniquely Daimler. After this model, nothing but the trim and nameplates could differentiate the Daimler and Jaguar versions.

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In 1959 the idea of Daimler producing a sports car was unthinkable.

But Daimler was in financial trouble, and desperately needed a big win in the lucrative American market. The solution, it seemed, was to produce a sports car to rival Jaguar’s all-conquering XK range.

Edward Turner was called in to design a light 2.5-litre V8 engine for the job, in double-quick time, and he solved the problem by (in essence) drawing together four his succesful Triumph V-twin motorcycle engines back-to-back. From this simple expediency,however, came one of the finest V8 engines ever designed — an absolute gem of a machine which today is greeted by motoring writers with the same superlatives that were heaped on it when it first appeared.

The chassis and body, unfortunately, were not so happily conceived. Rushed into production for the 1959 New York Motor Show, the Daimler sport car’s chassis was badly-underdveloped, and the fibreglass body’s styling was, to say the least, controversial. The early cars flexed badly, doors tended to fly open, finish was less than perfect, and the unsuspecting public ended up doing most of Daimler’s development work for them.

All of these problems were eventually rectified, and today most of the car’s quirks are put down to ‘character’, but at the time of its launch, with little price differentiation from its Jaguar rivals, and with the sensational E-Type just around the corner, the SP-250 was destined to struggle in the markerplace.

Nevertheless, its saving grace was its engine, which propelled it to great success in competitions around the world (Pete Geoghegan won outright,by two laps,at Mount Panorama in 1962), and the engine was even adapted to some successful hillclimb cars, a Cooper-bodied open-wheel racing car, a dragster, and a few remarkable hot rods.

But when Jaguar took over Daimler in 1960, they had no place for a rival to the E-Type, and although the car stayed in production for the time being, by 1964 it was gone. Today, by constrast, it is the most sought-after postwar Daimler, with buyers paying high prices for relatively ‘ordinary’ examples and top dollar for fully restored cars. Its quirky styling only enhances its appeal as an icon of the sixties.

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The larger Daimler owner-driver saloons just kept on getting bigger.

The One-O-Four developed into the 3.8-litre Majestic, with automatic transmission as standard, far greater performance and (a first for British production cars) four-wheel disc brakes to haul it to a standstill quickly and safely. The car quickly won acceptance as a luxurious businessman’s express.

Then, in 1959, the Edward Turner-designed 4.5-litre V8 (developed from the SP-250 sports car’s 2.5-litre unit) was dropped into a redesigned Majestic body, and the magnificent Majestic Major was born. This car, despite its traditional looks, shattered all preconceived ideas about Daimlers. Despite a huge weight disadvantage (nearly 2 tons fully laden) It could cover a quarter-mile in 17 seconds, top 100mph (180kmh) in under 29 seconds, and could easily top 120mph flat-out — and the larger limousine version wasn’t much slower! Contemporary reports noted that the Majestic Major could easily out-handle and outrun many sports cars of the day, and do it with consummate serenity and style.

For those who doubt the potency of this car, an anecdote from the period should dispel any uncertainty. When Jaguar took over the Daimler company in 1960, one of the first things they did was look closely at the two V8 engines on its production lines. The smaller engine was an obvious choice for the Mk2 Jag’s body, but would the big 4.5-litre Major engine do well in the vast, upmarket MkX hull? Engineers dropped a motor into a MkX to see if it could handle the task — and it promptly blew the doors off everything in the factory. The white-faced Jaguar execs quietly dropped the idea; the notion of marketing a Daimler that could humiliate a Jaguar simply wasn’t on!

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As Daimler developed its range of mid-sized saloons (Conquest and Conquest Century) into the fifties, the previous line of mid-sized cars was growing into a collection of quite large machines.

The chassis of the Consort was developed in 1954 into the Regency Mk II (the 3-litre Regency, retrospectively known as the ‘Mk I’, was virtually stillborn in 1950, although its chassis carried a number of attractive specialist bodies).

The Regency Mk II was offered with a choice of 3.5- and 4.5-litre six-cylinder engines, and again variations on the themes were also available. Apart from limited-production bodies such as the Hooper ‘Empress’, there was also the Regency Sportsman, with a four-light body and swoopy rear-end treatment giving it a most distinctive air.

The model was later upgraded to give improved performance, and its 104mph top speed inspired its new name: the One-O-Four.

Again, there were the regular variants, plus a model that today would have the liberationists picketing the factory: the Lady’s Model. This was a basic One-O-Four, but its interior was lavishly equipped with such niceties as power windows, a built-in vanity case complete with make-up, slide-away notepad with gold pen, travelling rug, umbrella, fitted suitcases, fully equipped picnic hamper, torch, sunglasses — and much more.

In 1956 Daimler offered the option of automatic transmission on its One-O-Four range, foreshadowing the death within two years of the famous Daimler fluid flywheel and preselector drive system.

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