Established in 1896 by H.J. Lawson, Daimler is one of Britain’s oldest automakers. The company purchased the rights to use the Daimler name from Gottlieb Daimler and set up its manufacturing base in Coventry.
Daimler was awarded a Royal Warrant to provide cars to the British monarch in 1902 and retained the privilege for decades. The company had become one of Britain’s larger automakers by the 1930s but declined after World War II.
Purchased by Jaguar in 1960, Daimler became part of the British Motor Corporation in 1966 and British Leyland in 1968. The company remained part of Jaguar when the latter was bought by Ford in 1989 and by Tata Motors in 2007. After decades of offering Jaguar-designed models, Dailmer has been dormant since 2010, when its last automobile, the Super Eight, was discontinued.
While not quite as famous as Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and Aston Martin, Daimler left a few notable cars behind. Of course, many are based on Jaguars from the 1960s, but some come from the pre-WW2 era. The DB18 is one of them.
Introduced as a replacement for the New Fifteen in 1939, the DB18 was also known as the Daimler 2 1/2 Litre in its early days. In 1949, it was revised and renamed the Consort. The DB18 is mainly famous for its association with Winston Churchill, who campaigned for the 1945 and 1950 general elections in a 1939 drophead coupe version of the car. The series also spawned limousines for British embassies and consulates in Europe.
In all, Daimler produced about 1,025 examples until the British joined WW2 and an additional 8,213 cars in the post-war years. It’s a relatively rare classic given the survival rate of 1940s and 1950s automobiles, while the two-door Sport Special version is genuinely hard to find. That’s because Daimler made only 633 units in total. The survivor you see here is one of those cars.
Like many DB18s that are still around, this silver and blue drop-top spent the last few decades in a barn. However, this one emerged as a solid survivor that looked like it would run and drive again with little intervention. And cleaning process it went through, thanks to the folks at “WD Detailing,” turned it into a stunning time capsule.
Sure, the body shows a bit of surface rust, the chrome is not all that shiny, and the interior is weathered, but this convertible might just be the finest unrestored DB18 / Consort out there. But this Daimler won’t hit the streets anytime soon. The owner decided to donate it to the Crawford Auto Aviation Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, so it will spend its retirement among other classics. Not a bad outcome for a rare 1950s gem.