Motoring
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Alan Judd
Ipressed my nose against the window of a classic car showroom recently and was suffused with nostalgia, not for what I saw directly before me — nostalgia is often indirect — but for my triptych of Daimler Majesties, a breed that once had all my love and perhaps could again.
Like most of its Daimler siblings, the Majestic was stately, even bulbous, but ele- gant nonetheless behind that regal grille (until Hitler, Daimler rather than Rolls were the cars of royal choice). It was a big automatic with yards of wood and herds of leather, a superbly comfortable (even for back sufferers) bench front seat and a 3.8 straight six engine that wafted its 35 hun- dredweight to a genuine 100 mph. It was made only in 1958 and 1959, after which it was succeeded by the even bigger Majestic Major which was powered by an excellent 4.5 V8 designed by Edward Turner. This remained in production after Daimler was taken over by Jaguar in 1960 and finished, in 1967, as the last genuine Daimler.
You never see them now. It saddens me that they weren't more collectable, though I was encouraged to read that ex-McClaren boss, Alasdair Caldwell, intends to take his on next year's Peking-Paris Motor Chal- lenge (I was slightly less encouraged to read that he also intends to drive it out there).
I bought my first in the early Seventies when no one else wanted them, a black Majestic with unmarked cream upholstery and blue pile carpet. It had done only thir- tysomething thousand miles and cost £130. The body was beginning to go — I imagine they all did — but it ran faultlessly and, years before the Young Fogies were offi- cially identified, I adopted heavy tweed, stout pipes, watch-chains and various hats and caps to go with it. I was in the Army and often away, so invariably had to crank it on rain-swept parking areas, but it always started on second or third pull. I don't know why I sold it, especially as I knew the new owner would love it not. Months later I tried to buy it back but he'd already got rid of it.
My second was another Majestic, maroon over silver, bought for another £130 when I was at Oxford and had enough of my Army gratuity left to run a car. My parsimony meant that it kept running out of petrol but its only breakdown was a blown manifold, easily welded. I kept it in the dons' carpark — it seemed appropriate — but it was seen one day by the bursar, a retired air vice marshal. I admitted owner- ship. He nodded. 'Fine motors. Had one myself.' I continued to park it there, with never another word said.
I remember doing an almost suicidal ton into the sunset on the A40, heading for a restaurant called Pinks in Gloucestershire, and later conveying most of the cast of Noel Coward's Hay Fever to a weekend party near Henley. We may even have put on the play in it. I sold it for £120 during an economising fit brought on by the oil crisis.
Within a year or so I'd done it again. This time it was a Majestic Major limou- sine, the biggest of all, with glass division, lambswool carpets and fold-away, rear-fac- ing seats. It had been the Mayor of Dart- ford's official car and the council invited offers. I couldn't view it but nor could I believe that many others would know what it was, so I sent a bid for what I reckoned it must be worth even as scrap — £75 — and forgot about it.
Mine, it transpired, was the only bid. I went along fearing a heap but found this gleaming black 46,000-mile beast, serviced by Stratstone's, taxed and MOT'd for nine months. I drove it around Oxford for less than two terms. It was ruinous to run but magnificent. You didn't so much drive it as assume command of the road; you didn't so much park it as dock it. I never rode in the back because none of my friends could or would do a turn on the bridge, but they had parties in the back, I believe, and one used to do his essays in it.
At 15 mpg, however, it had to go. An advert in Exchange & Mart produced an undertaker from Birmingham who bought it for £375 plus the Austin Cambridge he came in. If only they all sold like that.
Would I have one again? I like to think so but my nostalgic affirmative is immedi- ately qualified by considerations such as where I'd keep it, where I'd get spares, whether I could afford it. Yet I had nowhere to keep the others, never worried about spares, am richer now. So what's changed? My melancholy conclusion is that the nostalgia that suffused me as I pressed my nose against that window was not only not for the cars within but not even for the Daimlers recalled; rather, it was for a make called Youth, which I fear I mislaid some time ago.
First rule of football — don't lose possession.'
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