In 1954, the first Daimler sports car for decades, the Conquest Roadster appeared, together with the saloon version, the 'Century'. Lanchester produced the 'Sprite', a 1.6 Litre with a Mechamatic gear box instead of the fluid flywheel, the smallest car with an automatic gearbox, but it gave a lot of problems and only 15 'Sprites' were built and the ancient Lanchester manqué just faded away. In 1955, Daimler unveiled a 100mph variant on the Regency theme, the 'One-O-Four', with twin carburettors and 137bhp engine. The Dockers were ousted from the board of Daimler in 1956, when Jack Sangster of Triumph Motorcycles, who had been taken over by BSA in 1952, took over the Daimler Company. The Dockers bought Rolls-Royce cars from then on, as an act of defiance. In 1957, the last production car with the fluid flywheel, the 'DK400' was produced, although it survived on commercial vehicles.

Conquest Roadster