Daimler and Lanchester
History and Models
logo 1896 to the Present

 1954-1958
 

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.

QEreturn
Queen Elizabeth's return from Africa on the death of her father George VI in February 1952
Conquest
The Queen and Prince Phillip during their tour of Australia 1954
conquest
The Conquest in full production 1954
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