The story of Royal motoring in Britain stretches back almost as far as the invention of the automobile, with the first car to join the Royal Mews, a Daimler, arriving while Queen Victoria was still on the throne. But it was with Queen Elizabeth II, the monarch who presided over the UK’s modern era, and her family that cars as a means of regal transport played a far greater role than ever before, seeing Jaguars joining the long-established Daimlers as part of the palace fleets. When this Classic Jaguar article was conceived, it was intended to mark the commemoration of the Platinum Jubilee. Of course, the sad events of
September have inevitably changed its tone somewhat, especially as Elizabeth’s final journey was in a Jaguar XJ she’d helped to design herself. But we can still celebrate the life and times of the motoring Queen, and the Daimlers and Jaguars that helped define her reign.
Although the automobile was invented during the latter years of Queen Victoria’s rule, there is no record of whether she was ever amused - or otherwise - by the newfangled horseless carriage. For her son though, Edward, Prince of Wales - later to become King Edward VII when his mother died in 1901 - it was a very different matter, He was fascinated by new technology, with
Britain leading the world in science and engineering at the time; something that would only intensify during his Edwardian era. It’s generally accepted that his first encounter with a car was at the 1896 Exhibition of Motors in Kensington, London,
