Best cars for a royal wedding
Who cares about the nuptials when the car is so much more interesting, asks Damien O’Carroll.
The last royal wedding saw a touch of petrolhead class when William and Kate drove off in an Aston Martin DB6 MK2 Volante (which was the personal car of Will’s dad – Charles got it as a 21st birthday gift), so the bar was set high for the wedding car of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
In the end they went with a cool blend of retro and modern – a classic Jaguar E-Type that had been converted to pure electric power by Jaguar.
But what else could they have chosen? We reckon a blend of British and American culture would have worked too. Let’s look at what might have been.
AC Cobra
Yeah, actually just forget this royal wedding thing; this bad boy is easily the best ever marriage between the UK and USA.
The Cobra was created when, in 1961, Carroll Shelby abandoned all rational thought in his pursuit of speed and asked British manufacturer AC Cars to build him a version of its tiny two-seater Ace roadster modified to fit a V8 engine.
Shelby initially approached Chevrolet to supply the V8 for his project, but was turned down because Chevrolet didn’t want competition for its own Corvette. Ford very much did, however, and a legend was born.
Arguably the perfect car for the royal couple to make a loud, smoky getaway after the ceremony.
Jensen Interceptor
While the Cobra was a transatlantic marriage based on sheer inappropriate horsepower in a tiny body, the Jensen Interceptor was a far more cultured approach to combining a stiff upper lip with a thundering V8.
Initially packing a 6.3-litre Chrysler V8, the Interceptor would grow to 7.2 litres by 1971 before the company selfdestructed in a cloud of debt in 1975.
A big, lazy engine in a gorgeous GT hatchback body, the Interceptor was possibly the ultimate cross-continent distance crusher, and therefore perfect for that long-distance royal honeymoon. With added burnouts, or course.
Delorean DMC-12
While John Z DeLorean’s brashly extravagant brushed stainless steel gull-winged sports car could only ever have been American, it was actually built in the United Kingdom: namely Belfast in Northern Ireland.
The DeLorean was powered by a multicultural engine – the PRV V6 that was jointly developed by Peugeot, Renault and Volvo. And it wasn’t the highlight of the car.
DeLorean collapsed in a messy tangle of bankruptcy and accusations of drug laundering, but the DMC-12 would go on to find fame as one of the most recognisable movie cars of all time – the time machine for the Back to the Future series.
While it would certainly make a striking and dramatic wedding car, the PRV V6’s dodgy reliability might make for some royal anxiety.
MG XPower SV
Built at a time when MG Rover had basically thrown its hands up in the air and cried ‘‘why the hell not?’’, the XPower SV was a crazy thing that combined a complex carbon fibre body with an angry American V8 to create the most un-MG MG of all time.
It was released in 2003 with a 4.6-litre Ford V8, which was quickly upgraded to a Roushtickled 5.0-litre in the SV-R the following year. It was also offered with a factory-approved nitrous oxide kit that boosted power to more than 700kW because, again, why the hell not? It would make for a drama-packed royal departure, but certainly not the most dignified one.
Rover 75 V8
MG Rover clearly took the approach that the best way to get yourself out of a hole is to just keep digging, so went for broke (literally, as it turned out) and in 2002 strapped the 4.6-litre modular Ford V8 it used in the thunderous MG XPower SV into the stately Rover 75 (and the MG equivalent, the MG ZT) as well.
Creating the first V8-powered Rover since the SD1, the 75 V8 was well received by the motoring press but pretty much ignored by the buying public, who were largely scared off by rumours of Rover collapsing.
Which it did in 2005 when it was put into administration after being fleeced by the dodgy Phoenix Consortium that had bought it from BMW.
On second thoughts, probably not the best example of a successful marriage.