IMPERIOUS DAIMLER DOUBLE-SIX SUPERIOR THAN ANY V-12 CAR
IN the world of the super luxurious cars, the names that survive are mostly British. They are
Rolls Royce and Bentley, then there are those who aspire to be like the two.
As Rolls Royce or
Bentley, the world expects the largest, most extravagant and opulent vehicles with only the best. We are talking about looked-after cows sacrificing themselves for sofas, as well as library decibels in the cabins, engine that whispers like an exquisite lover, and suspension made of room-temperature French butter.
Because of that people are willing to pay any price and consider it a privilege to wait for their piece of industrial art to be produced.
Other car companies wish they are Rolls Royce or Bentley because it means that they can charge almost any price they want. Mercedes-Benz had previously tried to revive the Maybach marque as a standalone brand, but it failed.
Maybach failed because Mercedes-Benz did not understand “plutocratic palatial” and only understood industrialist extravagance.
The British are the only real snobs left. Even their working class can look down on anyone with conviction considering Britannia is no longer ruling even a swimming pool, and how their car industry relies on German and Indian generosity to continue.
In the old days before the World War 2, Europe was ahead of the pack when it came to car design. At that time each country had their own world class coachbuilder that pander to every “imperialist” wish.
Flush with money, the robber barons of Europe needed somewhere to spend their cash, and an utterly ridiculous set of wheels seem in order as they still do today.
Saoutchik, Chapron, Heuliex, Figoni et Falaschi and Vanvooren kept French aristocrats happy while Frua, Scaglietti, Vignale, Touring and Fissore maintained the Italian style. Strangely, I can only think of Glaser to represent the automotive powerhouse that is Germany.
The British were represented by hundreds of coachbuilders, many of which still survive today.
Names like James Young, H.J. Mulliner, Park Ward, Gurney Nutting, Vanden Plas, Grosvenor, Carlton and Hooper built some of the best looking cars of the age.
Most of these companies might have went the way of the dodo in the 1960s, but they left us a legacy with a large selection of styles and idiosyncrasies to select from when we dream about our classic car collection.
Today we have to be content with what the manufacturers offer on a fiveyear cycle with an in-between facelift.
We will never again have cars like this “fantabulous” Daimler Double-Six by J. Gurney Nutting & Co.
Here is a car that is as large as a small lorry, but has a coachwork that is so impossibly low-slung that it makes most people do a double take.
Even in the flesh it looks like it was resketched vehicle by Chip Foose, imagining what the original car should look like if they were built today.
The Daimler Double-Six is a heavyweight that could slug it out with Rolls Royce, Bentley, Maybach, Bugatti, Hispano-Suiza or even Duesenberg and Cadillac from across the pond.
Typical of these uber brands, they came with a large upright chrome radiator facing, a piece of mandatory decoration like a knighthood, or a piece of stolen diamond in the crown jewel.
One has to begrudge the Brits for their wonderful ability to conjure great names and it is absolutely genius to call the 8-litre V-12 cylinder engine a double six.
Apart from the fact that it seems to offer double of something clearly great, a six, which in itself is probably a reference to cricket when you can give a ball a great walloping and score a halfdozen runs by just looking down and kicking at the dust. It kind of rolls off the tongue easily, like a veiled insult to those unlucky enough to own something powered by something as pedestrian as a V-12.
What H.R. Owen did, while working at Nutting was come up with a close-coupled four-door sports saloon body for the Double-Six when it was ordered by British star Anna Neagle.
Owen had made a “stroke of genius” when he lowered the windscreen to an impossible level, leaving nothing more than a letterbox opening.
With the roof so low and the windscreen so wide, the large bonnet was exaggerated. From the side the car looks fabulous like a lowered sports tourer, but it is best viewed from the front three quarter with knees slightly bent so that the radiator is just above eye level.
In this position the wide windscreen would just half disappear behind the bonnet and grille while the low-set body takes on an impossible wideness.
It simply looks like nothing else. The body was built by Martin Walter Ltd.
The car fell out of public eye for nearly 60 years before reappearing in the late 1990s and winning the Pebble Beach Concourse in 1999.
This year another Daimler Double-Six by Nutting won the Pebble Beach event, a sports tourer with double open cabin.
With the advent of 3D printing, I am hopeful that the future holds a more exciting time for car fans, with new high-tech coachbuilders able to build cars to our exacting whims and leave the world with a more varied palette of the strange and wonderful to gape and ogle at.