Also in my garage
Built just eight years apart, these Daimler dream cars couldn’t be more different
When Ian Gilbert told us he had “a couple of Daimlers” we might be interested to see, the last thing we expected to emerge from his suburban south London garage was a 1951 DB18 Super Sports, a coachbuilt drophead of beautiful proportions, sublime craftsmanship and real rarity. And then, with a purposeful rumble and through a cloud of exhaust smoke, things get even more exciting as the Mr Hyde to the Super Sports’ Dr Jekyll – a 1943 Dingo armoured scout car – noses out into the open.
Gilbert has a love for old British machinery, despite having spent his working life at the cutting edge of technology as an aerospace engineer, working on myriad fascinating projects including most recently ‘Project Mosquito’, the three-year bid to design, build and fly the UK’S first unmanned aircraft. That engineering passion extends to a 1936 Rampart motor yacht and a collection of pre-war motorcycles, but his most eye-catching toy is surely the Dingo.
“I originally decided that I would buy a Jeep, without having really thought about it,” says Gilbert. “I discussed it with a friend of mine before we went to The War and Peace Revival. I had a great day out, but a couple of days later he called me to say that he’d bought a Jeep. That really pissed me off and I thought, ‘If he’s got a Jeep then I’m not buying one!’
“Then, while working in Woodford, I noticed a magazine advert for a Daimler scout car for sale in Manchester. It was converted for the Malayan campaign during WW2, complete with turret. Knowing nothing about them, I bought it and had it transported down to London on a massive low-loader that totally blocked the road.
“The biggest difficulty with these vehicles is getting spares – particularly the tyres, which are made of solid rubber. I found a guy selling six, but he said there was a catch… they came with a vehicle! So this arrived with the tyres,” he says, pointing to his Dingo, “I turfed my wife’s car out of the garage and sold the turreted one – it wasn’t very practical to drive once my son had left home because you really needed a spotter.”
Having been laid up for 20 years the Dingo was recommissioned by Gilbert, who repaired a stuck exhaust valve, and removed and cleaned the fuel tank. “It’s got an inch and a quarter of armour at the front and weighs about three and a half tonnes, so the engine works a bit harder than it does in the Super Sports,” says Gilbert. “The unit is fundamentally the same; they put on an aluminium head plus twin SU carburettors for the Super Sports. The carbs are different on the Dingo because it was designed to work at all sorts of angles. They’ve both got preselector ’boxes: the Super Sports has three forward gears plus overdrive and reverse, while the Dingo has five forward and five reverse gears. It’ll do 55mph, and the seat is angled so that the driver didn’t have to turn through a full 180º to look out the rear hatch and take it away from the action.
“It’s a very complex vehicle, with permanent four-wheel drive. Conventionally, drive goes across the axles, but in this case the connecting drive is along the body: the two left wheels are connected together, as are the two rights. It’s got fully independent suspension, with around 10in of travel, and a fluid flywheel like the Super Sports; it’s like an automatic, but you’re telling it when to change gear. It’s a great system, with no clutch so you can stop in any gear.”
As we leave, snow begins to fall and Gilbert prepares to jack up the Dingo for a maintenance routine that has now become a ritual. “They need a lot of love and attention,” he explains. “The steering alone has 24 grease points, and there are a further 32 on the suspension: you’ve really got to keep on top of maintenance. The trick is to avoid anything going wrong with it!”