Careful royal owner. Only 25,000 miles on the clock. But still – £730,000 for Diana’s 1985 Ford Escort?
BY NORMAL standards, a 37-yearold Ford with 25,000 miles on the clock would be unlikely to spark a bidding war.
But the black Escort up for grabs yesterday had a very distinctive lineage – it was the Royal runaround of Princess Diana.
The custom-made Turbo Series 1 motor went under the hammer for an astonishing £730,000 (including a buyer’s premium of about 13 per cent) and was bought by a mystery online bidder.
Although the Princess was able to use one of the many Royal Rolls-Royces and Daimlers, she preferred to drive herself, under the eye of a Royal protection officer.
The vehicle’s auction listing said: ‘Princess Diana was a city girl at heart and nipping to the shops or meeting girlfriends for lunch, at the wheel of her own car, was perhaps seen as a welcome break away from the police outriders flanking an armoured Rolls-Royce, and the attention it drew.’
Photographs were taken of Princess Diana driving the car with a young Prince William sitting in the back.
The listing added: ‘The RS Turbo was never intended to be driven by the future Queen and was inconceivable as transport for the future King William. It remains the most daring choice of class-dividing motor car by any member of the Royal Family since.’
The car, registration C462 FHK, was not Diana’s first choice, though. Before that, she briefly drove a red Ford Escort 1.6i Cabriolet – but protection officers felt it was unsuitable, citing its manual canvas roof as offering little privacy or protection.
Her Royal Highness relented but was ‘insistent’ on getting a new RS Turbo version of the Escort. They sold for around £10,000 at the time but hers ended up being custom-made.
Ford’s PR department suggested making a black RS Turbo Series 1 in contrast to the all-white range of the cars that were then on sale.
Therefore, the car was the first and, quite possibly, the only black RS Turbo Series 1.
Ford’s Special Vehicle Engineering department painted it and also installed a secondary rear-view mirror for the use of Diana’s protection officer.
The car came with a radio in the glovebox, the aerial of which was still visible as it went under the hammer at Silverstone Auctions in Warwickshire.
Despite being 37 years old, the Escort had just 24,961 miles on the clock.
Bidding for the car, which was driven by Diana between August 1985 and May 1988, started at £100,000.
In the end, more than 40 bids were received, with the new owner being someone from the affluent Alderley Edge area of Cheshire, famed for being home to numerous Premier League football stars.
The car was returned to Ford in 1988, having racked up 6,800 miles by Diana.
It was then sold to Geoff King, the manager of Ford’s government sales department, as a vehicle for his wife. In 1993 it ended up being a giveaway in a competition on the Kiss FM radio station.
Then, in 2008, it was bought by someone described as ‘the custodian of one of the best Ford RS collections in the country’.
At the same auction, the 1973 Rover P5 that took Margaret Thatcher from Conservative Party headquarters to Buckingham Palace after she won the 1979 General Election was sold for £32,000 to a telephone bidder.
‘At heart she was a city girl, nipping to the shops’