Daimler DB18 – childhood memories

Among my earliest memories, I recall sitting on the front floor of an aged Daimler, my back against the squab of the seat as I used two feet to press down the brake pedal so that my father could bleed the brakes.

Dad was the founding president of the Daimler Lanchester Club of Victoria. His first car was a Daimler DB18 Consort. Soon, he had a couple of them. They were grand, but tired. Given that Dad was a young academic with a couple of kids, it is not surprising that his Daimlers were not quite in the condition they were in when they left the Daimler factory in Conventry twenty years earlier. I recall cars boiling in the Australian summer, smoking with cold starts. I recall Dad desperately hanging on to the outside door handle, failing to stop a two ton Daimler (containing my sister and me, strapped in our safety seats) that was gathering pace down a hill when the handbrake failed.

However, the Daimlers had provided adventures even before I was old enough to remember them. Dad once drove a DB18 through a puddle and looked over his shoulder to find my bassinet and me floating on the rear passenger floor. Before I was able to walk, I managed to crawl under a DB18. I emerged out the other side black with oil and grease. As we were on a country property at the time with no running water, my father had only one thing with which to wash me down – kerosene.

The original DB18 was introduced immediately before the war, but few were produced before the factory was turned over to the war effort. Thus, despite a distinctly pre-war appearance, most DB18s were produced after 1945. The DB18 Consort was the post-war update that included headlights incorporated into the front guards and hydraulic front brakes. The rear brakes continued to be operated by rods.

The Daimlers used a 2522 cc in-line six cylinder, pushrod ohv engine fed by a single SU carburetter. This gave the car a claimed 70 bhp. Given that the DB18 saloon weighed 1650 kg, performance might best be described as stately.

Like nearly all Daimlers of the period, both my father’s DB18s were fitted with the Daimler Fluid Flywheel coupled to a 4 speed Wilson pre-selector gearbox. This meant that the driver would pre-select the next gear and then, when the moment was right, simply depress the left-most pedal to engage that gear. There was no need to coordinate the shifting of a gear lever with the depressing of a clutch pedal. Intended to allow smooth progress for the British aristrocracy, my father found the pre-selector particularly useful when traversing rough tracks in southern Australia. He would travel with a lower gear pre-selected, ready to dab the pedal at a moment’s notice, should the car begin to get bogged or the track get rougher or steeper.

Around our home, the DB18s were joined by a brace of Daimler Conquests – most of which did not run. The Conquest was based on the Lanchester 14 (also known as the Lanchester Leda). A much smaller and more affordable car than the typical large Daimler, the Conquest was aimed at solicitors and doctors, rather than the landed gentry. Our collection lived in various rented garages or parked on nearby streets. The Daimlers, now long gone, started my enthusiasm for interesting cars and thus probably set me on the road to financial ruin.

As an aside, I think Daimlers are a little under-appreciated in the classic car world. This is despite one winning best in show at MotorClassica in Melbourne a couple of years ago, and one winning at Pebble Beach before that. Generally, large Daimlers seem to be overshadowed by Bentley and Rolls Royce saloons. Later Daimlers (really just Jaguars with a crinkly radiator – except when fitted with Turner’s brilliant little V8 which never made it into Jags) seem to sell for less than their Jaguar siblings.