In 1959 the idea of Daimler producing a sports car was unthinkable.

 

But Daimler was in financial trouble, and desperately needed a big win in the lucrative American market. The solution, it seemed, was to produce a sports car to rival Jaguar’s all-conquering XK range.

Edward Turner was called in to design a light 2.5-litre V8 engine for the job, in double-quick time, and he solved the problem by (in essence) drawing together four his succesful Triumph V-twin motorcycle engines back-to-back. From this simple expediency,however, came one of the finest V8 engines ever designed — an absolute gem of a machine which today is greeted by motoring writers with the same superlatives that were heaped on it when it first appeared.

The chassis and body, unfortunately, were not so happily conceived. Rushed into production for the 1959 New York Motor Show, the Daimler sport car’s chassis was badly-underdveloped, and the fibreglass body’s styling was, to say the least, controversial. The early cars flexed badly, doors tended to fly open, finish was less than perfect, and the unsuspecting public ended up doing most of Daimler’s development work for them.

All of these problems were eventually rectified, and today most of the car’s quirks are put down to ‘character’, but at the time of its launch, with little price differentiation from its Jaguar rivals, and with the sensational E-Type just around the corner, the SP-250 was destined to struggle in the markerplace.

Nevertheless, its saving grace was its engine, which propelled it to great success in competitions around the world (Pete Geoghegan won outright,by two laps,at Mount Panorama in 1962), and the engine was even adapted to some successful hillclimb cars, a Cooper-bodied open-wheel racing car, a dragster, and a few remarkable hot rods.

But when Jaguar took over Daimler in 1960, they had no place for a rival to the E-Type, and although the car stayed in production for the time being, by 1964 it was gone. Today, by constrast, it is the most sought-after postwar Daimler, with buyers paying high prices for relatively ‘ordinary’ examples and top dollar for fully restored cars. Its quirky styling only enhances its appeal as an icon of the sixties.

TP