Quite surprisingly, the magazine does not cover the introduction of the Limousine model in June 1968. The DS420 is first mentioned in the article shown here, from the November 1969 issue, where a recent visit to the Vanden Plas factory in the Kingsbury suburb of London (Church Lane 468) is described.

This article, a "Road test" by Robert Glenton, is from the September 1970 issue. It is not so much a road test in the technical sense, but it paints a nice impression of how it is to taste the luxury as a passenger in this chauffeur driven car.

The illustration is a press photo showing the factory demonstrator car MDU808F in London near Piccadilly Circus. It is also shown on the press photos page of this site.

In large format that photo is shown here.

From the March 1971 issue came this story, covering the first DS420 delivered to the French branch of the Daimler Hire company, for use in Paris. The position of the screen wipers indeed shows that this is a left-hand drive car. Most probably this is car 1M20028, built in August 1970.

The article mentions that Daimler Hire, which in those days was a subsidiary of Hertz, already had bought 57 limousines "of the latest type", i.e. DS420, which is of course a substantial part of the 811 limousines that were produced up to March 1971. This purchase by Hertz France may have been triggered by the fact that their competitor Avis in the Clamart suburb of Paris already had two DS420 limousines in operation.

In April 1971, one month after the previous article, a DS420 hearse caught the spotlight of this magazine for the first time. The photo in this article is a publicity photo from the coach builder Thomas Startin Jnr. in Birmingham. It is also shown on the hearses page of this site.

In large format it is shown here.

The April 1974 issue had two photos of the Landaulette that the Governor General of Jamaica had ordered for the forthcoming visit of HM The Queen in 1975. It was the first (of two) landaulettes that were ever built by the factory.

On this website we have an entire page on these landaulettes. It includes large format versions of these two photos.

On Saturday 29th June 1974 the DLOC celebrated its 10th anniversary with a "cavalcade" through the city of Coventry. The September issue covered this event.

Two DS420 limousines formed the head of the party. The first one, with license number '1COV' was the Mayoral car of Coventry, It was the Mayor's second DS420, delivered only a few month earlier. His previous limo, carrying the same license number, is shown on a factory press photo; see it here.

The second limousine in the parade, license number EWK1L, was a factory demonstrator car. It is shown on several press photos; click here to see. It also figured in a 1972 sales brochure.

One of the first club members with a DS420 must have been King Hussein of Jordan, as this article from the May 1978 issue shows. Every issue has a list of new members, mostly with a specification of their car, and other DS420 owners just don't show up yet in these years.

The car is a Nov. 1969 model, LHD, 1M20008.

In 1999, more than twenty years after this article appeared, King Hussein passed away.

The February 2005 issue of the magazine published a letter, with photos, submitted by the director of the museum that was founded in memory of the King. A second letter followed in April 2005.

Here we have a number of magazine covers that show a DS420, while the magazine itself has no further information about it. All four photos are also shown in context elsewhere on this site, and are clickable there to see them enlarged.
September 1979: the landaulette for the Governor General of Jamaica for the visit of Queen Elizabeth in April 1975, More about this car on the landaulettes page of this site.
August 1980: The Queen Mother visits Vanden Plas in Kingsbury to see her first limousine. More about this visit on the Queen Mothers car page.
May 1983: A press photo showing car DVC803V, one of the first cars that were assembled at Browns Lane. This photo and more on the Press photos page.
November 1990: a DS420 on its way to Melbourne for the Royal visit in 1989. This photo is also on the page with Contemporary photos.

This photo is from the National DLOC club meeting in Knebworth in 1979. The photo was published several years later, in the June 1985 club magazine.
The caption of the photo labels the car as belonging to the Queen Mother, but the fact that the roof trim line is chrome, not black, proves this wrong. This car, SHP292N, was kept by Jaguar Cars as the "Royal Household Demonstrator". It is shown at several other places on this website, e.g. in this 1976 magazine article and in this 1968 magazine article in Dutch language.

This photo shows the club stand at the Thoroughbred and Classic Car show in 1980. Originally that show was planned in London's Alexandra Palace, but in mid-1980 a devastating fire had damaged the Palace and the show had to move to Earls Court.

The DS420 is the Queen Mother's recently retired (first) limousine NLT2.

The Queen visited the Royal Tank Regiment in Gutersloh, Germany, on July 12 1985. According to the text she also used the Daimler DS420 (reg. 06AF81) for parts of her trip.

The August 1988 issue had a "20 years ago" column, featuring information from, as the name says, 20 years earlier. It showed two photos made at the "Press day" in 1968 at the Silverstone racing circuit, when the newly introduced DS420 was shown to the press. Pictured is Jaguar's demonstrator car MDU808F (vehicle 1M1002) which shows at many places on this website.

In the early days, when the magazine was produced by stencilling, photo reproduction was extremely coarse and certainly not up to the quality shown here. So these photos are not reproductions from that year's club magazine.

These photos have been published in several books, e.g. the book "Daimler and Lanchester, An Illustrated History" by Tony Freeman.

From the October 1988 issue: the Sheriff of Nottingham took delivery of two identical limousines: cars DWATL3AA201148 (production date June 20, 1988) and DWATL3AA201150 (production date June 27, 1988). Their registrations were NTV1 and NTV2.

As the text states, both cars were in Racing Green colour. The article says: British Racing Green, whereas the factory records say: Jaguar Racing Green. Anyhow, there never has been a standard definition of the "Racing Green". The interior was in West of England fawn cloth.

But in June 1989 one of these cars showed up in the magazine again...

The large article on Daimler earning their keep by doing real work is from the Driving Member of October 2001. It triggered a reaction from another club member whose Daimlers had the same jobs to do. This appeared in the subsequent December issue.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, known by everybody as "The Queen Mum", passed away on March 30, 2002 at the age of 101. Shortly after the introduction of the DS420 model she bought her first one (March 1970) and half a dozen would follow until she bought her last one, the 2nd to last from the production line, in 1992. She was undoubtedly the most visible user of the model.

The Driving Member paid attention to her death with two articles in the May 2002 issue. Alec Mackenzie, chairman of the DLOC, wrote an obituary, and club member Reg Turner wrote an article in which he recollects his memories of a visit she paid in 1996 to a development project in which he was involved.

This website has an entire page dedicated to her and her DS420 cars. Of course both these articles feature her (last) car with registration NLT2.

This photo, that first appeared in the Driving Member of October 2004, drew a lot of attention. Hearse A484MCP carries an uncommon passenger. The publications started with a "caption competition", for which the results appeared in the December 2004 issue.
Finally the July 2005 issue copied an article from the local newspaper, winding it all up, with comments from the responsible owner, and the local police and municipality.

As a reaction to the letter by Mr. Littlewood I wrote him that the "too rusty" remark was made by an employee at the museum, when I expressed my disappointment that this car was not in the exhibition, although I had been looking forward to seeing it.

These two illustrations are also shown on my page with various sales illustrations.

This article from the February 2007 issue describes what probably was the last large gathering of DS420 cars.

In 2008, when tools to build websites were still rare, I volunteered to set up a website for the DLOC. I hosted it on a server at my company, as I did with this DS420 website in those days.

This appeared in The Driving Member, February 2008.

This car GFPL48 was in the collection of Dutch DLOC member Henri de Potter. It is a very typical one, produced in April 1979, which was a few month before VandenPlas closed. Note that this car already has the rectangular air vents, but it also still carries the Flying D ornament and thus the grille with the backward flap at the top.
Admittedly, I do not know whether this strange combination is the result of a previous owner modification, and I know of no other cars from the same period to compare this with. But I have known Henri (and this car) since 1998 and I am sure that this was not done by him. Henri bought this car from Peter Jarvis in London.
The "desirable" cocktail cabinet in this car is not a factory original one.

This article is from the November 2012 magazine issue.

The 1971 Tariff price list is also on display on this website (together with a 1970 one), on the page with Various sales illustrations. Note that this article combines the front page of the 1971 tariff list with the actual tariff figures of the 1970 tariff list. This particular illustration appeared in the May 2014 magazine. The brochure with the happy young couple and the chauffeured limo in the back is extremely rare. A larger photo is in the Daimler Days book (Vol II, pg. 863) where this illustration is copied from. But I have never seen an actual one.
Showing cars AMU330H (price list) and WGJ366G (brochure). Car WGJ366G, VIN 1M1004, was the very first limousine delivered to a customer, after it was used as a demonstrator car at Stratstone's. We have a larger photo of this car on our page with Contemporary Photographs.

While on a tour around the Scottish coast in Summer 2015 disaster struck near Inverness. A stub axle on my car broke and the wheel came off; luckily it stayed inside the wheel well and I could skid to the side of the -not so busy- road. My (Dutch) breakdown service arranged for local service companies to bring the car to Macrae and Dick, the Jaguar dealer in Inverness, and ourselves to our hotel. Scott Harrington supplied the parts and they arrived by overnight train. With lots of help from very friendly people we were back on the road in four days.

This photo was published in the Driving Member of November 2016 (Volume 53 No. 3).

David Salmon made a visit to the Mallalieu Car collection in Barbados, which houses, among others, an ex-Governor DS420.

Article appeared in The Driving Member, March 2022.

The Driving Member of May 2023 showed this page which was copied from an eight-page brochure by the Kenning Motor Group in Manchester dating from around 1981. This limousine, which was ordered for one of their customers, is divisionless. The full brochure is on display on the "Various sales illustrations" page on this site.

More on this car on the webpage about the Queen Mother's limousines. At this auction the car was bought by an enthusiast from Tenerife, who already had one Royal Mews DS420 in his collection.

Articles appeared in The Driving Member, June 2023. and September 2023

The Electrogenic company, based near Oxford, converted this DS420 to electric. They kindly gave permission to use photos from their website, on which I based this article that I submitted to the Driving Member of December 2023.