Daimler DS420 Scale model cars

 Although the real DS420 fan holds the opinion that the proper place to keep the car is in the living room of the house, practical considerations are often in the way. A scale model is then an excellent substitute to keep the mind focussed properly.

As far as I could trace, seven different manufacturers have built scale models of the DS420: one in scale 1:18, all others in scale 1:43. Five English manufacturers used the so called "white metal" technique, and two Chinese manufacturers produce their models in resin. Prices for the white metal ones are typically between GB£ 110.- and £ 140.- The resin models are around half to 2/3 that price.

A Chinese company has chosen the DS420 in its product line recently (Jan.2008). I have not been able to trace the manufacturer's name or website, but the models are sold by modelinfo.cn. The material is resin. An early DS420 was selected: round air inlets, wing mirrors, chrome bumper with chrome overriders, D-logo on the hub-caps, and the high grill with a tiny flying D. The seller indicates that there were 100 each produced in black and in white, plus a few with experimental colours. He offered a copy of these experimental ones to me for sale: dark blue, black+white, dark red, gold. Their shape is slightly more accurate than the other Chinese ones (see below), although the rear bumper lacks the chrome overriders and has integrated lights that shouldn't have been there. And there is only one petrol filler lid. It has the round insignia on the air inlets (pre 1973) combined with the long bootlid handle (post 1975). Several Chinese vendors offer them on eBay, with starting prices from £ 40.- (excl. P&P).

The box contained a small card (click on the image to enlarge), with a text paragraph copied from Craig Tiano's website and the year 1963. A bit early...

Latest news: 1/18 scale model. Available in white, black and royal red&black.

The Shenzhen Jiarun Model Ltd Co. in Shenzhen near Hong Kong released these DS420 models in December 2007 for the PMC (Paul Model Collection) brand name. Their website is at www.jiarunmodel.com. The models are made from resin, and nicely manufactured. The proportions look good, although the shape of the boot lid somehow doesn't look right. The tyres are also out of proportions. The bottom hardly has any detail, but the interior is very well detailed: lovely! The model is now available in six colour combinations: white (as in the 1981 sales brochure), metallic light bluegreen over dark bluegreen (as in the 1989 sales brochure), and as a Royal car in black over maroon with The Sovereign's coat of arms. In April 2008 the colours black, black over silver and black over yellow were added to the range. The company chose a very late model car, with the low grill, door mirrors, and sidelights in the bumper (although the bumper is chrome colour instead of rubber). All were made in limited editions of 50 each. The bluegreen one is my favourite. Several Chinese vendors offer them on eBay, with the reserve price typically set between £ 50.- and £ 65.- (excl. P&P).

A few Japanse vendors offer a model under the brand name "Antonette 43", but from photos and other comparisons I have the impression that this is a re-badged Shenzhen Jiarun product.

Western Models was the first to manufacture a DS420 model. It was produced for the Automobilia model car shop in Haarlem, The Netherlands. Automobilia had 300 of these made around 1989/1990, in black and in dark red (150 each). The DS420 was the first production ever commissioned by Automobilia, but more (non-Daimler) were planned. Therefore, this DS420 production received the designation Automobilia Collection No. 1.

All models have the license plate number A66 NNF. This model has very good and accurate proportions.

One day, a high ranking official was assassinated in his limo. An Automobilia employee "adapted" a dozen limos from their stock to this event. This version is shown here (above) alongside an unmodified one. René Boswinkel, the proprietor of Automobilia, provided this copy of the original model drawing (right):

Cheshire Scale Models produced some 400 to 500 DS420 models around 1993. Colours were mostly black, grey, blue over silver, and white. They made both a limo (300 approx.) and a hearse (200 approx.). Approx. 10 of the limos were made as landaulettes. Cheshire has taken a very early car, with the square number plate and the short boot lid handle on the back. The interior of the car is especially detailed. The proportions of the model are good but not excellent. It looks slightly lower and much more slender than a real car does.

These cars have the name Cheshire Scale Models and a cartoon of "the Cheshire Cat" clearly embossed under the bottom plate of the car. This manufacturer was based in Nantwich, Cheshire, and made both DS420 and Bristol car models. They went out of business a long time ago.

The advertisement shown above appeared in the Model Auto Review No. 68, of December 1992 / January 1993. The picture showing the black limo and hearse together (right) is from a catalogue. All other photos show models from my collection, including the recently acquired hearse.

Left: three Cheshire Scale Models (two-tone limo, black limo, white landaulette) are shown here together with the Milestone Miniatures hearse. The two-tone model is very beautiful: it has a "chrome" waistline which none of my other white metal models have. This colour combination was a special production. The manufacturer did these upon request for customers that somehow were involved in the "real" DS420 cars: owners, sellers, and even Daimler employees. On the real DS420 cars, this "Black over Carlton Grey" colour scheme was the most popular two-tone combination (of the first 1350 limos, 957 were black and 42 were black over Carlton).

Note the striking similarity between the hearse and the other models. More comments on this follow below.

Quite surprisingly, I was able to buy two unassembled Cheshire Scale Models kits: one limousine and one landaulette. Note (front row) the tiny cocktail cabinet, the landaulette window surrounds, grill, steering wheel and mirrors (together in the fork-like shape). Apart from the parts shown, there is a bag of extremely tiny parts such as door handles, boot-lid handles and the like that I did not even dare to unpack.

A quite rare specimen is the one from Specilties International (Mr.Ted Webber), from Ashford, Kent. They were manufactured by Illustra Models from St.Leonards, near Hastings in East Sussex. A series of 100 was built for the owners of a small limousine company. Quite soon thereafter that limousine company merged with a larger one, which was less interested in such an expensive gift item. Then some models went to a collectors club as a special celebratory item. Only three were fitted as the Queen Mother's car, black over maroon, with the actual license plate number NLT 2, blue roof lamp, the coat of arms, and with a lion mascot instead of the flying D on the bonnet. The coat of arms is not exactly right; the one used here is The Sovereign's one, not the Queen Mother's. Cf. "the real thing" in the picture to the left, which has the "bows" and the "lions".

The design as chosen is from around 1976: the car has round air inlets at the front, but the rectangular license plate and corresponding long boot lid handle on the rear. The car is beautifully manufactured, and especially the front grill is very charming. But its proportions are not accurate. E.g. the triangular body part behind the last side window is not properly shaped, which makes the model look much shorter than it should be. Also, the tail part of the waist line is very wrong, as can be seen on the two-tone picture. The Specilties Intl. models have yellow head lamps.

The last white metal manufacturer was MiniMarque43 of Halsham, E.Yorks. They got the mould from Western Models, so these MiniMarque43 models are extremely similar to the Western/Automobilia ones mentioned above. The most visible distinction is the front grill, which has a black shade on the MiniMarque43 and is kept in chrome colour on the Western ones. Another difference is on the centre line of the bonnet: body-colour on Western, and chrome-colour (actually "paint scraped") on MiniMarque43. Other differences are the "chrome" window surrounds of the MiniMarque43, not present on the Western, and the colour of the front bench, which is grey in the Western one, and black in the MiniMarque43. The interior mirror and the chrome trim around the front window are present on older MiniMarque43 models. but missing on later ones (as they are missing on Western).

MiniMarque43 called it a VandenPlas model 1967, but it has the rectangular air inlets and several other details that came on the car only from 1980 on. By that time, the cars were not made by VandenPlas anymore. As far as I know, all models have the license plate number A66 NNF, which is the same as the Western/Automobilia ones have.

The MiniMarque43 landaulette, released in September 2002, exists in two different versions: one with hood down, and one with hood up. The original colour combinations are two-tone grey over black (beautiful!) and two-tone black over light-yellow.

Also a limo equipped as a Queen Mother's car has been released: black over (very) dark cherry-red, with maroon side-stripe, license plate number NLT2, lion mascot, and even a badge bar!

The dark blue limousine in my collection came with a number-certificate that states that it is from a limited series of 100, the white car with a certificate that states that it is from a limited series of 150 (a model was advertised on eBay with a certificate from a limited series of 180). So one may conclude that these certificates have no value. The later production badges came with no certificate at all. The colour spectrum for "ordinary" limousines was: white, dark blue, burgundy (maroon), dark green and black. A close look to the landaulettes and the QM car shows that several details have been changed over the earlier ones, most notably the surround of the side windows. Note how the triangular ventilation window has disappeared. The same change has been made to the newly produced "ordinary" limousines. A nice addition is a tiny Daimler name sticker on the boot lid (as the real cars got from 1987 on).

These special models were originally made in very limited numbers (40 for the QM car, 50 for both types of landaulette together). The project was started by Richard Briggs, the owner of MiniMarque43, shortly before his death in July 2002. As most white-metal producing companies are, MiniMarque43 was a very small company. After it had been up for sale for quite some time, it faded away. The actual manufacturing was done by Scale Model Technical Services (SMTS) in Hastings, who have kept the original moulds. Occasionally, small series are still produced from them. These introduced new colour combinations, such as black over dark cherry/maroon for hearses and limos, and single colour yellow or grey for landaulettes. They are distributed e.g. by J.M.Toys in Waterlooville (UK), www.jmtoys.net.

In November 2002 the Milestone Miniatures brand released a Daimler Sovereign Hearse in their "Gems and Cobwebs" series. It is available in black, white, or two-tone grey, and upon introduction it was priced at GB£ 75.- approx. Their web site www.modelcars.co.uk has the following quote (verbatim copy): "The Daimler Sovereign Hearse. One of the most popular hearse in the UK. Used by many Undertaking Company's. Based on a sovereign limousine.[...] Very similar to the hearse used at Princess Diana's funeral."

But this "Sovereign" is a bit strange....

Browsing through the book "Daimler Days" of Brian Smith, I could not find any Sovereign with round air inlets at the front. Round inlets are just typical DS420 (and predecessor Majestic Major) items. Also, no Sovereign had the typical "Hooper" waistline, bending downward to a point below the tail light section.

The white hearse on the next picture is this Milestone Miniatures; the other two are MiniMarque43 (of which 50 were built originally: black, grey, and two-tone grey+black):

The various Daimler books by Brian Smith and Brian Long show many hearses, but none is Sovereign based. Also, I have never seen Sovereign based hearses listed in the "Used hearses" sections of the web sites of Wilcox Limousines, Woodall-Nicholson (Coleman Milne) or Zenith. I really doubt that "many Undertaking Companies" had such a Sovereign. So: to me the Milestone Miniatures really is a DS420 hearse that for some reason could not be called as such. Politics? Newer releases have the designation "Daimler 420" on the box: a change from am erroneous model to one that never existed. Earlier on this page we showed this Milestone "Sovereign" hearse next to the Cheshire DS420 landaulette. The similarity is striking... The hearse used for Princess Diana's funeral was a DS420, not a Sovereign. It was a 1985 model, and at that time even the DS420 had no round air inlets anymore.... More pictures on the hearses page of this web site. The black hearse (MiniMarque43) does not have the typical DS420 tail lights; its lights resemble the ones on the Eagle/DS420 hearses.

The price of the MiniMarque43 hearse is approx. 1.5 times the price of the Milestone Miniatures hearse. In my opinion this reflects the difference in detail and refinement in an appropriate way.

Banger Hearses: Mardave body shell Mardave is a brand name of Kamtec Corp in Bognor Regis, England, manufacturer of ABS-plastic body shells for radio controlled model cars. They produce this 1:14 (approx) scale DS420 hearse shell, and can deliver many more parts and supplies to make it into a moving vehicle. It measures 42×17.5×12 cm. (16½×7×4¾ inch).

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