Long reply which hopefully explains things.
- XHP 438 was registered in March 1959 and the number plate put on our car 100002.
However the same number plate also appears on a number of other cars in the book so it is clear that Daimler used to swap it from car to car. - One of the prototypes had the larger grille and although the book says the car retains this grille to this day no-one (as far as I am aware) knows where it is.
- XHP 438 was used as the press car and went back to the factory for some re-furbishment before it went for sale as a 2nd hand vehicle. We do not know what work was done.
- We have the buff log book for XHP 438 and a lot of history on the car including photographs from its first private owner Donald Harley – with the standard grille.
- The black and white and colour photos by the bridge are a bit of artistic licence by the Trust. We have a number of photos in the archive taken at Compton Verney of cars parked by the bridge, house and lake – different colours, some with hardtop some without – all generally showing a number saying DAIMLER.
- We cannot guarantee that any of these cars is XHP 438.
- Compton Verney is only a few miles from Gaydon so we took XHP 438 there for a day to re-create all the photos in colour and use them to give a ‘1959 b/w’ v ‘2019 colour’ view of the car.
