Royal Motors

Royal Motors

How long a rich and elderly English couple should keep their motor cars and what sort to buy when replacement becomes necessary are two questions which Their Britannic Majesties answered last week by setting an example. They have used their three personal cars for five years. They took delivery of three more, last week, from the impeccable firm of Hooper, carriage and motor-body builders to Royalty.

The new limousine for Royalty's town use is a Daimler Double-Six in deep red with scarlet hairline trim. The twelve-cylinder engine is of the "Knight," or sleeve-valve type, and the cost of the chassis alone exceeds $9,000. Until last week Their Majesties used a 1924 Daimler of exactly similar color.

The new field limousine for shooting on the moors is a Crossley, each rear wheel fitted with two tires to give double traction in mud.

The third car "for household and servants' use" is a gray Daimler sedan.

All the Royal cars have a duplicate speedometer, visible to the Royal eye. All are washed, polished, greased every night. Fortnightly a representative of Dunlap Rubber Co. (slogan: Dunlap Tires as British as the Flag!) journeys to wherever in Great Britain the Royal cars may be and thoroughly tests the rubber of each tire, scanning minutely for nails, flints, stone-bruises. Thus the undignified spectacle of Majesty waiting for a burst tire to be changed is seldom or never presented to English eyes.

Despite the popularity of Their Majesties--or perhaps because of it--misguided subjects contrive to scratch initials and other devices on the Royal bodies surprisingly often. Policy seems to dictate that the Crown shall not proceed against such petty offenders. Every blemish is patiently and skillfully obliterated (with sandpaper and quick drying varnish) during the night after it is discovered.

George V's preference for Daimlers dates from the purchase of a one-cylinder car of that make by his father, Edward VII. That young iconoclast, Edward of Wales, owns a Rolls-Royce town car, but like his father uses a Crossley in the field. The Sovereign's sister, Queen Maud of Norway, recently gave her son, Crown Prince Olaf, a U. S. Marmon sedan (purchased in London) for a wedding present.

The Emperor of Japan, the Shah of Persia and the kings of Afghanistan, Egypt, Sweden and Spain all own Rolls-Royces, as do most prominent Indian Maharajas. After trying out a fleet of Packards on the awful roads and cobblestoned streets of Jugoslavia, King Alexander has just ordered two more. Tsar Boris of Bulgaria drives a German Mercedes.

Four Chinese soldiers armed with Mauser pistols stand on the running boards and cling by means of hand grips to the Packard sedan of President Chiang Kaishek. For good measure two more yellow-guards sit on the trunk rack behind, holding rifles with fixed bayonets.

The enormous, regal Isotta-Fraschini is the car of two kings of tiny stature, Italy's Vittorio Emanuele and Siam's waif Praja Dhipok. In Manhattan the Isotta is sold by a son of potent Prince-Poet Gabriele D'Annunzio. Sumptuous, fur-carpeted is the new Isotta-Fraschini limousine just presented by Italian admirers to Achille Ambrogio Damiano Ratti, Pope Pius XI.

Dowager Queen Marie of Rumania still has the Lincoln which Henry Ford gave her. Patriotic King Albert has a Belgian Minerva but more often rides a motorcycle (TIME, Feb. 21, 1927), and is frequently rebuked by policemen, whom he always commends for doing their duty.

Minervas, among the cheapest cars of highest class, are also used by King Haakon VII of Norway, by the ruling Grand Duchess Charlotte of tiny Luxemburg and by Henry, Prince Consort of the Netherlands. Her Majesty Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands has a Cadillac. So has her daughter Crown Princess Juliana. And so have the Emperor of Japan and the King of Spain, in addition to their Rolls-Royces and Mercedeses. It would, in fact, be hard to name any good make of car which has not been owned at one time or another by King Alfonso of Spain and Prince Louis of Monaco.

President Herbert Hoover has a Lincoln for himself, a Packard for Mrs. Hoover, a Cadillac for his guests. In the Central American countries, Fierce-Arrow is now forging ahead as the official car of the presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela. Cuba. The Imperial Japanese Household has 25 old Fierce-Arrows and ten new. President Gaston Doumergue of France of course has an official Renault, but this great and justly renowned make is now reduced to claiming -- so far as Royalty is concerned -- "Dowager Queen Maria Christina of Spain, ""King Manuel of Portugal," and Britain's "Dowager Queen Alexandra." Some day someone will tell the Renault folk that the two dowagers are dead and that Portugal is a republic.

Signor Benito Mussolini personally drives (nearly always at breakneck speed) a bellowing, jouncing, space-annihilating Alpha Romeo.