Royal rollers and fancy Fords
As the 60s got underway, it was only a matter of time before the next royal visit reaffirmed our connection to the old country. The government needed to find some new royal cars suitable for the new Queen
By John Stokes
Ford Zodiacs had transported the Queen Mother during her tour in 1958 but five years on, their glitz had perhaps faded a bit too much for an actual monarch. As there was no longer a convertible version of Britain’s Zephyr or Zodiac on offer, Ford looked to their American arm for a replacement, finding it in the huge Ford Galaxie. The Public Service Garage purchased the car at around £3000 for royal tour work and VIP transport.
However, more prestige was required for the massively popular queen, so the government approved the purchase of two Rolls-Royce Phantom V limousines, each at a cost of £6704. The Phantom V was the largest Rolls-Royce that the carmaker had ever built but it was still a few inches shorter than the earlier Daimlers. They reeked of opulence. English leather upholstery and French walnut trimmings, a cocktail cabinet, electric windows and air-conditioning assured the comfort of passengers; a 6.2-litre V8 engine, automatic transmission and power steering made for a smooth ride.
Those cars were joined by two Austin Princesses as support vehicles, plus what was described in the press as a utility. Almost certainly that was the royal Land Rover, which had been carried on the royal yacht, Britannia.
Repositioning
The Britannia, with the Queen and Prince Philip aboard, arrived in New Zealand at Waitangi, Bay of Islands, on Waitangi Day, 1963. They stayed in New Zealand for 12 days, firstly visiting Auckland, Tauranga, Napier, and Wellington and then Dunedin and Christchurch. While not as extensive as their first visit, they were on a tight itinerary and much repositioning of the royal cars was involved. In the North Island, the cars were driven between itinerary points by night. In the South Island, because of the distances involved, the Rolls-Royces and Galaxie were mostly flown by RNZAF aircraft.
Following the tour, one of the new Rolls-Royces was sold by tender. It was purchased by cinema magnate Sir Robert Kerridge for £9000. Kerridge kept the car until 1970; it was sold again in 1981 to Len Southward. The car, with just 41,000 miles on the clock, is displayed today at Southwards Museum beside the royal Daimler.
The second Rolls-Royce was retained and used for royal tours and VIP duties until October 1970. The Galaxie was also sold following the 1963 tour. It has survived several private ownerships and is maintained in original appearance to this day.
1964
The next visit by a royal was supposed to be a return visit by the Queen Mother in February 1964. For that tour, the Ford Motor Company imported the latest Galaxie convertible again at a cost of £3000. However, the Queen Mother had become ill and the tour was postponed for 26 months. An all-new model Galaxie was due out in 1965 so the unused 1964 car was sold straight away, to the White Heron Lodge for guest transfers.
The Queen Mother arrived in Bluff on 16 April 1966. Over the coming weeks, she would make her way north to Auckland for an extensive tour which involved five royal vehicles – a 1966 Ford Galaxie convertible, the remaining Rolls-Royce Phantom V and two Austin Princess limousines. Additionally, another open vehicle was purchased, a Series II Land Rover, as we had seen on earlier tours. This was for use in open park sand off the road. The royal personages were to stand in the specially-made rear bodywork and wave with one hand, while supporting him or herself with the other
Another Daimler duo
Royal visits – as distinct from tours – were now becoming increasingly frequent. The Duke of Edinburgh paid a short visit in May 1968. But the next major event was a tour in 1970 by the Queen and Duke, accompanied by their two older children, Charles (now King Charles III) and Anne, to mark the bicentenary of Captain Cook’s discovery. This was the first time the Prince and Princess had travelled outside Britain with their parents, and the Queen had suggested in advance that this tour be kept as informal as possible; Prime Minister Holyoake later confirmed the informality of arrangements, and offered a tour theme of family and youth. Even so, the Royal vehicles needed to be appropriate! The government ordered two Rolls-Royce Phantom VIs at a cost of more than $22,000 each to supplement the existing Phantom V. (For context, a new base-model Falcon was listed at around $3,000.) Two Daimler DS420 Vanden Plas limousines were also purchased – it is thought these were support vehicles and to carry the Royal “children”. In addition, the Queen’s own Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud state limousine was aboard the Britannia for tour use.
The Royal Land Rover Series II had been sold following the Queen Mother’s tour in 1966 (it has survived in a private vehicle collection in Northland) but now the government was faced with the reality of open cars now being more difficult to source. No longer was Ford building cars in right-hand drive, so they could not replace the Galaxies of past tours. General Motors, who had been providing VIP Chevrolet Impalas to the government through the sixties, were also about to cease all right-hand drive production.
Indeed, the 1969 Impala was the last available as a right-hand drive, and only in sedan form. However, whilst the details are unknown, clearly some type of miracle was performed by General Motors – New Zealand, as they were able to supply a right-hand drive 1970 Chevrolet Impala convertible! It is thought this may have been converted from left-hand drive in Australia (as Ford was doing with LTD sedans). Rover-NZ were again able to supply a new Land Rover – a Series III with another specially made “Royal rear”. Following the tour, it was returned to Rover and the Chevrolet seemed to disappear as quickly as mysteriously as it had appeared.
1970
The royal yacht Britannia arrived in Wellington on 12 March 1970, and the requested informalities were instantly visible. The New Zealand Army Band played the New Zealand national anthem rather than the traditional “God Save the Queen”, and, on arrival at the Wellington town hall in a royal Rolls-Royce, the Queen and Duke approached the onlookers to speak directly with them.
Following this 18-day tour, one of the new Rolls-Royces was sold, subsequently converted into a hearse, and it remains in that role today with Lower Hutt funeral directors Gee & Hickton. The second Phantom VI was retained for use by the Governor General until 1996, and his earlier Phantom V was now sold.
While the new openness and approachability of the royals was welcomed, it heralded a change in the security needs of our visitors. Concern was compounded when, for the next major royal tour was announced as being in 1974, at the time of the Commonwealth Games, the planning called for royal meet-the-people “walkabouts”.
Now there was even less need for open cars. Rolls-Royce remained the limousine of choice, with the royal Land Rover being the sole open vehicle used. That vehicle was also eventually sold. It has survived in a private collection in Northland.
The Queen and Duke were again back in New Zealand in 1977 for the 25th anniversary of her accession to the throne. They visited 24 cities and towns – and made 25 walkabouts’. By now the royal motorcades were simply for getting from A to B, rather than for processions, and closed cars were the order of the day. Still the people lined the streets to wave, albeit in dwindling numbers, possibly because of the frequency of royal tours now and the rise of other entertainments.
There would be exceptions to the smaller crowd numbers. Interest in the royal family spiked in 1981, when Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer were married in a spectacular televised service which attracted a global audience estimated at 750 viewers. Everyone loved Diana and so, when it was announced that Charles and Diana would visit New Zealand in 1983, the crowd went wild. The government also rediscovered a new way to update the cars for royal tours at lower cost to the taxpayer. As in the earliest tours, they would borrow them.
The borrowers
Two such cars borrowed for Charles’ and Diana’s tour, wind and weather permitting, were a Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible and the Bentley equivalent. These cars were most certainly acquired with visibility of the new Princess in mind, as opposed to just transport.
Our government also borrowed a Rolls-Royce from the Australian government for the same tour. Apparently, when the time came for the car to be returned to Canberra, the representative managing the car during its time here became increasingly concerned about getting it back into Australia. No permission had been given for its temporary export, and no paperwork existed to aid the re-entry to Australia.
The Queen visited again in 1986 and again in 1990 to officially close the Commonwealth Games in Auckland, and she also took part in events marking the sesquicentennial of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. On both of these occasions protestors threw items at the Queen. In 1986 it was eggs and in 1990, a black T-shirt. It glanced off the Queen’s ams, while she and the Duke of Edinburgh stood in the open on the back of a Toyota Hilux fitted with a low screen and handrail. It was picked up by the Governor-General, Sir Paul Reeves.
While those incidents no doubt caused a reappraisal of security during walkabouts, it didn’t deter the Queen from visiting New Zealand. She came back for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Auckland in 1995 and opened the refurbished Parliament Building, and she returned in 2002 as part of the Commonwealth celebrations of her golden jubilee – her final visit downunder.
This year and the accession to the throne of King Charles III brought us to the end of the second Elizabethan era. With it one has to conclude that the days of parades of royals travelling our nation in exotic and, especially, open automobiles are almost certainly over.
As we reminisce about earlier times, we may be comforted in the knowledge that so many of the royal cars involved have survived and remain available to be seen by those of us with less august bloodlines. Long live the royal cars.
This story was made possible thanks to the valuable assistance of Russell Walsh, the guidance of the Daimler & Lanchester Car Club and the Vintage Car Club, Archives New Zealand and the National Library of New Zealand.
