Daimler SP250 - The Sacred and Profane 

Drove a Daimler-Jag V8 aged twenty, doing a test drive at a friend's garage. It was like propelling a suave lounge with rocket power. Superb engine. I'm 72 now and still recall every detail.

As a child I saw white police SP 250s being operated out of the Finchley traffic garage. What a job driving round in a sports car all day I thought.

Not many here in the U.S., but I’ve had the pleasure of detailing one, here in Jacksonville Florida. Definitely a very cool little car. 🚗🙂

I think it was a gorgeous car,wonderful engine with timeless elegance . Always wanted one but couldn't afford it.

A neighbour friend of mine has a B series one; he built it from bits in boxes shipped over from the US so also had to convert it to right hand drive. He says that the best part by far is the engine, followed by the interior. I have a Triumph Stag (yes, another commercial failure snatched from the jaws of victory by the British car industry) and today, as classic cars, they both punch above their weight. If only Triumph had put the SP250 engine in the Stag....or, more realistically, the 3.5 Buick/Rover V8 that was within the BL stable. It is what you would do today; rationalise and use something tried and tested. Hey ho, some poor commercial decisions back in the day have nonetheless left us a legacy of great classic cars that work well, thanks to dedicated (mad?) car enthusiasts.

The controversial appearance of the Dart was due to trying to combine British and American styling influences, to appeal to the American market. They do have a quirky appeal tho' and that rumbling V8 sound gives it genuine muscle car credentials.

I'm surprised they didn't build a hard top version of The SP250 for police use.

I’ve had my SP250 for over 40 years and still enjoy using it regularly, all year round. I also worked for Jaguar Cars during the 80s, spending much time at the former Daimler factory at Radford, Coventry. A great video, with nice detail. The little V8 engine is a gem. (External door handles & wind up windows too; sheer luxury for a 50s British sports car 🙂)

Though agreed on ugly, these cars did have many attractive parts. The little lights I assume are blinkers above the headlights are beautiful and I love the tail fins. If they had just changed the front away from the sad catfish look I think they could've had a winner.

Why did Daimler have to make the SP250 aesthetically unappealing and supposedly even being unable to properly make use of the larger 4.5-litre Daimler V8 (that in reality was putting out 260 hp rather than the projected 220 hp it was limited by on the dyno the company had) or the unrealised 280-290 hp 5-litre V8? Had they been able to afford it (were it not for the Dockers), Daimler needed something along similar lines as the AC MA-200 prototype in terms of styling, sophistication and latent longevity. AC themselves did consider the Daimler V8 only to switch to Ford after talks with Jaguar's Lyons fell through (and supposedly trying to nudge them towards the XK6 engine possibly the 2.4-litre or 3.4-litre). FWIW Leonardo Fioravanti was said to have produced a thesis that anticipated the Pininfarina 1800 Aerodynamica concept and powered by one bank of the 2.5 litre Daimler V8, an engine he much admired for its compactness and power. With the crankshaft and cylinders suitably modified by Fioravanti, whose engineering skills perfectly complemented his design talents, the engine was mounted transversely across the nose and inclined to the rear to keep the bonnet line as low as possible. That raises an interesting idea for how Daimler or BSA could have made better use of a related Daimler V8-based 4-cylinder that draws parallels to how Mercedes-Benz acquired DKW / Auto Union before selling it to VW and becoming Audi. If BSA were not adverse to developing the Bantam from the DKW RT 125 than surely they could have taken a similar approach to the British Army confiscated DKW F9 prototype, with the BSA name being discontinued upon switching over from two-stroke to four-stroke engines under either Daimler or more unlikely another junior marque within its portfolio (Lanchester, Ariel, etc). Mercedes-Benz did help towards the DKW F102 / Audi F103 via the Mercedes-Benz W118/W119 prototype, with the M118 engine becoming the Volkswagen EA831 OHC as used by the Porsche 924, Audi 100 and VW LT van. Daimler could have also aped Triumph by converting their own iteration from FWD to RWD (ala 1300/1500 to Toledo/Dolomite) with styling by the likes of say Ogle Design (a la Daimler SX250) and possibly Trevor Fiore. The idea of a related 4-cylinder also raises the unrealised prospect of producing a Spridget or Spitfire type sportscar below the SP250, given the potential for ties to Vauxhall there was also the Viva HA-based 1963 Vauxhall HAS Piper Roadster concept car for Daimler to utilise or draw inspiration from (that vaguely anticipates the Jensen-Healey - whose underpinnings were said to have been sourced from the Viva). Even if Daimler had limited capacity and the V8 was becoming an aging design by the late-1960s. Perhaps in better circumstance with competent management and drawing inspiration from their approaches to Vauxhall (via the Cresta PA-based Daimler DN250 V8 prototype), an independent Daimler-BSA concern could have design a replacement that used the Vauxhall Slant design to speed up development akin to Lotus with the 900 Series engine yet with more resources than the latter? A 6-cylinder slant engine based on a Vauxhall design already capable of being converted to diesel would echo the Jaguar AJ6. Daimler's slant-four meanwhile would have benefited from a 1904 patent by Fredrick Lanchester for two counter-rotating balance shafts running at twice the engine speed making a four-cylinder engine feel as smooth as a six-cylinder engine, which Mitsubishi updated and Porsche soon utilised for their M44 4-cylinder used in the 924/944/968. In the early-1970s the Opel Design Team built a Jaguar-like Opel Diplomat C study however the 1973 Fuel Crisis and low sales of the Diplomat B put paid to that idea (in spite of attempts at producing a Cresta & Viscount PD or a Cadillac Seville from the Diplomat B).

I remember seeing Police Daimler Darts around Newmarket back in the day. I thought they looked really good. Wouldn't have said no to having one of them.

The finned styling and fine interior stand the test of time very well.

Nice nod to Carmine Jnrs malapropism from The Sopranos in your title Rory. Thanks again for your amazing work and enjoy your Whit weekend.

When you talked BSA motorcycles and company it reminded me of the BSA sports cars as well as , the Swallow Doretti and the Bond Equippe.

Excellent video, I knew some of this but not all of the detail your very comprehensive research has uncovered. I filmed one of the ex police cars at Bicester Scramble that still remains in Police spec.

Nothing like doing a bit of customer clinicing before putting a car into production. A piece on the Dockers/BSA management failures, including the Lady Docker cars, would be good.

thoroughly excellent presentation as always. interesting how it became the Police high speed persuit vehicle of choice. a car with a face like a catfish is unlikely to warm to many but in the right circumstances I'd certainly buy one. something that never made sense to me (other than the nonsensical company who ended up making the decisions) is why the Daimler 2.5L and sister 4.5L engines weren't used as the power plants for the BLMC family V8s, being technically superior to the Rover/Buick unit and also being American derived making them ideal the biggest V8 market.

Great video 👍😊

Another great video!

A TR3 in no way compares with an SP 250 on performance and isn’t much better looking , unlike the TR4 , just my opinion of course

Ugliest car ever built? It's a work of art

I'm in New Zealand and I remember the SP250 very well. There weren't very many of them here, but I always thought that they were quite beautiful. I'm disappointed to learn that they sold so few if them.

When I first came across the description of the SP250 from the NY Auto Show a couple of years ago, I really questioned my memory as I’d always loved the Dart and was tempted to buy one in late 1987. I always thought they were absolutely the bees knees. Thought I had been mistaking the SP250 for the Dart all those years. But no…

They were based on the Triumph TR3/TR4 chassis…… also from Coventry… The first Daimler Sovereigns were versions of the Jaguar 420 which in turn led to the Series 1 XJ6 and the later Sovereigns, the Mk2 Jaguars became the 240 and 340 with slimmer bumpers etc, and the Daimler 2 1/2 litre V8 became the Daimler 250.

Maybe 50 years ago, I saw an SP250 driving along the M5 with the number plate "FU2".

Fantastic video informative as always I think one of these cars was on U.K. wheeler dealers as looks and sounds familiar possibly being one the great Edd China worked on

If only there had been a way to offer the Daimler V8 in a Triumph TR, that would have been a beast. A Cobra rival if the big 4.5 would fit.

I'm 68. I've only heard of Daimler (not 'Daimler-Benz') only from this channel. Seems Daimler may have had a struggle with name recognition in the US market.

re:hardtop. I'm sure I remember seeing a photograph some years ago of a hardtop that slid backwards on runners and settled between the rear wings over the boot.

Always thought the "Dart" was nicely engineered but a Frankenstein mix of British and American styling that just didn't look right.

I like the police versions. The black body colour suits it.

I am not sure that showing the building of Triumph TR3s illustrates fibre-glass bodies. Torsion bar (front) springs do not of themselves improve road holding, rather that they are used with full wishbone suspension, which does.

I always remember Daimler car in Jamse Bonds Movies

Wonderful work of art, unfortunately put out to market at the wrong time and eventually usurped by an even more beautiful design in the form of the E-Type. I dare say that there will be a fair few SP250's on show at next week's Coventry MotoFest. Coming along?

The Daimler 2.5 & 4.5 litre V8 engine garnered praise from motoring journalists here in the UK and was much superior to the equivalent Jaguar XK units, being lighter, more powerful and having considerable development potential. An E-type with the 4.5 V8 rather than the 4.2 XK would have been a much better performer in every way but, of course, due to internal politics etc it never happened…

That interior is teeny-tiny. It's not ugly at all, though.

Imagine if the SP252 had been the initial design....

Pity they never put the 4.5L V8 in them

You might have used some footage of cafe racers and not a chopper which is a totally different thing.

Wasn’t the Jaguar XK120 the first true 120mph British roadster?

they should have put the 450 daimler v8 - same as 250 but a 4.5 litre from the majestic major`s - now that would have challanged all the sports cars !

I don’t believe BSA ever owned Sunbeam. Rootes bought Sunbeam in 1934.

The catfish look

the british press had a lot of nerve calling the ugliest car ever built when you consider all those dumpy little austins built in the 1950s.

Really surprising. Who designed this atrocity? Could not be the same guy who did many other, far better looking, Daimlers?

james Bond drove one of these

Far to small for the americans.

The Daimler sp250 I had experience with had MANY, MANY PROBLEMS, apart from cracks in the fibreglass body, continually breaking exhausts just past the manifolds and in the lots of cracks in the steel wheels from stud hole to stud hole. It was a truly HORRIBLE CAR.

Toad ugly plastic bomber. But the engine is superb.

It’s either the ugliest beautiful car ever made, or the most beautiful ugly car ever made. That’s how I always viewed the SP250. But I’ve always liked it. That tiny little Hemi V8 is absolute jewel of an engine, and was certainly faster than any Triumph, MG, and Sunbeam at the time, and could keep up with a Jaguar and Corvette as well.

Not profane, I think you mean profound

It looks and was a bottom feeder. Technically it was okay, just. But America. No. those people have different eyes than the British. The best thing about it was the use of canoe building materials, since that means it was one of a very few cars out of Britain that rusted less than normal.

Awful styling by any standards; an amalgam of preceding American and British quirks that were ill-advised in origin and not pursued by their manufacturers; truly a hubris-led composite design that deserved to fail as badly as it did.

One of the ugliest car ever made and funny enough very few modifications to the front and back could have made it to a beauty queen. 🤦‍♂️

I wasn’t aware of the BSA connection, sad to say it was never going to have a happy ending 🥲🇬🇧