1935 Lanchester trade-in for modern city car

Sometimes the toughest part of buying a new car is figuring out what to do with your present one, particularly if it’s a 1935 Daimler Lanchester.

Mrs Margaret Hackett from Fenay Bridge, Nr Huddersfield, faced this tough decision when the car her late husband had spent so much time lovingly restoring, now sat in the garage gathering dust.

Not really knowing what car would best suit her needs, Mrs Hackett consulted a good friend of hers who recommended she went along to a local Daihatsu Dealer, Cross Keys Garage, Morley, nr Leeds to discuss her requirements.

Garage owner Anthony Dawson advised her to trade in the Lanchester, together with her 1999 Rover 400 for the class-beating new Sirion 1.0 SE, a stylish city-car with unbeatable value and economy.

Mrs Hackett said: “My husband’s dream was to renovate a Lanchester when he retired but he died before he could complete the restoration. I didn’t want all his hard work to go to waste and Cross Keys made the trade-in procedure relaxed and simple.”

In keeping with high standards of customer care, Anthony’s son, Alistair, went to Mrs Hackett’s house with a car trailer and transported the car back to the garage.

When they got the car back they found the engine was seized as the car had stood for 11 years.

But by using the starting handle it freed off. With new fuel, clean sparking plugs, the carburettor cleaned out plus a new battery it started on the button and is now a good runner.

At the beginning of the last Century, the once-distinctive Lanchester marque was a by-word for quality and innovation. By the 1920s, Lanchesters were every bit as magnificent as their rivals from Daimler and Rolls-Royce and at one stage were the most expensive cars in the world. However, the Depression drastically shrank the market for luxury cars and Lanchester was taken over by the BSA Group (Daimler’s parent company). The last Lanchester, a phase two Sprite, was dropped in 1956, almost 60 years after the first one was built.