The Daimler Motor Company Limited was incorporated on 14 January 1896 by the financier H. J. Lawson, who had bought the British rights to Gottlieb Daimler’s engine patents. It set up in Coventry in a disused four-storey cotton mill and became one of the first companies to build motor cars in Britain. The British company was always a separate business from the German Daimler firm.
King Edward VII awarded Daimler a royal warrant in 1902, and Daimler limousines carried every British monarch from Edward VII to Elizabeth II. In 1910 the company merged with the Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA), which owned it until 1960. Its cars included the sleeve-valve Double-Six V12 luxury cars of the interwar years, the V8-engined SP250 sports car of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the DS420 limousine, built from 1968 to 1992 and widely used by the royal family and as a funeral and wedding car.
Jaguar bought Daimler from BSA in 1960, and from then on the name was used for luxury versions of Jaguar’s saloons. The last Daimler-badged cars, versions of the Jaguar XJ, were discontinued in 2009, though some sources give an earlier date. The Daimler name is now owned by Jaguar Land Rover.
