The clue is in the colour, and the extra mirror: the shade is Edinburgh Green, and the mirror is for one to fix one’s hat on the way to royal engagements.
An immaculate veteran, a 1954 Aston Martin Lagonda, custom-built for Prince Philip, is coming up for auction with an estimate of up to £450,000 – more than three times the price of a brand new Aston Martin DB9.
“The accompanying paperwork beggars belief,” says Damian Jones, sales manager at H&H auctions, which will sell it in late April at the Imperial War Museum’s site in Duxford, Cambridgeshire.
The car was once stopped by a London traffic policeman, who spotted the occupants and hastily waved it on.
The convertible, a four-seater upholstered in grey leather – and which won the firm its first royal warrant – became almost as much of a star as its occupants, appearing in innumerable press photographs and newsreel films.
The extra vanity mirror was specially fitted so the Queen could get her hat absolutely straight.
And a radio telephone – of which only the control button on the dashboard remains – allowed Prince Philip to phone home, his call relayed through a Pye station in north London.
The Duke of Edinburgh drove it to open the M1 motorway in 1959, and regularly used it to drop his eldest son at prep school. It was serviced by weekly visits from Aston Martin engineers, sent to the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace, or to Windsor Castle,
In 1956-57, when Philip and the Queen went on a Commonwealth tour, the car was craned on to the royal yacht Britannia and went too. A senior engineer from the firm met it on its arrival in Australia for the Melbourne Olympics, and Dunlop ensured that all its branches on the itinerary were stocked with the correct tyres.
In 1961 he replaced it with an Alvis TD21 Drophead Coupe, which is still part of the royal collection, garaged at Sandringham.
The Lagonda engine and bodywork have recently been extensively overhauled, and the original paint scheme restored – but it still only has 50,000 miles on the clock, after one peppery and several overawed private owners.
• This article was amended on 9 March 2016 to correct the spelling of Damian Jones’s first name.
