Former Hampshire police car with a connection to Lord Mountbatten set to be auctioned

The two significant cars that belonged to Lord Mountbatten and Winston Churchill will be going up for auction in Birmingham at the NEC on March 24. One of the cars, a 1975 Rover P6 3500S, originally started out as a Hampshire police car in Winchester before it was re-sprayed black and used as the official staff car of the Earl Mountbatten of Burma.

It later changed hands and was used by the chairman of a county council before eventually being found abandoned in a pigsty in Eastleigh in the late 1990s. The car has now been restored to it's original purpose as a police car with new panels, a new engine, repainted in the police livery and given all its police equipment. It is expected to be sold for between £15,000 to £20,000 when it is auctioned.

Alongside this, a second car with famous links is also being auctioned. The 1939 Daimler DE27 Limousine, used by Churchill during his stint as Lord of Admiralty, was the first Limousine of its kind, but sadly a lot of the car’s history was lost during the Second World War, when the Daimler factory was struck during the Blitz in 1940.

However, a historical file that has survived confirms that in 1947 the Daimler was sold to the Iranian Embassy in London and was later purchased by the Irish Fine Gael party for their Deputy leader. It then changed hands to Ireland, where it remained before selling at auction in 2016 for £12,500, when it returned to England.

Its restoration consisted of £20,000 invested on mechanical works and external body parts to bring the Daimler back up to speed for when it goes to auction on March 24 with an estimated guide price of £15,000 to £20,000.