Daimler Stardust: What a dame

The Daimler Stardust reportedly cost more than a semi-detached house at the time it was made. Photo / Getty Images

It was designed in 1954 by the notoriously badly-behaved British socialite Lady Docker in a bid to transform Daimler’s staid image, writes Bill Gardner. Instead it nearly broke the company. Sixty years on, the DAIMLER Stardust — complete with blue crocodile skin trim — has gone under the hammer.

It is the luxury limousine designed by a former showgirl who dreamed it would bring glamour and pizzazz to gloomy post-war Britain.

Instead, the Daimler "Stardust" was part of a project that nearly bankrupted its makers and forced its designer and her husband to give up their extravagant lifestyle.

Last month the lavishly decorated car sold for almost £100,000 ($207,000) when it was auctioned at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in Sussex.

The car was the 1954 vision of the notorious socialite Lady Docker - born Norah Royce Turner - who tried to transform Daimler's staid image. Five years before, she had married Sir Bernard Docker, the Daimler chairman, her third marriage to a wealthy businessman.

A former dancer at the Cafe de Paris, Lady Docker had a taste for the high life. She declared that "Daimler can't survive on status alone". She convinced Sir Bernard the firm needed shaking up and was given a seat on the board of the motor body firm Hooper's, which supplied Daimler.

Despite her reputation for enjoying pink champagne, Lady Docker was determined to design a range of luxury cars.

Within weeks, she handed in her first request for materials; red crocodile skin, blue lizard skin, gold stars and silver metallic paint.

For the first "Docker" car, the 1951 "Golden Daimler", she used gold plating worth £900. That sum was enough for two Morris Minors and a small motorcycle.

The five Docker cars culminated with the Ivory White Golden Zebra, first shown at the 1955 Earls Court Motor Show. Lady Docker was particularly proud of the zebra skin upholstery. She said she chose zebra "because mink is too hot to sit on".

The Stardust reportedly cost £12,500 - more than an average semi-detached house at the time.

The royal blue and silver coachwork, with 5000 silver stars on the sides, also featured a dancer mascot on the bonnet modelled on Lady Docker.

The upholstery was in hand-woven silver-grey silk brocatelle for the rear compartment and blue crocodile skin trim for the cabinets. There were four crocodile skin suitcases in the boot.

Initially, the reception for the Stardust was warm. The unique model was shipped to the south of France for the wedding of Prince Rainier of Monaco and Grace Kelly, to which Sir Bernard and Lady Docker were invited.

"We bring glamour and happiness into drab lives," said Lady Docker at the time. "The working class loves everything I do." However, the Dockers' extravagance was causing rumblings of discontent within Daimler. On May 30, 1956, Sir Bernard was thrown out of office.

The other board members decided that the cars were commissioned for Lady Docker's "personal amusement", not for the good of the company. Sir Bernard was even left with a £70,000 bill for the car's construction, which ultimately left him and his wife almost penniless.

Lady Docker is said to have remarked: "It's not the loss of the gold cars that makes me feel like this. And weren't they fun? They were like my children. No, it's that lovely party I was planning for 25,000 of the company's workers for my 50th birthday. A tiptop affair - and now it's all off."

The five Daimlers were stripped of their expensive trimmings and sold.

After her husband's downfall, Lady Docker went to shop for a Bentley, made by Daimler's arch-rivals Rolls-Royce.

"Actually, I've always loved Bentleys," she said.

Lady Docker.

Soon the high-profile couple were in decline. They had to sell their yacht and Hampshire estate and became tax exiles in Jersey. Lady Docker still wasn't happy. She dismissed her island neighbours as "the most frightfully boring, dreadful people that have ever been born". Sir Bernard died in a nursing home in 1978 while Lady Docker spent her final years living in the Great Western Hotel, Paddington, central London.

She died almost penniless in 1983.

But by this time, the Stardust had enjoyed a miraculous rebirth. Found abandoned on a Welsh farm with a frost-damaged cylinder block, the car was fully restored to show condition in 1980.

Geoffrey Francis, a heraldic artist who had worked on the car in 1954, was commissioned to reapply the stars to the coachwork.

By this time, crocodiles had become an endangered species, so blue-dyed lizard skin - a Lady Docker favourite - was used instead for the interior trim.

Stardust was acquired from the Blackhawk museum in California by a previous owner in the 1980s and subsequently imported into Japan. The present Japanese owner acquired the Daimler in the 1990s.

As well as the car, the Dockers' invitation to Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly's wedding went under the hammer at the Goodwood Revival Club in West Sussex.

"The car was made famous by Lady Docker because its hugely extravagant design was during a period where something like that was not cricket," says Tim Schofield, the director of Bonhams' Motor Car department in the UK.

"It was post-war and during a time of austerity. Lady Docker wanted hand-woven upholstery and 5000 stars hand-painted on to the side of the car. It was a work which could not be bettered."