Production history
The Conquest saloon was released to the public in 1953 as a replacement for the Daimler Consort, but was shorter and lighter, with better performance. The Daimler Conquest was meant to be an affordable Daimler, priced at £1066. (That price may well be linked to the name Conquest.) It was pedigree with pace, at a reasonable price. They still had luxurious, well-appointed traditional wood-grain and leather interiors. Actual construction was by another BSA subsidiary, 'Carbodies'.
The open 2-seater Conquest Roadster was first shown to the public[11] at the Motor Show in 1953 with the tuned engine later known as the Century engine. The Roadster was not available to the public till 1954.
The Daimler Conquest Century, released in 1954[3] was the best seller of the range with 4818 of them produced. A hundred-horsepower, hence the Century name.
The Conquest Roadster was dropped from production in 1955. The dropheads had outsold them by over 3:1. Then a new drophead 4-seater and a drophead coupé version of the 2-seater Roadster were introduced at the 1955 Motor Show. This Mark II Conquest Roadster drophead coupé had a sideways-facing single rear seat, making the car a 2- or 3-seater and with wind-up side windows in place of the clip-on side-curtains of the continuing Mark II open 2-seater Conquest Roadster.
Two of the roadsters, at least, were coach-built as fixed head coupés.[13]
There is one fibreglass new drophead, and one fibreglass fixed head coupé (with a Hillman Minx Californian three piece rear window)
One-offs seem to have been mostly done on Roadster allocated chassis, so there may have been even fewer roadsters built than officially indicated.
In October 1956,[14] Conquest Century buyers were offered the choice of an automatic transmission or the traditional preselector system. Time was changing gear. Preselector gearboxes faded away as modern automatic transmissions took their place. Currency restrictions had meant that until Borg-Warner built a British plant, automatic transmissions were only available on export cars.
Pricing
The price of the Conquest was reduced in April 1956 by 12%[15] and again in September 1956 by between 7% and 16%:
The Suez Crisis in the summer of 1956 had brought Europe petrol rationing which began France on 29 November and two weeks later in Britain. In Britain the restriction lasted until mid May 1957 bringing, amongst other economic dislocation, short time working to the British motor industry.[17]
The Roadster had started out priced close to the Jaguar XK120 at £1673, but by the time the New Drophead was released the price was £280 more than an XK140. While Jaguars became less expensive, the hand-built Daimlers escalated in price. Jaguars sold in large numbers, and Daimlers sold in small numbers with frequent model changes.
Daimler's problems became increasingly obvious.[2] In 1960 Daimler was bought by Jaguar, who wanted the additional factory space. Four years after the Conquest ceased production, Daimler introduced the 250
