It’s been awhile since we’ve featured one of these fiberglass bodied oddities. This Dart needs a full restoration, but does appear to be a good starting point for an ambitious Daimler fan. Jaguar actually owned the company by the time this particular car was made. That’s okay though because they made a few improvements and stiffened up the chassis a bit. Apparently, the early cars had some problems with flex. This project is located in Sutton-in-Ashfield, United Kingdom and is listed here on eBay where bidding starts at £6,500 with no reserve.
Besides that uniquely styled fiberglass body, the next most important feature of the SP250 was the hemi V8. We aren’t talking Chrylser Hemi here though. This hemi-head engine only displaced 2.5 litres, but it turned these catfish into quick swimmers. There are even rumors that a few were used in London as Police cars! Just think how fun that would have been to get paid to cruise around in one of these.
The starting bid might seem high for a project with so many needs, but these are relatively scarce. Very few stayed in their home country and I can tell you that spotting one over in the United States, where most of these were exported, is a rare occurrence. With that said, I still think this could make the perfect vintage race car project. The missing interior bits and such wouldn’t be that important then and it would be fun to see what this thing could do on the track. Either way, it’s going to be expensive so why not have some fun?
A low point of British styling and particularly from a fine old firm like Daimler. I see the occasional one around Toronto before I can look away in disgust. How about buying it, replacing the body with one from an XKE and dropping a crate motor into it?
Barry Thomas’ “Wheel to Wheel” blog
Another project that got as far as taking things apart and then….nothing.
Daimler only made 2650 of these, so they are scarce, but the median auction sale price is only $45K, so you would need to make sure that enough parts are still with the car and that they are is good condition to make this a decent project. Those “boxes and boxes of parts” don’t look too encouraging…..or even much like car parts.
I don’t like projects like this that someone just disassembled and then left, but these are scarce and unusual enough that no doubt someone will take it on. I hope whoever that is will carry through this time.
Is it just me, but I get wood from this styling and added bonus of a factory hemi combined in the same package. Must be Pavlov’s dog syndrome we’ve been conditioned with on this shore ….
Too bad it’s wrong hand drive.
The police car use is not a rumor. I lived in London from 1959 to 1962, and it always cracked me up to see one of these tooling around with two Bobbies in it. They were white and I often wondered how the bobbies kept their helmets on at speed.
Also, I want the engine. I want to put one in my ’68 Midget.
There’s a classic midget racer running around on the west coast with the baby Daimier Hemi, zoomie pipes on it. The sound…
eargasm.
No doubt’s here what use I’d put it to.