Steve Campbell-Wright

Steve Campbell-Wright Imperial Echoes: one company’s exploitation of cultural identity in marketing cars before the Great War To buy a car before the Great War of 1914–18 showed that the owner was a person of means, be it old money, new money or borrowed money. The running costs alone of an average car could keep a small, working-class family in a degree of comfort. In 1910, a seven horsepower, single-cylinder Austin, complete with body, cost £1501; while at the other end of the scale, a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost began at £985 for the chassis alone2—the equivalent in 2016 Australian terms of over $200,000. Within the ranks of the relatively wealthy, the investment placed in a car indicated much about the owner. According to Bill Boddy, a former editor of British magazine Motor Sport, ‘the wealthy bought Rolls-Royces, the aristocracy bought Daimlers.’3 One Australian firm, Dalgety and Company, held the exclusive rights to sales of Daimler cars before the war, and the company’s approach to marketing indicates much about Australian society and its reflection of the class structure at ‘home’ in Britain. Social identity was a rich marketing vein to be tapped when the conditions were right. This paper examines the marketing style and approach of Dalgety and Company in the years before the Great War, with particular reference to its sales of Daimler cars. It asks whether such marketing—as a construct within social behaviour—indicated and reinforced the social stratification of Edwardian Britain in Australia. 1| AHA 2016 Conference Proceedings Steve Campbell-Wright Imperial Echoes: one company’s exploitation of cultural identity in marketing cars before the Great War The Daimler Motor Company Limited was the first British car manufacturer, having been incorporated in 1896.4 The company’s first cars were German-made Daimler cars imported from Cannstatt, Germany; and their first Coventry-made vehicles were manufactured under licence using Gottlieb Daimler’s designs and patents. The vehicles were sturdy and made with an eye to reliability and a degree of comfort, both of which relied on high-grade materials and precision engineering. From the start, one of the best ways to prove and demonstrate the reliability of cars was through feats of endurance and competitive events. J.J. Henry Sturmey drove a Coventry-made Daimler from John o’ Groats to Land’s End in 1897—a distance of over 1300 kilometres—to great acclaim in the press. This earned Daimler some very early and valuable credibility. In the same year, Evelyn Ellis drove his Daimler to the 425-metre summit of the Worcestershire Beacon in the Malvern Hills, the last part of which was over a rough track not designed for carriages.5 Also in 1897, Daimler became the first British car manufacturer to provide a car for a press road test. Two female journalists were taken on a drive from Northampton to the London offices of their publication, The Gentlewoman, both ladies having driven the car for periods on the journey.6 By 1902, reports reached Australia that pre-federation Governor of Victoria Lord Brassey was often seen ‘careering round’ his English estate on his twelve horsepower Daimler7, and that tea baron Sir Thomas Lipton had purchased a twenty-two horsepower Daimler.8 Coincidentally, both were keen yachtsmen, which must have reinforced the connection between powerful cars and competitive sporting activities. From around 1904, Daimler entered heavily into competition motor sport. Speed trials and hill-climbs provided the company with another source of valuable publicity. Speed trials such as the Bexhill competition in Sussex were excellent opportunities for manufacturers to attempt to establish a reputation for power, efficiency and reliability. Daimler performed very well at Bexhill, notably in the 1905 season.9, 10 Marque historian St John Nixon claimed that Daimler ‘won either first prizes or made the fastest time in no fewer than sixty events during the year’.11 Daimlers also had a good deal of success at the Shelsley Walsh hill-climb in Worcestershire12, 13, winning the inaugural event in 1905.14 In Australia, Daimler’s reputation inspired a small number of private importations of their cars. Western Australian businessman Richard Strelitz imported one of the first examples in 190315, and he was followed by Melbourne businessman Ernest Wagstaff, South Australian lawyer Robert Robinson and South Australian pastoralist Keith Bowman. In 1905, Bowman’s Daimler was noted ‘the most powerful [car] in the State’ and ‘is likely to prove an interesting 2| AHA 2016 Conference Proceedings Steve Campbell-Wright Imperial Echoes: one company’s exploitation of cultural identity in marketing cars before the Great War competitor at future events’.16 Prices of Daimlers prior to shipment from Britain ranged from £1100 for a seven-seat limousine or landaulette—the equivalent of over $250,000 in 2016— down to £675 for a basic four-seat phaeton with no hood or windscreen—or some $140,000. Columnists delighted in listing the increasing numbers of the nobility who had purchased Daimlers. In March 1907, Adelaide’s Observer advised that the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, the Duke of Plymouth and Lord Percy Saint Maur had recently purchased Daimlers, as had the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Maharajah Dhalpus.17 Meanwhile, the Evening Journal announced that the Marquis Dunnet and Prince Pescara of Naples had also purchased Daimlers and, with an unconscious nod to Bill Boddy’s quip about the purchasers of Rolls-Royces, that the wife of American millionaire John Jacob Astor had bought an example of the latter.18 At the height of Daimler’s sporting exploits, and coinciding with the company’s adoption of an all-metal chassis design19, the Australian pastoral and stock company of Dalgety and Company decided to add motor vehicles to their inventory of products on offer to Australian consumers. The decision was in response to the Daimler Motor Company’s 1907 move to increase colonial and foreign markets for their products, including agencies in Spain, British Columbia, Borneo, the Transvaal and New Zealand.20 On 25 September 1907, Dalgety announced that the company had recently been appointed as the sole agents for Daimler cars for the Commonwealth and would soon be in possession of cars for demonstration purposes.21 By November, the company had received its first three Daimlers, two phaetons and a landaulette22, and invited ‘inspection by intending buyers’ at its Sydney garage.23 The same offering was made in the following month at its Melbourne garage.24 Dalgety’s advertising featured the slogans such as ‘Daimler Cars—Giants in Strength’25 and ‘The Dazzling Daimlers’26, boasting that ‘During the last 8 seasons in England DAIMLER Cars have won more hill-climbing and reliability trials than any other make of car.’27 By late 1908, Dalgety’s newspaper advertisements read like a list of sports results, detailing successes in speed and reliability trials and hill-climbing events. A prominent Dalgety advertisement in The Sydney Morning Herald of 8 August 1908 announced Daimler’s first places and prizes in the Irish Reliability Trials, the Two-thousand Miles Reliability Trials and sundry other trials, such as the Saltburn Speed Trials.28 3| AHA 2016 Conference Proceedings Steve Campbell-Wright Imperial Echoes: one company’s exploitation of cultural identity in marketing cars before the Great War The Daimlers imported to Australia during 1907 and 1908 were generally either touring cars with phaeton bodies or town cars with landaulette or limousine bodies, nearly always bearing imported Daimler factory bodywork. They had four-cylinder engines of generous proportions—the smallest of which was rated at twenty-eight horsepower—and were driven by side-chains with a few exceptions. A good example is Charles Campbell’s twenty-eight horsepower Daimler, which was entered in the Automobile Club of Victoria’s Sealed Bonnet Reliability Contest in December 1907. The contest ran over a course from Melbourne through the Western District of Victoria for three days.29 The car performed creditably, earning Campbell the maximum three-hundred points for reliability. It achieved a timed speed of over sixty miles per hour and a creditable hill-climb time for its class.30 It is interesting to note that the Daimler—the only one in the contest—was placed before the two twenty-horsepower Rolls-Royces entered.31 Another good example is Western Australian businessman Richard Strelitz’s ten-and-a-half- litre car—the largest car in the state at the time32—which was noted for making a record time for the trip from York to the Perth Post Office in September 1908. The trip of seventy-eight miles was completed in two hours and ten minutes, complete with a ten-minute refreshment stop for the party on board.33 Along with the well-deserved sporting reputation of Daimler cars, the Company held the honour of having supplied British royalty with motor vehicles. The Prince of Wales first rode in a British motor vehicle, a Coventry Daimler, in November 1897 in the grounds of Buckingham Palace34, and he ordered his first car, a Coventry Daimler, in early 1900.35 The Chronicle in Australia reported in August 1900 that, The Prince of Wales is so pleased with his six horsepower Daimler motor car that he has ordered two more cars of different types. The fact of His Royal Highness taking up motoring has given a great impetus at home to the new mode of locomotion.36 As King Edward VII, he bought six Daimlers by 1905. His son, the subsequent Prince of Wales, had bought two Daimlers by that year. Press stories circulating about the King and his cars added to the reputation of Daimlers.

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