Whenever a highly anticipated TV show falls on a streaming platform, there is a rush when fans rush to binge – or carefully ration it – the new episode of episodes. The fourth season of The Crown took Netflix’s number one spot on both sides of the Atlantic, with the dramatized story of the real-life soap opera that reached the British royal family in the 1980s. While the accuracy of the show has been criticized in certain parts of the story, we can report that for the most part the automotive casting is both excellent and accurate. And there are so many cars to watch:
Throughout the season, Prince Charles (played by Josh O’Connor) rides a beautiful Aston Martin DB6 Volante, which is very similar to the real one the real Prince bought in 1971. The show car dates from 1968 and is therefore an earlier Mk 1, and it is also finished in green instead of the proper Seychelles blue.
But still impressively close; Prince Charles still owns the original, which has been converted to E85 fuel, which is made in part from bioethanol made from wine and cheese by-products. He is shown here during an appearance in early 2020.
Gillian Anderson’s Margaret Thatcher is frighteningly convincing in terms of both the accent and the facial expression. Their character’s auto selection is similarly accurate. The newly appointed Prime Minister arrives at Buckingham Palace for her first meeting with the Queen in a Rover P5B, just like the real Thatcher. The V-8 rover had actually been retired for five years when Thatcher became Britain’s first female Prime Minister. However, like its predecessors, it reportedly preferred its solid lines to those of the sleek, angular Rover SD1 that replaced it.
Later in the series, Thatcher is chauffeured and back to life in a Daimler Sovereign 4.2, a posher version of the contemporary Jaguar XJ.
The Queen spends more time being driven around than she did in season four, even though the production company hasn’t attempted to recreate one of the extra tall “State Landaulette” Rolls-Royces used for ceremonial duties. Colman’s character can be seen in both a James Young-built Phantom V and the Mulliner Park Ward Phantom VI shown here. The VI used for filming was either packaged or digitally recolored and originally built for a member of the Saudi royal family. His previous films include Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Later in the season, the Queen also travels in a prototype Daimler DS420 sedan – the real royal family had five copies delivered between 1970 and 1992. In this scene, Lady Diana Spencer is brought to the Daimler to visit the Royals in Balmoral.
Little known outside of its homeland, the Mini Metro was launched in 1981 under the grandiose slogan “A British car against the world”. It was not like that. Intended to replace the original BMC Mini, it used the same combination of an A-series transverse motor with a gearbox that shared the oil pan at both ends and the subframe-mounted independent suspension. The real Lady Diana Spencer actually drove a basic version while working at a kindergarten in London that became one of the most photographed cars in the world when the paparazzi obsessively documented her life leading up to her wedding to Prince Charles. The Crown’s production team went to a formidable effort to come up with a very similar example of a sunroof that actress Emma Corrin could drive, albeit in a slightly darker shade of red.
While most heads of state typically only experience cars from the back seat, Queen Elizabeth has always been keen to take the wheel. Trained as a mechanic and driver in the British Army during World War II, she has since demonstrated both the ability and enthusiasm to pilot herself and sometimes other world leaders. Olivia Colman’s character drives an LWF Land Rover Series 3 station wagon during a hunting party on the Balmoral estate in Scotland, finished in a reasonable shade that the British often refer to when referring to the nation’s favorite color of rubber boot, green. (Check out this Twitter clip as Colman terrifies Gillian Anderson by turning back in the Land Rover with swiftness.)
Prince Philip’s true love for Land Rover products was long, having run them throughout his tenure as the Queen’s consort and effectively ending his driving career in January 2019 with a serious accident in a Freelander 2. Three years earlier, he surprised Barack Obama by driving the then President and First Lady through the Windsor Royal Estate at alarming speeds. While the production company choice for a first-generation Range Rover for Tobias Menzies’ Prince is spot on in Episode 3, eagle-eyed viewers will recognize the use of an LWB LSE example, a version that didn’t go on sale in 1992. long after the scene is set.
One of the non-royal storylines this season is Mark Thatcher’s unfortunate entry into the 1982 Paris-Dakar rally as a co-driver, which resulted in the Prime Minister’s son (played by Freddie Fox) being stranded in the Sahara with two other crew members after the The car’s rear suspension was broken (he later admitted, “I made absolutely no preparations. Nothing.”) The production team created an impressively accurate replica of the box-shaped Peugeot with the same sponsor stickers and even a roll cage. After six days in the desert – and an expensive search for the air at the behest of the British ambassador to Algeria – Thatcher and his teammates were discovered and rescued.
While many viewers of The Crown will no doubt consider one Rolls-Royce convertible to be as good as another, we know differently. The decision to use a stylish Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III convertible for the scenes of Charles and Diana waving to viewers during their 1983 Australian tour was an unquestionable one given the restrictions on filming that actually took place in Spain makes sense.
The actual royal visit included an earlier (and even more elegant) Silver Cloud I convertible. These details are important.
Another preeminent piece of auto casting has resulted in the creation of a very accurate replica of the Jaguar XJ-SC convertible that Princess Diana acquired in 1987. The company later created a fully convertible XJ-S, but the convertible had fixed window frames and a Targa-style roof. Diana stated that it should be built with both North American-style twin headlights and rear seats so she could transport the young Princes William and Harry around, with the regular convertible being a two-seater. Both details are precisely reproduced on the car used for the filming, although it has a non-prototypical Northern Irish license plate. The real Diana clearly had a penchant for open-top driving and replaced the XJ-S with a Mercedes 500SL and then with an Audi 80 Cabriolet.
Even the most resourceful of British filmmakers often struggle to create compelling US roadscapes, and it proves it in The Crown. Diana’s trip to New York in 1989 was actually filmed in Manchester, England, using a significant number of digitally added backgrounds. Britain’s limited supply of American metal from the ’80s also means the same background vehicles appear in almost every take, including a trio of checker booths that would have gotten pretty thin in NYC by that point. Diana is driven in a beautiful Cadillac Brougham limousine; Our attempts to measure accuracy were hampered by the tendency of contemporary photographers to photograph the princess’ outfits rather than her method of transportation.
For the scenes in Great Britain, the set chests of drawers from The Crown were much more successful in creating an environment in which the selected background cars mostly feel right. Fans of obscure British metal can spend happy hours sightseeing rare (for us) automotive attractions with numerous examples of carefully sourced cars from the period. We spotted examples of the Ford Cortina, Granada and Sierra, several Vauxhall Cavaliers, a Rover SDI and the unsurprising addition of a classic black FX4 cab. There’s also a nice cameo from an E30 BMW 318i. See if you can recognize others!
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