A vehicle which was used by Diana, Princess of Wales in the 1980s has sold for an extraordinary £650,000 at auction. The late princess drove the black Ford Escort RS Turbo from August 1985 for a period of around three years.
When performing official duties, Diana was chauffeured in luxury vehicles, but she preferred to drive this car in London when going about her daily life. She was photographed with it outside boutique shops in Chelsea and restaurants in Kensington and driving a young Prince William around the city.
Silverstone Auctions said there was “fierce bidding” for the car, which went up for auction on August 27, attracting interest from around the world and the firms largest amount of phone bids in over a decade. Bidding opened at £100,000 and quickly climbed with a UK-based buyer, whose identity has not been revealed, eventually winning.
The high price was met with disbelief from the auctioneer, who at one point exclaimed, “560,000 pounds for a Ford Escort, I’ve never said that before.”
The car is believed to be the only of its kind, with the exterior being made in a “discreet” black, especially for the royal mum-of-two, with all the others of this model being white. Ford also added extra features for Diana’s security, including a second rear-view mirror for her protection officer and a radio in the glove box. The car has just under 40,000 kilometres on it.
Classic car specialist Arwel Richards, who works at the auction house, also admitted to being “surprised” at the huge price the vehicle fetched but thought the investment was well worth it. “[The new owner] is going to have one the finest preserved examples of this model anywhere, and also the slice of social history that comes with the car,” he told the BBC. “This car was known as the ‘people’s sports car’, and the fact it was driven by the People’s Princess just nails it.”
The car is believed to have had four owners since Diana used it, with one lucky owner picking it up through a radio competition in 1993.
Last year, another Ford Escort that Diana used sold at auction for £52,000 pounds. It is likely that this one fetched such a large sum due to the sale’s proximity to the 25th anniversary of the Princess of Wales’s death. Diana was killed in a car crash while fleeing paparazzi in Paris on 31 August 1997.
