Could you tell me if Winston Churchill drove an automobile?  I’m interested in establishing whether the major Second World War leaders could drive a car.  So far, I know only that Franklin Roosevelt drove his own Ford at Hyde Park. It had hand controls but, he was his own motorist when he needed to be.

This may seem an odd line of investigation, but I think it might be illuminating. —P.C., New Hampshire

A: Yes; and sometimes a menace

(Updated from 2011.) He did! I wrote a long-simmering article about Churchill as motorist in 2016. Published in The Automobile, it is linked below: “Blood, Sweat and Gears.”

Churchill owned quite an assortment of cars from  Morrises and Land Rovers to a big Daimler given him by his friends in 1932. But most of the time he was driven—virtually always after 1930. Even around his farmlands at Chartwell, by the “duty Morris” or a Land Rover. Lady Churchill drove until quite late in life; her last car was a Vanden Plas Princess in the 1960s.

Churchill was a motorist himself, mainly in the 1920s. He was a known danger behind the wheel. Always impatient for progress, he thought nothing of driving up on the sidewalk (“pavement” in Britain) to get around traffic jams.

This occasionally put him in trouble with local constables, who let him off with a warning when they recognized him. I have only run into a few photos of him behind the wheel of a Wolseley in 1925. I notice the car has a nice ding in its right front fender.

Roosevelt too was a scary driver with those dicey hand controls, at least when Churchill rode alongside him. The latter wrote that they came precariously close to the cliffs overlooking the Hudson near Hyde Park, in FDR’s Ford V-8, and he was glad when they arrived back at the house.

“Blood, Sweat and Gears”: Churchill as Motorist

1: “Mors the Pity,” 1900s-1920s.

2: “Daimlers and Austins,” 1930s.

3: “There’s Safety in Humbers,” 1940s-1960s.

“Driving Miss Nancy: Nipped in the Astor Bar,” 2022.

The Daily Mail once reported on a 1923 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost supposedly used by Sir Winston Churchill. The Rolls had been refurbished by Charlie Tope of Modbury, Devon. According to the Mail,  “the vintage motor is said to have served the former British Prime Minister when he used it to give driving lessons to the first woman to take her seat in Parliament, Lady Astor, on a Kent estate.” Is there any truth to this? Also, was Wolseley his favorite make of car? —T.M., Dorset

A: Fun, but unlikely

Churchill was a notoriously impatient and scary driver. The idea of him in this big Rolls, teaching road technique to Nancy Astor, strains the imagination, but does conjure amusing images. It’s true they met socially, and shared a kind of bemused affection—in between tossing barbs at each other. (See “Lady Astor and Other Women Nemeses.”) But proving that he taught her to drive would really require more evidence than the Daily Mail offered.

Churchill did briefly own a Rolls-Royce, a 1921 Silver Ghost cabriolet by Barker. Painted Marlborough blue, it carried the number plate AE60—in case it may still be around. But he owned it only in 1921, and quickly parted with it after a family tragedy (not involving the car). For details see “Blood, Sweat and Gears.”

Pinched on the Dover Road

Behind the wheel, WSC was often accompanied by his towering bodyguard, Walter Thompson. Seated bolt upright with the 5’6″ Member of Parliament, Thompson looked rather like a private perched over an Aldershot latrine. The detective had terrifying but endearing memories of their journeys.

In 1926, en route to Dieppe via the Channel ferry, Churchill opted to drive himself. This was a bad sign, Thompson said: “It either means that he is cross and subconsciously wants to smash up something, or that he is dangerously elated and things will get smashed up anyhow through careless exuberance.”

Off they went, flat-out. At Croydon, they encountered road repairs and a queue of cars. Suddenly, Thompson recalled, they were off the road, “progressing right down the pavement [sidewalk]. We got into a nice mess in no time and had to make an abrupt stop. (Churchill was unusually good in the technique of an abrupt stop.)”

Next, they were looking at the face of an outraged local constable. “You fool!” the policeman shouted. Then he “swore most richly for some seconds.”

Churchill’s head hung. “He did have the civic sense to say he was sorry,” Thompson continued. “The matchless voice of the man identified him at once to the constable. ‘Sorry, Mr. Churchill,’ the policeman apologised.

“Then the majesty of the constable’s office and the disgusting guilt of the violator brought forth, in gentle sarcasm, a caution that withered Churchill and kept him silent clear to the Channel. ‘Do try to stay in the road, sir.’”

Wolseley: a Churchill favorite

To everybody’s relief Churchill stopped driving himself in the mid-1920s. But yes, the unassuming Wolseley did qualify as one of his favorites. He owned five between 1923 and 1931, including the car in the photo above.

Andy Plummer writes from England: “Wolseley may have been lowly compared to a Rolls, but it was still considered a quality car. I own an 11/22, the model shown in the photo. I believe Churchill replaced the two-seat coupe shown with a four-seat deluxe tourer, which is the body style of my car. There is a picture of him driving it in St. John Nixon’s Wolseley: A Saga of the Motor Industry (1949).

Andy is right, and for the benefit of Wolseley fans, here is the full Churchill roster:

1923 Model 10 tourer: 4cyl, 1260 cc, 10 RAC hp (serial #40459), owned 1923-25

1923 Model 20 tourer: 6cyl, 3921 cc, 20 RAC hp (#36920), owned 1923-26

1925 Model 11/22 2-seat deluxe tourer: 4cyl, 1261 cc, 22 bhp (#45126), owned 1925-26

1926 Model 24/55 landaulette: 6cyl, 3921 cc, 55 bhp (#37129), owned until ca. 1931

1926 Model 11/22 4-seat deluxe tourer: 4cyl, 1261 cc, 22 bhp, (#75006), owned until ca. 1931

Further reading

“Fake Churchill Quotes: Lady Astor and Other Women Nemeses,” 2021

“Cars and Churchill: Blood, Sweat and Gears,” 2016

Part 1:

Excerpt only. For footnotes,  illustrations and a roster of cars, see The Automobile (UK), August 2016. A pdf of the article is available upon request: click here.

Mors the pity

Always fascinated by new technology, Winston Churchill welcomed the motorcar, buying his first in 1901 at the age of 26. It was French Mors—one of only two non-British cars Churchill would ever own—and a disappointment. He might have been thinking of it when during World War II he said of France: “The destiny of a great nation has never yet been settled by the temporary condition of its technical apparatus.”

Mors is Latin for death, and Emile Voilu, Churchill’s enthusiastic French chauffeur, appeared to take this seriously, sustaining many a bump. Churchill kept the Mors through 1906, but it lay unrepaired for long periods; this upset Voilu, who looked upon it as his personal equipage. In 1904 Churchill wrote: “The motor was a real sad business. Nearly £28 to put it straight after a fortnight’s utter neglect. The fury of the Frenchman at seeing its condition was disquieting to witness.”

Edging his bets

In 1911 the Churchills bought a new Napier 15hp landaulette from a great racing driver and Napier exponent S.F. Edge, “the ebullient Australian.” With extras the Napier cost over £600 (£54,000 today). Churchill specified buff cord upholstery and “Marlborough blue,” the house color of his famous ancestor, the First Duke of Marlborough. Edge didn’t know what shade of blue that was, and the car was delivered in red, but Edge promised a repaint when convenient—repaints were less complicated in those days. The Churchills were already on holiday in Scotland, so they hired a works engineer to drive to meet them, and to serve as chauffeur.

They visited the King at Balmoral and Prime Minister H.H. Asquith in East Lothian. There Asquith offered Churchill a coveted prize: the Admiralty. He took office in October, prepared the Fleet for battle, tried and failed to promote peace, and went to war full of fight in 1914. Ignominously sacked during the Dardanelles-Gallipoli debacle of May 1915, he spent six months in brooding impotence. Then he joined his regiment in Flanders, where (as he had written earlier) he was “shot at without result.” 

Annus Horribilis

Nineteen twenty-one was a year of tragedy, with the deaths of Clementine’s brother, Winston’s mother, and Marigold, their 2 1/2-year-old daughter. The child died only days after they’d purchased the finest car they would ever own, a 1921 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost cabriolet by Barker. Marigold’s death on August 23rd—from septicemia, which modern antibiotics would easily vanquish—brought deep gloom.

Preoccupied with his personal loss, the Irish rebellion and troubles in Iraq, Churchill gave little thought to the car. When he returned to London in late September, the Silver Ghost only reminded him of their loss. In October, his Aunt Cornelia, Lady Wimborne, took the Rolls off his hands for only about £150 less than he had paid. Although he would frequently hire a 20/25 after World War II, Churchill never again owned a Rolls-Royce. He made do with government cars until 1923 when, having purchased a country estate, he went shopping for transport.

“Weighed and found wanting”

In late 1922 Churchill bought Chartwell, a spacious brick pile overlooking the Weald of Kent, where he would live until he died. His daughter Sarah recalled the day he bundled his children into “an old Wolseley” and drove them down to see it, overgrown with ivy and in need of major renovation:

We were all so excited when we set off for home that my father couldn’t make the car start. Help was solicited and an amazing number of people helped to push the Wolseley about a quarter of a mile along a slight incline so that we could have the benefit of the subsequent decline to start the reluctant engine. I noticed the people helping were very red in the face, but ours were redder still when it was discovered that the ignition was off and the brake on.

The “old Wolseley” was likely borrowed. It was 1923 before Churchill bought any cars: a Wolseley two seater and a four-seat tourer. He owned five Wolseleys, but was most often photographed in the “little car,” which looked like its springs and frame were held together with bailing wire, with a slight assist from the taillamp wires. It marked his transition to self-drive cars. In retrospect he might have considered that “an awful milestone in our history,” when “terrible words were pronounced” about his driving: “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

Menace on the road

Behind the wheel, Churchill was scary. His bodyguard, the towering Inspector Walter Thompson, was sometimes photographed nervously sitting bolt upright next to him.  “Mr. Churchill has an immense grasp of the advantages and uses of the machine age,” Thompson wrote. “…but he has no personal sensitivity about the machines themselves. He strips gears and rams head-on toward anything.” One Wolseley’s flywheel was missing so many teeth that if the engine stopped in the wrong position it had to be crank-started. They removed the front number plate to leave the crank in place, and were thus often stopped by the law. “Take a good look at this car,” Churchill lectured one policeman, “and never, never stop me again.”

Churchill became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1925. A year later, after the General Strike had paralyzed Britain for ten days, the Duke of Westminster invited him to relax at his residence near Dieppe. Exhausted from the strike ordeal, Churchill opted to drive to the Channel ferry himself. That was a bad sign, Thompson said. “It either means that he is cross and subconsciously wants to smash up something, or that he is dangerously elated and things will get smashed up anyhow through careless exuberance.”

Jumping the queue

Off they went, flat-out. At Croydon, they encountered road repairs and a queue of cars. Suddenly, Thompson recalled, they were off the road, “progressing right down the sidewalk [pavement]. We got into a nice mess in no time and had to make an abrupt stop. (Churchill was unusually good in the technique of an abrupt stop.)”

Next, they were looking at “the face of an outraged local constable.”

“You fool!” the policeman shouted. Then he “swore most richly for some seconds.” Churchill’s head hung. “He did have the civic sense to say he was sorry,” Thompson continued. “…the matchless voice of the man identified him at once to the constable.” ‘Sorry, Mr. Churchill,’ the policeman apologised.

“Then the majesty of the constable’s office and the disgusting guilt of the violator brought forth, in gentle sarcasm, a caution that withered Churchill and kept him silent clear to the Channel. ‘Do try to stay in the road, sir.’”

By the late 1920s, no doubt to the relief of drivers on the London-Westerham road, Churchill had quit driving. But he often rode “up front” with his new chauffeur, Sam Howes. One foggy night in the Wolseley tourer, they could not read a road sign. Churchill stooped, “made a back,” and told Howes to climb on to read the directions. Howes was sure few “gentlemen on his level would have bent down for me to stand on their back.” Continued in Part 2….