Dynastic rides: cars royals drive in the 21st Century

When you think of transportation for royalty, chances are that images of chauffeurs and luxury limos come to mind. Yet royals are people too, and some of them are car guys or car gals like us. But there’s a key difference. Being rich goes hand in hand with being royal, so royal car enthusiasts of course have resources that most of “the rest of us” lack when it comes to being able to live out their automotive passions. So what are the cars royals drive in the 21^st century?

Elizabethan engines: surprisingly, Queen Elizabeth II of England still occasionally drove until 2019

One might easily assume that a royal personage with as high a profile as the monarch of the United Kingdom would shun driving herself around, due to security concerns and other considerations.

But, to the contrary, the Queen has a history of being quite the car gal. It wasn’t until last year that, at age 92, she did finally pledge to give up driving on public roads. According to Vanity Fair, she was following suit with her husband, Prince Philip, who pledged to strop driving after an accident in his Land Rover.

Some of the vehicles in the Queen’s personal collection are quite predictable, including a couple of Land Rovers and a Bentley state limousine. Among her more interesting vehicles, however, are a 1970 Daimler Vanden Plas and a 1966 Aston Martin DB6.

Hotcars reports that the Queen’s personal collection is worth an estimated $13.8 million.            

A hot hatch for the King of Spain?

Beyond the United Kingdom, Spain is one of 11 other European nations that continue to maintain a monarchy in the 21^st century. Spain’s current monarch, Felipe VI, became king after his father, King Juan Carlos 1, abdicated the throne.

Like his father, who, according to the Telegraph, was “known for his fondness of fast cars,” King Felipe is quite the car guy. Motor1 reports that Felipe owns “an assortment of historical cars and daily drivers in service.” Among his more elite rides is a Rolls Royce Phantom VI, but on an ordinary day you might spot him in a Volvo.

Interestingly, however, he has a special sentimental attachment to something that could legitimately call a hot hatch: a 1986 SEAT Ibiza that, according to Road & Track, is customized with “Porsche-derived fuel injection and air conditioning.”

Originally a gift from his father for Felipe’s 18^th birthday, the hot hatch received a factory restoration in 2014.

So, yes: you can actually check off “hot hatch” on your list of cars royals drive!

Does Norway’s royal family back up the nation’s “all electric by 2025” pledge?

As we have noted previously in our article last year on the Norwegian startup electric automaker Fresco, Norway takes pride in being the nation with the world’s highest penetration of electric vehicles. The Scandinavian country’s Parliament has also officially committed to “a national goal that all new cars sold by 2025 should be zero-emission (electric or hydrogen), according to Norsk Elbilforening (the Norwegian Electric Car Association).

Norway also has a royal family, however, headed up by the current monarch, King Harald V. And royals don’t always seem to feel obligated to live up to the same mandates that apply to the rest of us. So what are the cars royals drive in Norway? Is the Norwegian royal family living up to their nation’s electric-car pledge?

It’s nearly impossible to be certain about what might happen outside of the public eye, but there is some evidence to suggest that Norwegian royalty does make an effort to live up to the commitment to environmentally friendly transportation.

In an interview with Der Spiegel last year, Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, after noting that he is personally not a car enthusiast, said that he nevertheless does like to drive and has owned electric cars for 15 years.

Incidentally, Norway’s monarchical interest in electric cars seems to have started early. In 2013, an exhibition of historic cars belonging to the royal family opened in Trondheim. Among the vehicles on display was a miniature Cadillac electric roadster that was given in 1912 to Crown Prince and future King Olav, who was about nine years old at the time.

The toy electric Caddy, which was a gift from his grandmother, Queen Alexandra of England, boasted a range of 15 miles between charges, according to The Royal House of Norway website.

Heck, that’s about as much all-electric range as some of today’s plug-in hybrids.                          

King in a Caddy: The car collection of King Vajiralongkorn of Thailand includes a Cadillac DTS convertible

Hoxon, a lifestyle channel on YouTube, lists six vehicles as belonging to the car collection of King Vajiralongkorn, the reigning monarch of the lovely nation of Thailand since 2016. In a video, Hoxon includes a short segment of the King standing up in the back of a Cadillac DTS convertible.

Other vehicles in King Vajiralongkorn’s collection, according to Hoxon, are a Rolls Royce Silver Spur Stretch Limousine, a 1960 Rolls Royce Phantom, a Maybach 62, a Mercedes S Class, and a Mercedes V Class.

A Fiat fit for a sheik? United Arab Emirates

No conversation about kings and cars would be complete without bringing up the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It’s no secret that many wealthy royals and oil magnates of the middle east have a fondness for cars, and the UAE is well known as a nation where automotive opulence is showcased on a grand scale.  

The United Arab Emirates, which shares borders with Saudi Arabia and Oman, is a relatively small country from a geographical perspective. At 32,278 square miles, it’s about 11 percent smaller than the U.S. state of Indiana and just over 300 square miles smaller than Ireland.

Yet the UAE packs a lot of royalty into those square miles. It’s made up of seven Sheikdoms, each ruled by—you guessed it—a Sheik. And some of those Sheiks, and their family members, are known to be fanatical car collectors with eclectic automotive tastes that run from Fiat 500s to Bugattis, Rolls Royces, and beyond.

One of those Sheiks, Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, has automotive tastes that are so, literally, colorful, that he has earned the nickname “Rainbow Sheik.” The nickname owes to his fondness for painting cars in rainbow color schemes, among them a 1950s-vintage Fiat 500.

So how different are royals from the rest of us in their automotive tastes?

Clearly, we’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to looking at the cars royals drive in the 21^st Century. But do we see enough here to perhaps glean at least some tentative generalizations?

Maybe. Especially with the example of the sheik whose fondness for cars extends to vehicles as humble as Fiat 500s, we see that royal tastes aren’t always confined to top-of-the-line vehicles like Rolls Royce salons or bespoke exotic supercars.

That hints at what is arguably a hidden principle that underlies the strategy of automakers when they create aspirational vehicles.

While there are a few automakers that make handsome profits by making just a handful of each model, most automakers are aiming at higher volumes.

So here’s the trick.

They want to create cars that are cool and luxurious enough to appeal to the elite. But to be profitable, those cars also need to be economical enough to produce that they can be priced in a range accessible to those of upper-middle means who are willing to part with a healthy chunk of their hard-earned cash to acquire something that supposedly carries a cachet of status.