{"id":113563,"date":"2021-04-16T16:24:46","date_gmt":"2021-04-16T23:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=113563"},"modified":"2021-04-16T16:24:46","modified_gmt":"2021-04-16T23:24:46","slug":"prince-philips-old-car-a-1935-standard-nine-becomes-a-sri-lankan-royal-artefact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/04\/16\/prince-philips-old-car-a-1935-standard-nine-becomes-a-sri-lankan-royal-artefact\/","title":{"rendered":"Prince Philip\u2019s old car, a 1935 Standard Nine, becomes a Sri Lankan royal artefact"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy NewsIn.Asia<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

April 16 (AFP) \u2013 An 86-year-old car that once belonged to Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, is now the centrepiece of a seaside museum in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prince, whose funeral will be on Saturday, was a car aficionado who bought the 1935 Standard Nine for 12 pounds when he was based in Colombo with the British Navy in 1940.<\/ins><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he came back in the early 1950s, he came and saw the car,\u201d said Sanjeev Gardiner, who has kept the vehicle at his Galle Face Hotel in Colombo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he saw the car he said, \u2018I hope the brakes work. They didn\u2019t work then.’\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

According to Mr Gardiner, the prince acknowledged that the Standard was the first car he bought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also became a patron of the Standard Motor Car club.<\/ins><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Gardiner\u2019s hotel, one of the oldest in the former British colony, has built a museum around the silver and black sedan, preserving it for the enjoyment of guests and tourists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time he bought it, the prince reportedly failed to beat down the asking price for the second-hand car, though he did manage to get a payment plan of two equal instalments within a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to museum records, he first drove the car from Colombo to a naval base in Trincomalee, 260 kilometres away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The car, which has 93,040 kilometres on it, has been restored several times and can still be driven. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Mr Gardiner said the prohibitive insurance cost means it is not taken out anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vehicle was bought by Gardiner\u2019s father Cyril in the early 1950s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Gardiner said his father also loaned the royals the Cadillac used by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip during their first official Sri Lanka visit in 1954.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That along with another used by the royal family are being restored at the moment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prince Philip, who died at the age of 99 last week, was known to love cars and often chose to drive himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in 2019, he surrendered his driving licence at the age of 97 after a collision that flipped his car and injured two other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the Duke of Edinburgh\u2019s funeral procession on Saturday, a bespoke Land Rover Defender that he helped design will bear his coffin to St George\u2019s Chapel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy NewsIn.Asia April 16 (AFP) \u2013 An 86-year-old car that once belonged to Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, is now the centrepiece of a seaside museum in Sri Lanka. The prince, whose funeral will be on Saturday, was a car aficionado who bought the 1935 Standard Nine for 12 pounds when he was based in Colombo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[167],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}