Prince closing door on family era

Prince Durga Pratap Sinh (

It has been in his family all its life, but an Auckland-based Indian prince faces the wrenching task of selling his beloved 1936 Lanchester car before returning to his homeland.

Prince Durga Pratap Sinh ("Chuck") Sisodia, the Maharaja of Pratapgarh in what is now India's sprawling northwestern state of Rajasthan, has listed the huge eight-cylinder vehicle with the Dunbar Sloane auction house in the hope of raising $400,000 or more from its sale.

That follows his decision to spend most of his time in India, where he says it is virtually impossible to import cars more than three years old, even though he battled long and hard with officials there for permission to bring the Lanchester to New Zealand in 1993.

The auctioneers expect bids to exceed $300,000 when the sapphire-blue car, which is 5.5m long and hogging a princely volume of space at their Auckland showroom, goes under the hammer on April 20.

Prince Chuck says there is no way he will hand over the keys for less, given that it was the only open-bodied "straight eight" to be made by Daimler after its takeover of Britain's Lanchester Motor Company in 1931.

The property developer and former plastics machinery manufacturer, who migrated to New Zealand on the recommendation of his friend the late Sir Edmund Hillary and intends retaining links with this country, said it would be difficult at any price to part company with the car.

"It will be like losing a family member."

Auctioneer Dunbar Sloane snr says he has had a few "nibbles" of interest from potential New Zealand buyers but believes the strong Australian dollar makes it more likely the car will end up across the Tasman.

Brothers Fredrick and George Lanchester were in 1896 the first manufacturers of an all-British car, and Prince Chuck's family began assembling what grew to a 26-strong fleet of Lanchesters well before they became the marque of choice for Britain's Royal Family.

Although Daimler decided to stop making Lanchester straight eights, and to switch to smaller models, it accepted special requests to build three more in 1936 - two for King George VI before his coronation and one for a maharaj - Prince Chuck's great-uncle.

The maharaja gave the car to him when he turned 18 in 1964, and he handed it on to his son Dhruv as a 21st birthday present while it was winning accolades at an international motor show in California a decade ago.

Prince Dhruvadityasinh Sisodia has since moved to Australia, leaving his father to sell the car on his behalf before returning to India to help with a family tourism business, which includes taking New Zealanders on guided tours of Rajasthan's former palaces.

"I'm only the car's caretaker now," Prince Chuck said wistfully, as he showed the Herald its immaculate condition, achieved by a full restoration for the Pebble Beach Concourse d'Elegance motor show in 2000 then nine years on show at Californian car museums.

Although he won trophies driving the car in rallies as a young man, it spent many years off the road in India because of the impossibility of finding replacement tyres for it there.

That has left the car with only about 16,000km on the clock, although Prince Chuck has given it weekly run such as along Tamaki Drive from his St Heliers home since getting it back from the US last year.

Describing the car with its wooden framework, aluminium body, stainless-steel bolts and expansive hood covering a 4.5-litre engine and twin klaxon horns as "better than brand new", he batted off a question about its fuel efficiency.

"When you have a car like this you don't think about the gas."