IT is desirable to know a bit of background to a used car one is contemplating buying.

Few vehicles have a more interesting history than a Jaguar I-Pace up for auction next month.

In 2018, King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, purchased the fully-electric model from Jaguar for his personal use.

The flagship EV400 HSE all-wheel-drive version cost around £60,000. It is the only I-Pace to have been painted in Loire Blue, the colour requested by the King.

Having covered about 3,000 miles, it was returned to the manufacturer in 2020 and subsequently sold by an Oxfordshire Jaguar dealership.

Purchaser Karen French said: “It was exactly what I was looking for and pretty much on my doorstep.

“It was only when I agreed to buy it that I discovered its extraordinary history.

“Having driven it over 30,000 miles, I decided in the New Year it was time for a change.”

The I-Pace is among 180 vehicles in the Historics’ auction at Ascot racecourse, Berkshire, on March 2. It is expected to fetch £55,000-£70,000.

King Charles may have been the first Royal to drive a fully-electric car but his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, took delivery of a Bedford CF Lucas electric van – with rear side windows and equipped like a limousine - in 1980.