Abstract. – Throughout Western European history, wheeled vehicles have been prominently included in religious and political (especially kingly) ceremony and iconography to encode aristocratic authority and ideals and to connect society with cosmological powers. Four contexts of ceremonial vehicle usage are interpreted as they have appeared and reappeared over the millennia: 1) their relationship with cosmological realms and the concept of travel between human society and otherworldly domains; 2) the ritual identification of wheeled vehicles themselves as sacred objects; 3) their significance in political-ideological processions featuring the well-being of humankind; 4) their usefulness as instruments expressing concepts of spirit/motion and matter/stasis, especially as these involve skilled crafting and aesthetics. [Europe, chariots, coaches, pageant cars, symbols of royalty, ceremonies of state, liminality, aesthetics and transformation]