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ROLLS-ROYCE

& BENTLEY

ROYAL ROLLS-ROYCES

SPECIAL JUBILEE FEATURE ON REGAL CARRIAGES - AND BENTLEY TOO

CONTINENTAL S3 WE DRIVE THE PRETTIEST 1960s BENTLEY – RESTORED TO PERFECTION

TURBO R & MULSANN E TURBO ANATOMY O F THE ‘80s & ‘9 0s BLOWERS

ROLLS-ROYCE WRAITH CATCHING SUN DOWN UNDER

ARNAGE BMW

REASSESSING THE SMALL V8

PLUS: MARKET UPDATES ● LATEST NEWS READERS’ CARS ● CLUB REPORTS ● ALBUM ART

COOL CAMARGUE

R-R’S FASCINATING COUPE JULY/AUGUST 2022

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60 YEARS

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Editorial

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Royal Rollers, breezy Bentleys Here’s to a fine, enjoyable summer after two years of thwarted activity. This issue comes out around the Platinum Jubilee weekend, and we couldn’t allow such an important moment to pass without a close look at the relationship between RollsRoyce and the Royal Family, starting on page 26. Our cover star is a glorious Bentley S3 Continental Convertible, surely the perfect car for a long summer jaunt. This one has recently emerged from a sensitive but thorough restoration and is about as good as they get; join us behind the wheel on page 12.

Throughout the rest of the magazine, we’re offering as much variety as we can pack in, including a Wraith basking in the Australian sun, a blast in the under-rated BMW-engined Bentley Arnage and a day out with an even more misunderstood car – the Rolls-Royce Camargue. Our ‘Anatomy Of…’ series reaches the Mulsanne Turbo and Turbo R on page 58. Fancy a road trip?

We’ve done a roundabout route from London to Edinburgh in the magazine’s own Turbo R, finding plenty of interesting Bentley and Rolls-Royce stop-offs on the way. We'll also meet a reader who refused to let age stand in the way of a dream, and bought his first Rolls-Royce aged 88. The biggest news for me, personally, is the arrival of a new project. The photo above will give you a hint, while those of you who follow Rolls-Royce & Bentley Driver on Facebook may well have seen some posts leaking news of the car’s arrival. Find out what I’ve got myself into on page 88.

Enjoy the issue!

Nigel Boothman rrb.ed@kelsey.co.uk Part of the Classics World Family www.classicsworld.co.uk

KELSEYmedia www.kelsey.co.uk

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Kelsey Media 2022 © all rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part is forbidden except with permission in writing from the publishers. Note to contributors: articles submitted for consideration by the editor must be the original must be the original work of the author and not previously published. Where photographs are included, which are not the property of the contributor, permission to reproduce them must have been obtained from the owner of the copyright. The editor cannot guarantee a personal response to all letters and emails received. The views expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of the Editor or the Publisher. Kelsey Media accepts no liability for products and services offered by third parties.

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3

JULY / AUGUST 2022

CONTENTS 40

48

68 COVER STORY

88 REGULARS 6

UP FRONT

All the latest Rolls-Royce and Bentley news

22 MARKET WATCH

Temptation abounds, from £6000 to £4.5 million…

36 READERS’ LETTERS

Your chance to have your say

64 FROM THE CLUBHOUSE

All the latest news from the RREC and BDC

82 PERSONAL CHOICE

Our readers, their cars and their adventures

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CONTINENTAL S3 CONVERTIBLE

One of the prettiest Bentleys of any era, this car is fresh from a careful restoration. Does the driving experience live up to the looks?

92 FROM THE ARCHIVES

Rolls-Royces on record sleeves – of all kinds!

96 MOTOR FREE ADS

Rolls-Royce and Bentley classics for sale

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26

“The intention was for the Phantom VI to be delivered during the Jubilee year, but this was Britain in the 1970s; industrial action delayed its arrival in the Royal Mews until spring 1978”

98 THE FINAL PAGE A Rolls 20hp grabs attention amongst the rally cars

FEATURES 26 ROYAL ROLLS ROYCES Happy Platinum Jubilee! Come with us on a tour of 70 years – and more – of regal motoring

40 BENTLEY ARNAGE 4.4 The smaller-engined Arnage is scarce but can be a shrewd buy, especially in this condition

54 ANATOMY OF…MULSANNE TURBO & TURBO R

Our history series marches on with the cars that gave Bentley new life

68 ROLLS-ROYCE CAMARGUE Once an oddity, now a rarity – and seriously under-rated

76 LONDON TO EDINBURGH ROAD TRIP 500 miles in our Turbo R

88 STAFF CAR REPORT

Meet our Blenheim Palace barn find!

48 ROLLS-ROYCE WRAITH A Silver Spirit owner falls for a graceful 1930s R-R, but has to ship it 10,000 miles!

52 MEET THE EXPERTS: MWS We meet the people who keep the wheels turning for pre-war Rolls & Bentley models R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

SUBSCRIPTION

OFFERS PAGE 86

5

UP FRONT

NEWS AND VIEWS

PHANTOM PHOTOS MARK FAMOUS MEETING On May 4th, Rolls-Royce marked the 118th anniversary of the meeting between Henry Royce and The Hon. C.S. Rolls at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, with a near 100-year history of one model.

The company released some superb images of the many generations of

Rolls-Royce Phantoms, reflecting on what set the company’s flagship product apart – and what continues to do so. Each generation took the model forwards in one or more ways, starting with the car that had to follow the Silver Ghost.

The Phantom family was born in 1925

This 1930 Phantom II (62GY) was coachbuilt

by Hooper of London with a Dual Cowl Tourer body, modified to include a larger fuel tank, louvered bonnet and radiator two inches taller than standard.

1933 Phantom II Continental (55MW) Park Ward’s main feature was a compact folding hood that, when fully retracted, was entirely concealed under the rear deck. (Credit: ‘Park Ward The Innovative Coachbuilder’ by Malcolm Tucker)

1937 Phantom III (3BT85) with striking Hooper saloon-with-division style, which looks fast even when standing still thanks to its semi-razor edge styling and swooping curves. (Credit: ‘The Spectre Arises’ by Steve Stuckey)

The handsome frontal aspect of the 1933 Phantom III Sedanca (3BT103) ordered new by polar explorer and author Apsley Cherry-Garrard, and later owned by actor Ralph Richardson. (Credit Alpine Eagle)

The sumptuous interior of 1965 Phantom V (5VD63) bought second-hand in 1968

by John Lennon and later used in the Oscar-nominated film Georgy Girl (1966), the classic Let It Be (1970), starring The Beatles, Performance (1970), featuring Mick Jagger, and the The Greek Tycoon (1978) with Anthony Quinn.

The best-looking post-war Phantom? This 1966 Phantom VI (5LVF65) is bodied by James Young to their PV23 design, developed especially for the Rolls-Royce Phantom V chassis, with 22 such examples built.

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when Rolls-Royce launched Phantom I. With its massive low-range torque, cutting-edge technology and magiccarpet ride, the new model immediately confirmed the fundamental traits that would define the family for the next 100 years. By 1929, its successor, the Phantom II was ready for the market. In 1930, the company unveiled the Phantom II Continental, which gave customers a choice of a more performance-orientated model for those who preferred to drive themselves. The ‘standard’ longer-wheelbase car was retained for chauffeur-driven use. This practice set the precedent for today’s Phantom and Phantom Extended.

While the new Continental could attain speeds up to 95mph, it was still not as fast as some of its rivals.

The company decided to resolve the matter once and for all. In 1934, applying its proven experience with aero engines, it developed a new 7.3litre V12 engine, mounted in a new chassis. The resulting Phantom III, when fitted with lightweight coachwork,

Rolls-Royce created this magnificent Bespoke Phantom VII Extended for its display at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show.

It’s decorated with hand-embroidered and hand-painted Chinoiserie blossom motifs that took up to 600 hours to complete.

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was capable of exceeding 100mph.

The post-war Phantom IV saw the model’s role change to that of formal limousine, as detailed in our Royal RollsRoyces feature on p26. Some of the cars chosen by Rolls-Royce to represent the Phantom lineage in these anniversary images are pictured here. The sequence is finished by a 2015 Phantom VII and a 2021 Phantom VIII named the Serenity Phantom and the Phantom Oribe, respectively. The first was created for the Geneva Motor Show and is trimmed in Smoke Green raw silk and decorated with hand-made blossom motifs, while the second is a collaboration between Rolls-Royce and the House of Hermès to co-create a bespoke Phantom for Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa. The Phantom VIII was always intended as a basis for personalisation and continues Rolls-Royce’s long tradition of catering to the individual, as CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös explained: ‘As we reflect on Phantom’s remarkable heritage, I am struck by the unique place it occupies in the hearts and minds of our most demanding Rolls-Royce clients. Phantom is the beneficiary of the most ambitious forms of Rolls-Royce Bespoke, transforming into whatever our clients want it to be. Indeed, Phantom is not only the “best car in the world”, but the best car for them in their world.’

This 2021 Phantom VIII is a unique collaboration called the Phantom Oribe that saw the House of Rolls-Royce and the House of Hermès collaborate.

The bespoke two-tone exterior finish is inspired by the client’s collection of ancient Japanese ceramics, Oribe ware.

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All of the extra length is within the rear door

NEW BENTAYGA EWB – AN R-R RIVAL? Bentley has added a long-wheelbase model to the Bentayga range, the Bentayga EWB. It offers rather more than just an extra 180mm of length in the rear door, and hence a more spacious cabin, as Bentley has chosen to raise the focus on rear passenger comfort and even ‘wellness’ by introducing new features with startling abilities.

The new Bentley Airline Seat is claimed to be the most advanced seat ever fitted to a car, with 22-way movement, a new auto-climate sensing system and postural adjustment technology. It has two modes, Relax (tilts back 40 degrees, footrest deploys from the rear of the seat in front) or Business, the most upright posture for working on the move.

The auto-climate sensing function senses your temperature and surface humidity (!) and then determines whether to heat, cool or ventilate you.

Meanwhile, the postural adjustment system makes micro adjustments to your seating position and pressure points by measuring pressure across the seat surface. It can apply 177 individual pressure changes across six different pressure zones during a three-hour journey, claiming to minimise fatigue. It will be fascinating to discover how it feels in real life.

This passenger-focussed role ticks several boxes for Bentley. First, it provides a car in which to be driven, something the range has lacked since the Mulsanne bowed out in 2020. Second, it extends the appeal of the Bentayga, already Bentley’s best-selling model. Third, you could argue it takes on Rolls-Royce in the uber-luxury segment for those who will not always be behind the wheel, albeit with a significant under-cut in price compared with the Phantom or Cullinan.

Seats can cool, heat and ventilate you, and even the armrests are heated

With Airline seats in Relax mode, you recline 40 degrees and gain a footrest

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UP FRONT NEWS AND VIEWS

BENTLEY VICTORY IN FLYING SCOTSMAN After covering 600 miles over three days, the 1923 Bentley SuperSports of William Medcalf and Andy Pullan came in at the top of the timesheets to win the 2022 Flying Scotsman rally. They passed through the ceremonial arch at the Gleneagles Hotel after holding a lead they’d secured, but had to fight for, since the first morning. The margin of victory was a scant ten seconds over the second-placed crew of Martin Hunt and Bob Mannix in a Frazer-Nash BMW 328, who in turn pipped Martin’s son Theo and navigator Jimmy Galliver to third in their Frazer-Nash TT Replica.

William Medcalf was modest in victory, saying ‘Thank you to Mr Pullan, it’s all in the nav. I just do as I’m told!’

Although as Andy pointed out, ‘This is William’s third win now, and I’m delighted that this is my first. A great competition, really tight throughout.’

A total of 29 Bentleys appeared on the entry list, far more than any other single marque. The mix was in favour of vintage Cricklewood-built cars, but quite a number of postvintage Derby Bentleys joined to swell the ranks. Some looked more or less standard while others wore lighter, sportier bodywork, and the second and third best-placed Bentleys, in 4th and 8th position, were both 4 ¼ -litre Derby models. A solitary Rolls-Royce, the 20/25 DHC of Karl Schaefer and Christoph Dorn, came in a respectable 60th of 81 finishers – outdoing eight of the Bentleys in the process.

This event, now in its 12th year, has risen to become the premier fixture in UK vintage rallying, and one of the most in-demand events in Europe. The format involves a mix

The Editorial Turbo R exchanges notes with Grandpa

Paul Dyas and Ian Tullie just missed a podium finish in their 4 ¼ -litre Derby Bentley

Andrew and Phillipa Bailey in another of the SWB Bentley SuperSports

The winning 1923 Bentley SuperSports of William Medcalf and Andy Pullan

of road miles, regularity sections and special tests, which are timed sections on closed land. It ought to favour fast, nimble cars, but as with all rallying, the navigator can make a bigger difference than the driver and consistency is key. Reliability matters too, so it’s impressive that 81 of the 94 entrants finished the event.

The Flying Scotsman is organised by the Endrance Rally Association and the ERA’s pseudonymous reporter, Syd Stelvio, summed up the value of the event.

‘For most it is just about finishing, for completing a challenging route in cars that really might be better suited

to enjoying their retirement. But for these people this is a celebration of these machines, an opportunity to show them to a public that hold a fond fascination for them, evidenced by the sheer amount that showed up along the route to wave the cars through and by those that gathered in the rain at the finish, clapping and cheering just as loudly regardless of the position in which the crew finished.

It is also about keeping these old machines moving and inspiring the next generation, who will become the custodians of these motorcars, long after the current crop of internal combustion engines becomes obsolete.’

UNCOMFORTABLE… IN A PHANTOM IV? A lip-reader claimed to catch an unexpected remark from Prince Charles as he exited the family’s Phantom IV Limousine (featured in our Royal Rolls-Royce article, page 26) before delivering the Queen’s Speech. It seems the Prince said ‘Oh my word, that was uncomfortable,’ to Camilla, Duchess of

8

Cornwall, on exiting the sumptuous back seats of the Rolls-Royce – according to lip-reading expert Jeremy Freeman, quoted in The Metro. Can he really have been talking about the car…or was he reminiscing about one of the more awkward social encounters he and the Duchess have endured?

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B ARN AT O H ASS AN BEN T LEY S PEC IA L FORME R B ROO KL A ND S OU TRI GH T O U TE R CI RCU I T RE CO RD HO L D E R

V INT A G E BENTL EY S WA N T E D

UP FRONT NEWS AND VIEWS

AT LAST BETTER HEAD GASKETS

Just as we went to press, IntroCar announced a breakthrough in the supply of a vital component for all Rolls-Royce and Bentley models equipped with the L-series V8 from 1959 to 2002.

The new Prestige Parts® cylinder head gasket (07V103147.01-X) has been three-and-a-half years in the making and alleviates the limitations of the Bentley gasket, which is no longer in production. The original gasket was designed for use in brand new, lower performance engines, but the Prestige Parts® gasket incorporates additional features appropriate to the wide range of vehicle applications - both old and new - for which it is now required.

These include a long list of technical features, such as critical solid-core stainless steel fire rings, able to withstand the high heat and pressures generated in the most recent 400+BHP engines. They also feature cutting-edge compressible gasket body material incorporating high-strength bonded Aramid

fibre, with 70% rebound – ideal for older engines where mating faces are imperfect or non-parallel – for a perfect seal. Other innovations increase strength across the whole gasket body and eliminate the formation of fluid paths on first startup. John Tupper, IntroCar’s Managing Director, said: ‘The standard head gasket was neither designed for nor suited to all the aftermarket applications for which it was eventually used and was withdrawn from sale with little notice some years ago. We have finally developed a robust replacement gasket which we will be selling with a 3-year worldwide warranty.

This project represents one of our most expensive and advanced products to date, incorporating state-of-theart design, tooling, and manufacturing techniques.’

Delivery is expected in June. See IntroCar.com for pre-order. The price will be £124.95 plus VAT, per unit.

HERITAGE FLEET EXPANDS Bentley’s Heritage Fleet has completed its expansion from nine cars to an impressive 35, all of which will be running, reliable and road legal – forming what the firm calls the ultimate Bentley toy box. They brought a selection of the new additions to the Goodwood Members’ Meeting in the spring, including a 1929 Speed Six to complete their pre-war collection, a 1949 Mark VI to represent the first Crewe-built Bentley, a 1963 S3 standard saloon, a 1984 Continental (Corniche-type) formerly used by the Chairman, a 1991 Turbo R to represent the model that started Bentley’s sporting re-birth, and a 2001 Arnage Red Label to mark the return of the 6 ¾-litre V8 to Bentley saloons.

The new additions mean the Heritage Fleet now includes cars from every decade and of every significant model.

Rolls-Royce and Bentley Drivers …

Drive in with confidence where you see this sign.

The Rolls-Royce and Bentley Specialists Association Your guarantee of satisfaction Visit Established 1984

www.rrbsa.co.uk for details of member companies

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Independent Masters OF ROLLS -ROYCE & BENTLEY MOTOR CARS SINCE 1983

SALES R E S TO R AT I O N MAINTENANCE

FO R M E R LY K N OW N A S R OYC E S E R V I C E A N D E N G I N E E R I N G SAME SERVICE DIFFERENT NAME

01737 844999 S U R R E Y, U K R S A N D E .C O.U K

COVER STORY BENTLEY CONTINENTAL S3 CONVERTIBLE

BE GOOD TO YOURSELF

A convertible Bentley Continental should represent the very peak of self-indulgent motoring. And a perfectly restored S3 like this might be the biggest treat of all WORDS: NIGEL BOOTHMAN

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PHOTOS: LEWIS HOUGHTON

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I

t’s a cool spring day as we leave Edinburgh. Gentle pressure on the accelerator produces a refined thrum from somewhere forward and the big Bentley slips past lesser traffic with no apparent effort. The roof is up, and such is the quality of the material and the neatness of the fit, it’s not far different from being in a fixed-head coupé. Only the lesser glass area gives you a more cocooned feeling, though the view out of the front is still magnificent.

It's soon time to peel off the dual carriageway and go looking for some quieter, prettier roads. Meeting a few bends at speed can be uncomfortable in some cars of this size and age, but here there is no plunge and wallow on tight corners. This S3 remains remarkably stable and level, with excellent body control. Here comes a fast straight, and the car tracks down its lane like an arrow, with none of the wheel-sawing correction you’d be performing in, for instance, most American contemporaries.

It has a good punch of mid-range acceleration for dealing with motorway on-ramps and overtakes, as we’ve already discovered. It’s a peach of an engine, not just the early 6230cc L-series V8 in general but particularly the one in this car. Thanks to this aluminium coachwork the Continental probably weighs around 200kg less than the standard S3 saloon, and it’s higher geared too. Indeed, 2000rpm is about 60mph in top (4th gear) for this sensible four-speed automatic.

You leave it in the ‘3’ position for mixed driving, ensuring there will be instant thrust available because it won’t allow itself to drop into top gear at low speeds. You flick it up to ‘4’ when you hit the open road. And that’s very much its natural habitat, away from the rough, potholed city streets that are the only situation capable of showing up the ancient origins of the chassis and suspension design.

Inside, it's extremely comfortable with very big, broad chairs that don’t share the failing of many older cars without headrests, and actually rise high enough to support your upper back and shoulders. It’s easy to slouch into a relaxed, somewhat splayedlegs position, with thick lambswool

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rugs robbing a little foot-room. The speedo and rev-counter are inverted, in that the needles begin their swing in the top right of the instrument and move round to the top left. The speedometer is marked all the way to 140mph and while that may be a little ambitious, everything suggests the car would feel just as unruffled at 100mph and even more.

PRETTY ON THE INSIDE Looking around this lovely cabin draws your eye to various details. There’s an enormous tray under the dash including a vast ashtray for thumping the end off your Double Corona. The steering wheel is huge and slim and a delight to pass between the fingertips, while the gear selector lever meets your right middle finger at just the right spot. The electric windows whoosh up and down more promptly than many Rolls-Royce and Bentley models of younger years, and you notice the door tops are exquisite: it’s that mixture of rather dark, wide-grained veneer, sandwiched by black leather above and below with a brightwork strip closing it off at each end. It’s gorgeous, especially mingled with the mellow cognac hide. Some would hurry to find an alternative to the modern Pioneer head-unit in the radio slot, but at least it works. In the corners of the dash, there are tiny little air vents, which do an adequate job of supplying fresh air when the roof’s up, but of course you don’t buy a convertible to go everywhere with the lid on. So it’s time for us to let the outside world »

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COVER STORY BENTLEY CONTINENTAL S3 CONVERTIBLE in. Release the header-rail catches and touch the button, and the roof descends promptly and smoothly.

The natural look for this car seems to be roof down, side windows down, which is by no means breezy or exposed, and it flatters the long, even side profile of the bodywork. That bodywork turns out to be a very subtle piece of design. When you look closely, you tend to focus on the details. One in particular marks this car out from the

even more understated S2 Continental: the slanted pairs of headlamps with bright surrounding panels. But take in its general form, with a straight waistline that neither dips into a Cokebottle hip nor falls away, and you have a more ageless look. This, and maybe the car’s dignified dark blue paint, must be why it doesn’t turn heads as much as you’d think. If you miss the lamps and the shiny bumpers, it doesn’t scream ‘classic car’, and with the roof up, has a

familiar three-box outline that blends in like a big saloon of the 1970s or ‘80s.

Indeed, the image this car projects is interesting. It’s more subtle than many, but it is still an enormous dropheadcoupé Bentley, and enormous drophead Bentleys are not inconspicuous. You would have to be immune to selfconsciousness or at least happy to be looked at, were you to drive the car somewhere populous with the roof down. But the same applies to

Deepest lambswool adds a plush touch to gorgeous cabin - dash and door veneers are as good as it gets

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any large, luxurious convertible car and it can be a lot more pronounced with something showy and modern.

A CHARMED LIFE Enough chin-stroking. It’s time to learn a little more about this example. This is chassis BC 152 XC and it was delivered new on July 20th, 1964 from Jack Barclay Ltd to Sir Arnold Weinstock, later Baron Weinstock, the managing

director of GEC. In addition to the car’s already chunky list price, Weinstock ordered chromium-plated GB letters to the boot lid, a Hirschmann electrically operated aerial and electrically operated windows. He paid a grand total of £8011 for it, of which £1377 12s and 11d was purchase tax. By way of context, you could have bought two Cadillac De Ville convertibles or four Jaguar E-type roadsters for the price of the Bentley. Surprisingly, in

light of this significant indulgence, Lord Weinstock only kept the car for a year or so, passing it on to a second owner via H.R. Owen. In researching this article, we came across an odd snippet of information that may help to explain why. London-based dealer Graeme Hunt once advertised an S3 Continental Saloon by James Young, and in the car’s listing, we found this: ‘There is also all the correspondence between Bentley Motors and James Young from when she was in production. Rather funny is a Young's internal memo instructing the team that the car would need extra care as the customer was so demanding and “worse than Mr Weinstock”.’

Hard to please, then, and perhaps willing to find fault with his new car after only a year? Whatever the truth, the car passed to its buyer in Yorkshire who registered the car in his wife’s name, giving it the registration plate MUM 21. It remained in the White Rose county until 1977 when the owners retired to Guernsey, and the car retired with them, used for the next 40 years almost entirely on the island.

When the owners died, the car passed to their son, who had an engine rebuild carried out around the year 2000 at 80,000 miles – it’s now »

Discreet fins are carried over from earlier Park Ward S2 Continental; like this car, a true four-seater

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COVER STORY BENTLEY CONTINENTAL S3 CONVERTIBLE

With any luck the roof will be down when the car attends the RREC show at Burghley House in July

showing about 102,000. He used the car for a few trips to the UK and France from Guernsey but kept the usage fairly light, getting it serviced by the same man who performed the engine rebuild.

When he decided to sell in 2016, word of the car reached Derek C. Mowat.

Derek is a man of many roles, with several characterful, upscale hotels in Edinburgh, and space behind the largest of them for a business buying and selling classic and highperformance cars. He specialises in Rolls-Royce and Bentley, as well as other prestige marques, but he’s also an enthusiast with a mental ticklist of cars he’d love to own. That’s something he shares with many of us, but unlike many of us, Derek manages to do something about it.

‘I heard about this car through a friend in the Bentley world and

it had a lot going for it,’ he says.

‘Provenance, low ownership, good colours and originality. The engine had been done within the last 20,000 miles by a respected engineer and it seemed the one to have, though I knew it would need work eventually.

The paint was poor – not a great re-spray from many years before – and the leather was cracked. A typical dried-out old car, really.’

So Derek brought it up to Scotland and put it into use. He and his wife Shirley drove up to the ferry to Orkney, their place of origin, so it became probably the only Continental S3 Convertible to have visited both Guernsey and Orkney, some 850 miles apart. But after a couple of years, Derek felt he couldn’t put off the inevitable restoration any longer and the process

began, with the car visiting various specialists as the cycle progressed.

‘First we stripped the interior,’ says Derek, ‘and removed the hydraulic pump and rams for the roof, for overhaul. The pump lives behind the rear seat and the rams are like the ones on a grey Fergie; they would lift a pallet of sand! The frame of the roof was alright under the old fabric, but it needed a good clean and some lubrication. Then it was time for the bodywork.’

This is a potentially ruinous job on these large, complex Park Ward bodies.

The combination of internal rust-traps and huge, gracious aluminium surfaces is difficult to get right, which made it all the more fortunate that Derek had chosen wisely in the first place.

‘It only needed partial repairs to the inner sills and new outer sills,’ he »

Remarkable spares kit contains over 100 items

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J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

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COVER STORY BENTLEY CONTINENTAL S3 CONVERTIBLE

“This car has that calming quality in spades, but it’s combined with dashing V8 performance, an excellent power roof and a sweet spot in coachwork design between stylish and subtle.”

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says. ‘We drilled inspection holes in the top of the scuttle to have a look at the bulkhead with a borescope, and thankfully it was fine. That can be a disaster area on these cars.’

The paint is a colour called James Young Blue; a slightly ironic choice for a car made by Park Ward but one that Lord Weinstock specified all those years ago and perfectly right for this sophisticated machine. The mechanical side of the restoration was also quite straightforward with nothing more than a good clean and some service work required for the engine.

‘Even the differential and gearbox were fine,’ says Derek. ‘It’s the quietest S3 I’ve ever heard, and in all the trips I’ve done, it’s never used a drop of oil or even of coolant.’

Derek says he made one addition under the skin, with an aftermarket anti-roll bar as part of the familiar

Rolls-Bentley handling kit offered to various models. That explains the composed attitude in the bends, then.

With the brakes renewed, the wheels blasted and coated, given new tyres and dent-free, polished hubcaps, the car was ready for the trimmer. By this time, Covid 19 had spoiled everything for so many of us, but at least it gave Derek the consolation of not missing out on a summer of wonderful events in 2020. It was just about ready to go by the summer of that year, and it seems the trimmer had all the time he needed to excel himself.

THE FINISHED PRODUCT When you see it for yourself, the trim is almost beyond factory perfect.

Derek chose to change the colour of the leather from the original blue, his one deviation from the car’s 1964

specification, and it’s impossible to disapprove when you’ve seen the car in the flesh. The tones of cognac leather, black leather, sheepskin and dark wood veneer work beautifully together and the standard of craftsmanship is sky-high.

There are other delights to explore as we look around this car. The boot, which is large enough for a month-long honeymoon, contains a fascinating ‘Overseas Touring Spares Kit’ that Derek tracked down at Goodwood. It resembles a wooden case for a child-size croquet set but contains dozens of items an unlucky motorist might need on a trip around the Continent, from a little rubber O-ring to a cylinder head gasket and almost everything in between.

‘I’m sure most of it is well past its sell-by date,’ says Derek, ‘But it was so unusual and »

S3 CONTINENTAL – FOUR , OR MORE?

One of the nicest items in the Convertible’s history file is a small brochure for the S3 Continental models. All S3s were a marginal evolution from the S2, which in turn changed significantly from the S1 only in the engine department, with the arrival of V8 power for the S2. An S3 brought you a lower bonnet line, slightly better legroom and different front seats in the standard saloon, with improved power steering, but the change from two headlamps to four was more obvious. And it was carried over, of course, to the Continental models. The brochure depicts four of them – the Convertible Coupé, as featured in this article, the very similar Two Door Sports Saloon, the Four Door Flying Spur by HJ Mulliner

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and the Four Door Saloon by James Young, which is very similar but perhaps slightly heavier-looking. Yet there’s another one, the James Young Coupé that looks very much like the Saloon but with two fewer doors.

Only two were built, we think. To add further confusion, there was badge engineering, or rather grille and badge.

The two Park Ward coupé bodies could be bought as Rolls-Royces for the first time since the Continental name was re-established with the R-type Bentley. But that’s one of the wonderful things about coachbuilt cars: variation is to be expected, and indeed demanded, by the kind of clients who could pay to be different.

In total, 312 of them chose to do so by ordering a Continental variant of

the S3 generation. Survivorship is high and all variants of these aluminiumbodied cars are now sought after, with the Convertible Coupé topping the value charts. As they’re virtually the last gasp for coachbuilt choice on Bentley and Rolls-Royce chassis, the appeal is obvious.

1965 Bentley S3 Continental James Young coupé

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COVER STORY BENTLEY CONTINENTAL S3 CONVERTIBLE

“Weinstock paid a grand total of £8011 for it.

By way of context, you could have bought two Cadillac De Ville convertibles or four Jaguar E-type roadsters for the price of the Bentley.”

complete I couldn’t resist it.’

Delve further, beneath the floor of the boot, and you find a tool tray with some spare bulbs to compliment the spanners, and beneath that, an inspection lamp. Both of these are the originals to the car and look never to have been used. The rest of the car has, though, with Derek adding S PECI FI C AT I O N

1964 BENTLEY S3 CONTINENTAL CONVERTIBLE COUPÉ LENGTH: 5385mm Width: 1867mm WEIGHT: 1800kg (est) ENGINE: 6.25-litre V8 POWER: 200bhp@4000rpm TORQUE: 347lb ft@2500rpm 0-60MPH: 12.1 seconds TOP SPEED: 115mph COST NEW: £7950 (1964)

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some 4000 miles to the total on the clock when it arrived. It’s occupied an unusual place in his garage, as almost everything that passes through his hands is acquired for a customer or as stock for the business. This car, though it has been listed on Derek’s website, has been his own property for seven years and has benefitted from all the expenditure any fond owner would give such a car. So how does Derek feel now? Has he crossed this one off the mental tick-list?

‘I think I’ve had the best of both worlds with it. I brought a good car up to a standard it deserved and while it’s a wonderful thing to have on the site, I’ve had the experience of owning an S3 Continental too. And it’s been wonderful – a great compromise between modern and classic. Plus, if it doesn’t sell, Shirley likes it as much as I do, so we won’t be unhappy.’

As we near the end of our time with the Continental, we can step

back and try to form an objective view. It must be quite rare to find one in this precise condition, and it’s to be envied. Start with a good, highly original car with low ownership and few structural defects, albeit a little cosmetic trouble, and then carry out a careful and sensitive restoration to a high standard. Finally – and this is the bit that’s so often missed – actually use the car. Derek has taken this one to the Isle of Skye and all the way down to Goodwood since it was restored.

And now that it’s so thoroughly shaken down, it just doesn’t miss a beat.

In all, it’s gorgeous, in many ways practical, easy to drive and useable.

It's such a tranquil car in which to cover the miles, yet you can throw it about with a bit of dash and verve, should you wish. But I don’t know why you would…it’s not a sports car and was never intended as such. What it is, as Derek hinted, is a marvellous meeting point of old and new.

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6.2-litre V8 gives aluminium-bodied S3 plenty of urge

It’s like this: when this S3 Continental was built nearly 60 years ago, RollsRoyce and Bentley were already capable of offering cars that delivered the ride comfort, serenity and most of the performance you’d have expected in a luxury saloon in the 1990s or even 2000s. In the case of this example, all its natural abilities have been brought back to showroom standard, so we can tell just how good these cars were in their day. A word that sometimes springs to mind when driving wellsorted classic Rolls-Royces or Bentleys is ‘butler-esque’. It’s probably not a real word at all, but it's meant to convey the car’s ability to attend to your every whim and generally make life easier. This car has that quality in spades, but it’s combined with dashing V8 performance, an excellent power roof and a sweet spot in coachwork design between stylish and subtle.

If that doesn’t add up to a supremely desirable car, I don’t know what does. ■ R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

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MARKET WATCH BUYING AND SELLING

MARKET and report on others that have sold – covering everything from affordable modern classics through to the most premium-priced gems

TWO LEGENDS IN ONE SHOWROOM Looking after the sale of the Barnato Hassan Special, one of the most famous racing cars of pre-war years, is quite a boast. Being able to say you also have the very first Bentley Motors Works Le Mans Team car is even more remarkable. The showroom at Vintage Bentley might currently resemble a major museum collection (there are other important competition cars in there too) but you’ll need more than the price of an entry ticket to walk away with either of these – the Barnato Hassan Special invites offers over £4.5m while the 1925 3-litre Team car is asking for offers over £3.5m.

Woolf Barnato fancied a return to motor sport in 1933 and commissioned Walter Hassan to build a single-seat racing car with Bentley power (as in

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W.O. Bentley, not the then-current Rolls-Bentley), initially using a 6 ½ litre engine and then an 8-litre unit, eventually competing in 25 races over four years. It hit its personal best with a lap of 143.11mph with Oliver Bertram at the wheel in September 1938. It was retired soon after but in post-war years began a long career in vintage and historic competition, much of it while in the hands of Keith Schellenberg, who owned the car from 1953 to 2007. It’s still winning, albeit concours prizes; it’s just taken 2nd place overall at Salon Privé.

Chassis 1138 was the only Works entry to Le Mans in 1925. Bentleys had competed at Le Mans the previous two years, but they were private entries. The two Bentleys, Number 9

a privateer and Number 10 the Works Team car, stood a good chance against a rival British team from Sunbeam, but Number 10 suffered a frustrating retirement when a miscalculation led to the car running out of fuel after 18 laps, having led some of the race. It was then retained as a factory demonstrator before entering private hands.

‘Both cars have been with their current owners for a considerable time and are now in a position to explore new custodianship,’ says Anna Wilkinson of Vintage Bentley. ‘The team car in particular has completed a lot of racing and rallying including a return to Le Mans for the Classic in 2016, and this time it completed the race! It’s ready for its next adventure.’

See vintagebentley.com

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HAUNTING BEAUTIES AT V&P Northampton dealer Richard Biddulph’s Vintage & Prestige had an astonishing 13 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts for sale as we compiled the Market Watch pages. Of those, five are Edwardian examples, with one as early as 1909.

This is a particularly interesting car in the world of Ghosts, as it seems to be the only survivor of its series and it sports a desirable combination of rare features: the four-speed gearbox in which third is direct drive and top gear is an overdrive, plus the larger 7.4litre engine. It has worn this so-called Balloon coachwork (the flat area behind the seats was capable of carrying a folded hot-air balloon and basket) since 1959 when it was constructed

by Maurice Schwarz of Bohmann & Schwarz in Pasadena, California.

Another Edwardian Ghost, but with a remarkable original body, is V&P’s 1913 Colonial Open Drive Landaulette

by Barker. Thanks to a charmed life and a top-notch restoration in 1987, the 100 year-old coachwork survives in fine condition. The quaint arrangement of permanently open sides to the driver’s seat and optionally opening roof to the rear seats seems to ensure that only those sitting on the two jump seats in the middle are guaranteed safe from a rain shower. Original extras such as a foot heater for the rear passengers and a ceiling-mounted hat net for errant headwear add to the charm.

Perhaps the most eye-catching car of the lot, thanks to a dazzling fresh coat of silver paint, is a 1912 Roi des Belges tourer that’s just emerged from a nut-and-bolt restoration. It’s a remarkable sight – a 110 year-old car on which everything looks brand new.

Ever wanted to know what it felt like to have a new Silver Ghost delivered, or fancied yourself as the owner of the original Silver Ghost, AX 201? This might be as close as you could get. But for all their appeal, can these ancient machines really cope with modern roads? Yes indeed, says Richard.

‘I did 2000 miles around Spain in a 1912 Ghost on an Iberian rally, happily cruising at 50 to 60mph, and the car never missed a beat,’ he says. ‘These earlier Ghosts have only rear-wheel brakes, but they work well and you just adjust your driving style to give a little more room. They are amazingly capable.’ See vandp.net R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

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MARKET WATCH BUYING AND SELLING

TYNESIDE’S TURBO TEMPTATION Auctioneers WB & Sons of Killingworth, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, have some affordable temptation in their next sale on June 11th. Readers with a yearning to imitate our recent road trip in the magazine’s Turbo R (see page 76) can bid on a very similar car. It’s a 1991 example just a year younger than ours and in a smart dark blue – so dark you might

think it’s black. This suits the grey hide interior and blue carpets, and the whole car looks commendably clean for the estimate of only £6000 to £8000. These fuel-injected, activeride Turbo Rs can cope with regular use quite easily and we know what satisfying long-distance cruisers they make. With 70,000 miles on the clock and a fresh MoT it should attract

keen interest. WB & Sons are fans of our favourite marques and often have Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars looking for new homes. For those with a preference for the SY generation, there is a 1979 Silver Shadow in grey in the same sale, with further details yet to be confirmed as we go to press.

You can see photos of both cars and full descriptions on wbandsons.com.

AZURE BARGAIN? As our previous issue went to press, this delectable Peacock Blue Bentley Azure was hammered down at £56,000, including the buyer’s premium, at Brightwells’ spring sale in Leominster, Herefordshire.

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Even though it soared past the oddly modest £28,000-£35,000 estimate, it looks relatively cheap in today’s market for this soft-top Continental GT, until you know the car has been laid up since 2019

and the hood doesn’t work. However, the dazzling history file (£60k in upkeep) and the valuable registration plate meant a little money invested in sorting the car out was unlikely to be wasted. On balance, well bought!

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SPECIAL FEATURE ROYAL ROLLS ROYCES

AFFAIRS OF STATE

Rolls-Royce and Bentley are synonymous with Royal transport during the reign of Elizabeth II. With this year marking the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, we look back at her State Cars, and how Rolls-Royce and Bentley came to attract such special patronage WORDS: RICHARD GUNN

I

t’s 70 years since Britain gained a new Queen, with the accession of Elizabeth II to the throne in 1952. As the monarch who has presided over the UK’s modern era, cars as a means of regal transport have played a far greater role in her reign than with any of her predecessors. And the marques most associated with Elizabeth and others in her family are Rolls-Royce and, more recently, Bentley - something that had undoubtedly done the image of the two companies as paradigms of British prestige, luxury and craftsmanship absolutely no harm whatsoever. But how did the long-standing association begin? Originally, Royal patronage was reserved for some of their rivals instead.

PHOTOS: KELSEY ARCHIVE/ RICHARD GUNN

Although the automobile was born during the late-Victorian era, there is no record of Queen Victoria ever having been amused by one. It was with her son, Edward, Prince of Wales - later to become Edward VII upon the death of his mother in 1901 - that the Royal interest in motoring began.

He was far more fascinated by all things mechanical and technical and although his reign spanned less than a decade, it marked a significant spread in the use of machinery throughout the nation. Edward first encountered a car during 1896 while visiting the Exhibition of Motors in Kensington, London, but it was only when that most famous of aristocratic motoring

Lord Montagu with Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1899. It was this encounter that prompted the Prince to buy his own Daimler, thus ensuring they later became State Cars

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enthusiasts, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, took him out for a drive in his Daimler 12hp during 1899 that Edward’s spark was ignited. He ordered a Daimler of his own the following year, which was followed by a succession of other models from the firm. They were soon adopted as the official State Cars.

Rolls-Royce and Bentley didn’t even exist at this point - Henry Royce was still tinkering with the machines of others to try and improve them, while Walter Owen Bentley was still receiving his education in Bristol, ahead of a teenage apprenticeship with the Great Northern Railway in Yorkshire. However, one feature that would become a fixture on later Royal Rolls-Royces and Bentleys was established by Edward; the livery of Royal Claret, which first appeared on a 1902 Hooper-bodied Daimler. He later added black trim and a vermilion coachline - all aspects that remain on State Cars today.

Nevertheless, when Rolls-Royces did start to appear, the noble connections of the Honourable Charles Rolls were able to get the marque noticed in the right circles. A very early photo from 1904 - the year of the first Rolls-Royce-badged car - showed the Duke of Connaught, the third son

Before Rolls-Royce, State Cars were the domain of Daimler such as this 1923 King George V car

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of Victoria, in a 10hp model. RollsRoyce’s regal associations had begun.

However, not even the 1906 introduction of the 40/50 - the Silver Ghost model, which soon became regarded as ‘the best car in the world’ - could shift the Royal allegiance from Daimlers as State Cars, even if the Ghost did turn the heads of other monarchs oversees. The official affection for Daimlers continued through the reigns of George V (1910-36) and Edward VIII (1936). However, it seems that, while abroad on duties during the First World War, Rolls-Royce staff cars were used by both men. One story tells that Edward narrowly escaped death in one during September 1917; having just got out for an inspection, a shell landed nearby and shrapnel killed the chauffeur, still at the wheel.

1904 photo of The Duke of Connaught, the third son of Victoria, in a RR 10hp with CS Rolls

FROM GHOST TO PHANTOM Edward, as Prince of Wales, ordered a Silver Ghost in 1919, which was fitted a semi-enclosed cabriolet body from Barker. This was the first of the marque to be personally bought by a high-ranking Royal. A second swiftly followed, this time with closed Barker bodywork. More Ghosts and 20hps followed throughout the 1920s including a second-hand 1910 Ghost that was rebodied as a shooting brake for use during game parties on the Balmoral estate. When Rolls-Royce replaced the Ghost with the Phantom I in 1925, the Prince of Wales was a keen early customer. He had two Phantom Is and two Phantom IIs, with his last arriving in 1929. After that he became more distracted by things originating from the USA such as Buicks and Mrs Wallis Simpson.

Although other members of the Royal family acquired Rolls-Royces, Daimlers remained steadfastly in charge of State duties. But after George VI’s death in 1952, the crown passed to his eldest daughter, Elizabeth. It was the start of a new Elizabethan era but, for Daimler, it also marked the beginning of the end of its era as official Royal transport.

The 1950s proved controversial for the company, during which it was overseen

by Sir Bernard Docker and his wife, Norah. Both were known for being flamboyant, extravagant and attentionseeking, which didn’t exactly meet with the approval of those at Buckingham » R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

Queen in 1950 Phantom

The 1950 RR Phantom IV

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SPECIAL FEATURE ROYAL ROLLS ROYCES

“Philip asked if he could borrow the ‘Scalded Cat’ and, naturally, Rolls-Royce said yes - for when you’re the husband of the future Queen, getting others to agree to your whims is surprisingly easy” Palace. In addition, Daimler’s new limousine for 1954, the Regina - Latin for ‘Queen’, clearly indicating its eyes on the Royal prize - was poorly received, even after its DK400 revamp in 1955.

By then, Daimler was also in financial trouble, so much so that it had to be rescued by Jaguar in 1961. This contrasted with Rolls-Royce enjoying a high profile and prosperous period.

It’s widely felt that it was Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, who steered the Royal family away from Daimler to Rolls-Royce. During 1948, the Duke visited Rolls-Royce’s fresh new factory in Crewe and there spied an experimental 5.7-litre B80 straight-eight engined Bentley, Although codenamed ‘Comet’ by the factory, it was more colloquially known as the ‘Scalded Cat’ because of its blistering performance. Philip asked if he could borrow it and, naturally, Rolls-Royce said yes - for when you’re the husband of the future Queen, getting others to agree to your whims is surprisingly easy. He then ordered his own version, albeit in Rolls-Royce form, with the B80 engine and a limousine body by H J Mulliner. This was the first Phantom IV and originally intended

The 1950 Phantom IV

to be the sole example - although, eventually, 17 more would be built for Royalty and Heads of State up until 1956. Such was the secrecy surrounding the Duke’s Phantom that, while being

Rolls-Royce Phantom IV 7-Seater Limousine delivered to then HRH The Princess Elizabeth, The Duchess of Edinburgh in July 1950 on its first Maunday money State Car duty in April 1952

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built at Crewe, all the indications were that it was intended for the Maharajah of Nabha. It seems Rolls-Royce was very aware that it was about to step firmly on Daimler’s toes and didn’t want word »

When carrying the Queen, the State Cars temporarily lose their Spirit of Ecstasy mascot and instead have one portraying St George slaying a dragon affixed

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Sales & Marketing of Fine Motor Cars the World Over

1924 Bentley 3 litre Freestone & Webb Tourer £310,000.00

1931 Bentley 8 Litre Vandenplas Style Tourer £1,150,000.00

1938 Derby Bentley 4.25 MR Overdrive Series Hooper DHC £280,000.00

1913 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost Colonial Open Drive Landaulette by Barker. £685,000

1910 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost “Rois-Des-Belges” style tourer by Cadogan £750,000.00

1933 Rolls Royce 20/25 Hooper Sports Saloon £78,000.00

1925 Rolls-Royce Phantom 1 Hooper all weather cabriolet £150,000.00

1928 Rolls Royce Phantom 1 Hooper Sedanca £115,000.00

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SPECIAL FEATURE ROYAL ROLLS ROYCES

1954 Phantom IV landaulette, sold by Bonhams in 2018 for £800,000

to get out until the coup was complete.

It took two years to complete the Phantom, which featured design input from the Duke, who wanted to drive it as well as be chauffeured in it. Thus steps were taken to accommodate his tall frame up front, with adjustable bucket seats, armrests and raked steering. It was Princess Elizabeth who specified it should be Valentine Green though. Other features included a blue roof light, three heaters, a powerful Radiomobile 4020 radio, electric windows, division glass, rear window blind and aerial, plus magazine,

stationery and vanity cabinets. There was also a compass, something else no doubt specially picked by Philip, then a first lieutenant in the Royal Navy.

The Phantom was delivered in July 1950 and registered LGO 10. It was used as the couple’s private car up until February 1952 when Elizabeth became Queen. Although there were four existing Daimler State Cars, the Phantom was dispatched to Hooper to be repainted in the official livery of Royal Claret and black with heraldic coat of arms, retrimming of the front compartment in dark blue cloth, and »

Royal crest on 1954 Phantom IV

1954 Phantom IV blue light on top of windscreen, a feature of State Cars for night identification

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Front cabin of 1954 Phantom IV

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Detail of 1954 Phantom IV - showing claret, black and vermillion colour scheme

RR Phantom IV of 1954, showing occasional rear seats, sold by Bonhams in 2018

Interior of 1954 Phantom IV

Rolls-Royce cars of H.M. Queen Elizabeth ii at the Royal Mews

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SPECIAL FEATURE ROYAL ROLLS ROYCES

“Among the novel features of the Phantom Vs were Perspex rear domes to allow occupants to be seen on tours. The bumpers were easily removable, so the cars could fit in Britannia’s garage”

The view from inside the Perspex dome of one of the 1960 or 1961 'Canberra' Phantom Vs.

The Queen in one of the 1960-61 Canberra Cars

removal of the numberplates. In April 1952, the first Rolls-Royce State Car undertook its inaugural duty; taking the Queen to Westminster Abbey to distribute Maundy money to the elderly.

It soon became the favourite majestic carriage of choice, with one of the Daimlers given to the Queen Mother

and the remaining three gradually seeing much less use. Rolls-Royce must have been delighted, Daimler less so. It even built two DK400s, one a limousine, the other in landaulette, in 1955, making it clear that they were for Royal use whenever needed. The offer wasn’t taken up. Rolls-Royce also

did the same, constructing a Hooperbodied Phantom IV landaulette in 1954. Not only was this used for the State Opening of Parliament in 1955 but it also went abroad in 1956 and 1957 on the Royal Yacht Britannia, having been designed to (just) fit the garage facilities on board the ship. In 1959, the landaulette was purchased for State Car use. The Daimlers were not; instead the three surviving fluted bonnet cars were sold off and orders placed for two new Phantom Vs. The decades of Daimler had passed, now it was Rolls-Royce’s turn to shine.

The 1954 State landaulette, known as ‘Jubilee’, featured a manuallyoperated folding rear section, although much else on it was electric. It also had a new Royal crest above the windscreen, for which Lucas provided internal lighting facilitated by two copper strips. Stylistically though, the Phantom IV was very similar in design to the Daimlers that Hooper had provided previous bodies for.

STATES OF THE SIXTIES The Perspex rear dome of one of the 1960 or 1961 'Canberra' Phantom Vs

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For the two new virtually identical V8-engined Phantom Vs, delivered in 1960 and 1961, Rolls-Royce kept J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

1978 RR Phantom VI

the whole construction job in-house, with its own coachbuilder, Park Ward, being responsible for the coachwork.

Again, there was considerable secrecy surrounding the cars; they were both codenamed ‘Canberra’ to give the impression that they were intended for Australia rather than the Royal Mews in central London. Among the novel features were Perspex rear domes to allow occupants to be seen on tours, although they could also be covered when privacy was required. The bumpers were easily removable, so the cars longer than their predecessors - could fit in Britannia’s garage. Air conditioning was installed, which no doubt proved very useful when the cars visited Italy in 1961 and Australia and Fiji in 1963. The combination of hot sunlight and a vast amount of Perspex might otherwise have made things very uncomfortable.

The four Rolls-Royces were the only R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

1978 Phantom VI. In profile, the extra height of the roof is particularly noticeable

State Cars up until 1978, and their lives during this time weren’t without incident. One of the Canberras was damaged in an accident during its 1961 Italian tour, with scraped front wings and a dented boot, while a bottle of beer was thrown at Prince Charles in one during a visit to the north-east of England, which cracked but did not break one of the rear side windows. A more serious incident occurred in 1966 when the Queen was in Belfast and a nine-pound lump of concrete was thrown from a fifth-storey window. It hit and damaged the bonnet, but the car was able to continue. If it had struck the Perspex, it might have been a different matter, and it’s believed that the domes were strengthened soon afterwards.

Rather more comic episodes were connected with the eight-day clocks in the rear compartments. If a chauffeur forgot to wind them when the vehicle

Above: The Queen's second RR Phantom VI - in 1987 - was a more standard car like this one, albeit with a glass roof panel and enlarged rear quarterlights added

was next needed for a duty, it would be checked over and the stopped clock noted - meaning it was 'unserviceable' and wouldn't be sent out. Mechanics would be summoned in great haste to sort it out, only to discover that all that needed to be done was wind a clock.

Meanwhile, one of the reserve State Cars had been dispatched instead...

For her Silver Jubilee in 1977, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) decided to present the Queen with a new car, a Silver Shadow, for personal use. However, the Queen suggested a new State Car instead, rather than one that would be largely out of the public eye. That meant a Phantom - twice the cost of a Shadow.

It’s believed that Crewe absorbed »

33

SPECIAL FEATURE ROYAL ROLLS ROYCES

“The intention was for the Phantom VI to be delivered during the Jubilee year, but this was Britain in the 1970s; industrial action delayed its arrival in the Royal Mews until spring 1978”

Lady Norfolk, the last Rolls-Royce Phantom State Car - a VI - of 1987

Queen in Berlin, 2015 in 2002 Bentley State Car

THE STATE ROLLS-ROYCES AND BENTLEYS Rolls-Royce Phantom IV with H J Mulliner limousine coachwork

1950-date

Rolls-Royce Phantom IV with Hooper landaulette coachwork

1954-1987

Rolls-Royce Phantom V with Park Ward limousine coachwork

1960-2002

Rolls-Royce Phantom V with Park Ward limousine coachwork

1961-2002

Rolls-Royce Phantom VI with Mulliner Park Ward coachwork

1978-date

Rolls-Royce Phantom VI with Mulliner Park Ward coachwork

1987-date

Bentley State Limousine with Mulliner coachwork

2002-date

Bentley State Limousine with Mulliner coachwork

2002-date

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some of the costs for what would become the fifth State Rolls-Royce - a Phantom VI. The codename ‘Oil Barrel’ was picked this time, presumably in the hope that it would convince people into thinking it was destined for a Middle East sheik. Like its predecessors, it had a Perspex rear section, as well as front and rear radio cassette players and a small tape recorder for dictation purposes. The intention was for the car to be delivered during the Jubilee year, but this was Britain in the 1970s; industrial action delayed its arrival in the Royal Mews until spring 1978.

In 1980, while in Italy, an unusual incident occurred. The car was in a high-speed police convoy to pick up the Queen from an airport near Rome to meet the Pope when its dome lifted off and shattered, only just missing one of its Alfa Romeo escorts. It turned out that the chauffeur had opened his window at around 100mph, and the resultant change in air pressure had blown the Perspex panel out of its channels. After that, the order went out not to drive the Perspex-topped Phantoms too fast without their metal covers in place.

It was the 1978 Phantom VI that was infamously attacked by protesters in Regent Street during December 2010 while taking the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall to the Royal Variety performance at the London Palladium. The couple were unharmed, but one of the car’s windows was smashed and white paint thrown over it.

Another Phantom VI joined the fleet during 1987, as it was deemed that the Prince of Wales’ own long-wheelbase Bentley Turbo R wasn’t always appropriate for his increasing number of duties. In addition, the older cars were becoming more difficult and expensive to maintain. Although this new Phantom, codenamed ‘Lady Norfolk’, came with a metal roof rather than Perspex dome, it had enlarged rear quarterlights as well as a glass roof panel, all of which could be covered up for discretion. The arrival of the new State Car allowed its 1954 ancestor to be retired to the motor museum at Sandringham.

In 1998, Rolls-Royce and Bentley split J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

acrimoniously as we’ve covered several times in RR&BD, with Volkswagen taking over Bentley and BMW grabbing the rights to the Rolls-Royce branding from under VW’s nose. However, VW must have got some measure of satisfaction by having Bentley do what Rolls-Royce itself had done to Daimler 50 years previously: usurping it as State Car supplier. For her 2002 Golden Jubilee, the Queen received a Bentley State Limousine as a present from a consortium of British automotive firms. It was complemented by a second example soon afterwards, albeit bought rather than gifted. The 400bhp cars were based on Bentley Arnages, though with modified bodywork by Mulliner to include rear-hinged doors for the passenger compartment.

While Bentley has remained coy about some aspects for security reasons, it is known that both cars are armourplated, with Kevlar-reinforced tyres and a blast-proof and gas-tight cabin.

With the arrival of the two Bentleys, the 1960 and 1961 Phantom IVs were withdrawn from service, one going to Sandringham, the other being housed in the special garage of Britannia on display in Leith, Edinburgh.

It’s now 20 years since the Royal Mews last received any new State Cars; the longest interval between vehicles of Elizabeth II’s reign or, indeed, any 20th century British monarch. While the fastidiously-maintained Bentleys are probably good for many decades yet, and the 1950 Phantom IV is such a favourite that its retirement is almost unthinkable, it’s possible that the 1978 and 1987 Phantom VIs could well be superseded before too long. And if that happens, what might their successors be? Will Rolls-Royce wrestle the Royal warrant back from Bentley or could we see another company step in to, quite literally, steal the crown? ■

Build Plate on 2002 Bentley State Limo

R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

Both Bentley State Limos on the Long Walk, Windsor, in 2008

The Queen withe the Bentley State Limo

Bentley State Limo Interior

35

YOUR SHOUT READERS’ LETTERS

YOUR SHOUT Got something to say about anything Rolls-Royce or Bentley related? Then we want to hear it!

Send an email to rrb.ed@kelsey.co.uk or write to: The Editor, Rolls-Royce & Bentley Driver, Kelsey Publishing Ltd, The Granary, Downs Court, Yalding Hill, Yalding, Kent, ME18 6AL

EXPERIENCE ON LPG? I use my 1997 Bentley Brooklands quite regularly, almost as a daily driver, though I have a smaller modern car for city driving. With the horrifying recent rise in fuel prices I’ve got to the point where driving 100 miles costs at least £50, as I use only Super Unleaded because I believe it suits the car’s engine and because of the lower ethanol content. So I’ve cut back on use of the Bentley, which saddens me. I look after the car but I bought it to use it because I love driving it, but filling the tank now costs more than my annual insurance, and two fill-ups exceed what it costs me in road tax.

Have any readers converted Bentley Brooklands or Turbo Rs to run on LPG? I used to avoid cars with LPG conversions because I thought it was a sign of someone trying to run an expensive car on a budget, but with the recent price hike, the difference between a litre of Super Unleaded and a litre of LPG has risen to almost £1 – and an engineer friend tells me that LPG has a high octane rating and is therefore suitable to use with turbocharged engines. Does anyone still do this conversion work – and what would it cost?

Tom Derbyshire, Birmingham

NO TO INSIPID BENTLEY COLOURS Re: the 2022 Bentley Flying Spur V8 on page 38 of the May/June issue. Why oh why? That insipid colour combined with black does the car no favours!

Why accentuate that awful black line across the bonnet? The sombre interior is very depressing and as for the 'plain Jane' rear end on p 43....

The 'mean look' & Bentley simply do not go together!

Alex Kuhn

We remember seeing at least one Brooklands with a multipoint LPG injection system fitted in period by a Bentley dealer, so it’s possible – though rare.

Can readers offer advice?

36

J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

YES TO GOODWOOD CARS You featured a Phantom Coupé in the latest edition of Rolls-Royce & Bentley Driver Magazine and asked for feedback as to whether we want more of the same.

Absolutely we do.

I have owned and driven many Rolls Royce and Bentley models. My 2006 Phantom VII is without doubt the best car I have ever owned. It is certainly the quietest car and it has the best ride of any Rolls Royce ever made. Surely that is what many owners want from a Rolls Royce. I

have no problems reading about older RR models but after 20 years it is getting somewhat tedious to hear the endless chant of ‘It's not a Rolls Royce, It's a BMW’.

We all know that this is nonsense. The Phantom VII took RR to a new level of refinement. The motoring press declared it was the first time that RR could truly say it was the best car in the world.

More and more Phantom owners are now discovering the joys of ownership. Thank you for making

us feel at home at last. Yes, there's always a place for the ubiquitous Silver Shadow et al but after 20 years, now is the time to recognise the Phantom for the incredible piece of engineering it is. Thank you for bringing it into the fold.

Barry Tyler Thanks Barry. We should publish a full-length article – if any reader has an early Phantom VII they would like to volunteer for a photoshoot, please email rrb.ed@kelsey.co.uk

WHO WILL RESCUE FRENCH SHADOWS? I have subscribed to RR&BD for about 3 years. I live 15 km south of Paris in France, I am 58 years old and I have had an unlimited passion for Rolls-Royce since I was 10 years old, following a stay in London.

I discovered, by chance, these 3 cars abandoned at a kind of car dealer, and unfortunately stored outside, located in Arpajon a few km from my home.

I wanted to share these sad photos with you, which could make one of your passionate readers in France or Great Britain want to save them from this unbearable destiny for a lover of these beautiful cars. Apparently, there are 2 Silver Wraith II (or LWB II), and one Silver Shadow I, it was impossible for me to approach closer.

Rémy Dessaut Thanks Rémy! That is a sad sight, and we think the Shadow I is certainly a Bentley T1, making it a relatively rare car, as are the long-wheelbase Wraiths. If anyone can attempt a rescue, email rrb.ed@kelsey.co.uk and we will put you in touch with Rémy.

R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

37

YOUR SHOUT READERS’ LETTERS

A HEARTY WELCOME A very warm welcome to RollsRoyce & Bentley Driver, its wonderful team and the family of enthusiasts, afficionados and proud owners. I hope your tenure will be every bit as rewarding in all its wondrous forms as your predecessor Paul Guinness found.

I look forward to reading an excellent range of articles as I have done with past issues. A very good start was made with the May/June issue, which I enjoyed reading with the same enthusiasm and interest as in the past. A particular quirk of mine is I like to read the magazine on the month of issue, even then only one article at a time as I like to savour it for as long as possible.

And I would like to thank you for including my letters in the Your Shout section – it’s quite a thrill to see them in print.

So, Mr Boothman, have a wonderful editorial time.

Stephen Williams

READERS CARS REQUIRED!

MEMORIES OF P&A WOOD Further to my ‘Rolls-Royce jottings’ (the elusive Phantom II) which you kindly published in the March/April 2022 issue, I was suitably intrigued by the history of ‘Silver Ghost’, AX 201.

The one-time owner, Daniel Hanbury (any relation to the Hanburys of Hanbury Hall, near Chelmsford?) left the car to his son-in-law, Field Marshall Sir Alec Coryton, whose Cornish family are related to the Bonds of Erth Barton & Holwood, by Saltash; from which I descend – last of the line.

I was also interested to find the periodic involvement of P&A Wood in the continued maintenance of such a hallowed vehicle. I knew Paul & Andrew when they first bought the village garage in Great Bradfield, near Braintree, in the 1970s and I would borrow tools to keep my cars on the road. We had a mutual interest in vintage motorcycles. I seem to recall a rather forbidding 500cc (or

thereabouts) Royal Enfield, predating my 1926 two-stroke model by some ten years. I also bought up their cache of BMC spares, inheriting the previous owners’ collection. Their success in maintaining prestigious models led to a new R-R and Bentley dealership at Dunmow, from where their most notable (and wellchronicled) engineering achievements have originated. I believe they were involved in the recordbreaking Brooklands machines, now preserved for posterity.

You have ‘hooked’ a new reader!

Sadly, I can only afford MGs. Penelope de Earthe Bond (Miss) Thanks for that fascinating letter, Penelope. Alec Coryton was an Air Chief Marshall rather than a Field Marshall, and a near-contemporary of my great uncle Jack, Air Chief Marshall Sir John Boothman, but I didn’t realise Coryton owned AX 201. Glad to have hooked you!

I want to welcome you to your new position and convey a question for you.

RR&BD is my favourite publication, but I have noticed the absence of the section for readers’ vehicles in the last two editions. Have you eliminated this section from the magazine? I certainly hope not as I always enjoyed this section. I wish you the best of good fortune in your new position and look forward to future issues of this amazing magazine. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Jeff Kelley Mustang, Oklahoma Hi Jeff, thanks very much for the welcome I’m happy to say we are certainly keeping the Personal Choice section for readers’ cars, but the supply of content for these pages isn’t always consistent – sometimes plenty, sometimes none. This issue we have a remarkable tale of misfortune and redemption from a reader in Australia (p.82) and we already have some more great cars in the files to bring you in future issues. But as an appeal to other readers – please get in touch! The more cars, the merrier, so email rrb.ed@kelsey.co.uk

38

THE BEST CUPCAKES IN THE WORLD? Just a line to the new Editor to say I hope you will have a happy time with RR&BD. I have been a subscriber from day one and just love this magazine and also enjoyed corresponding with Paul Guinness, so I wish you all the best.

I wondered if you would be

interested in this photo of the Rolls-Royce cakes – they were hand-made for me by my sisterin-law's daughter Samantha for my 75th birthday and I received them today. It's a shame to eat them!

Chris Wardlow J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

SUBSCRIBE TODA SAVE 6 ISSUES 3 FOR £23.99 3% VIA DIRECT DEBIT

VISIT SHOP.KELSEY.CO.UK/JWO2022

OR CALL OUR SUBSCRIPTIONS TEAM ON 01959 543 747 HOTLINE OPEN: MON – FRI 8.30AM – 5.30PM Prices correct at the time of going to press.

Other offers and overseas rates apply. Please visit shop.kelsey.co.u /JWO2022 for more information.

FEATURE CAR BENTLEY ARNAGE

BETTER

BY BMW? WORDS: NIGEL BOOTHMAN

40

P H OTO G R A P H Y: G R E G O RY OWA I N

J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

Alan Beecham bought this 1999 Arnage on condition, not specification, and he’s delighted with it – including the 4.4-litre BMW V8 engine

A

lan Beecham had never owned a Bentley before this car, but the more he talks to us about his motoring history, the plainer it is that he was destined to end up with one. First, he’s had a few fast cars with big V8s, and though they’ve been from Detroit rather than Crewe, that tends to leave you wanting more.

Second, he’s clearly got a thing for mintcondition machinery, as he explains.

‘I had a Corvette Stingray from the mid-1970s,’ he says, ‘and it was a really good one. I won 15 trophies with that car. More recently, I had a Chevrolet Camaro Z28 Indianapolis Pace Car edition, a 1995 model that was another low-miles car in immaculate condition. I like them to be right, and I don’t mind putting in a bit of work to keep them that way.’

The origin of Alan’s thorough approach to automotive hygiene came from his 30 years in the Fire Brigade, first as a fireman and fire appliance driver, then as a fire inspector.

‘When I started, we had these Dennis appliances with Rolls-Royce engines and beaten aluminium sides,’ he says. ‘Our boss used to make us polish the sides with toothbrushes and a tub of aluminium polish and it took hours. But it’s the method I still use!’

Alan was present at all the major fire incidents around Manchester through

R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

those years, including the Manchester air disaster and the Woolworth’s fire. So retirement at 53 back in 2005 seemed very attractive, and he decided he wouldn’t work again. The Beechams first bought a 65-foot Dutch barge and lived on that, then moved to France and bought a smallholding, settling for ten years. But a return to their home country eventually beckoned, and in 2017 they migrated back across the Channel.

The Z28 Pace Car was bought while they were in France, so when the Beechams returned to live in the UK, Alan wasn’t really looking for anything else. It was only when a friend told him of a Bentley coming up for sale that his interest was aroused.

‘It had an attractive story,’ says Alan.

‘An older gentleman in Whitby had sold his house and moved into sheltered accommodation back in 1998 or ’99, and with the money from the house, he’d bought himself a new Bentley Arnage.

He lived on for 19 more years, having the car serviced every year and keeping a diary of its use – “Went to Scarborough for a picnic”, that sort of thing. It had only covered 46,000 miles and it was in amazing condition, so I bought it.’

Sure enough, the back seats appear never to have been sat on, the tool kit, first aid kit and umbrella are still in their wrappers and the only items that needed replacing were those four big »

41

FEATURE CAR BENTLEY ARNAGE

Arnage's shape was another typical R-R / Bentley success: it's aged very slowly

tyres – which turned out to be the set fitted from new. Alan had to go through the car and do a light recommissioning job, as it had seen very little use for the previous three years, but this was limited to freeing off the brakes, cleaning up the discs and so forth.

‘Someone had taken the centre console out once,’ he says, ‘and they never put all the nuts and bolts back, which really annoyed me. But that was all I found that wasn’t as it should be.’

It seems Alan wasn’t alone in his high opinion of the car. The first time he took it to a show, at Capesthorne Hall in Cheshire, it won not only Best in Class but Best in Show.

‘I never really knew anything about

42

Rolls-Royce or Bentley,’ he says, ‘so I joined the RREC. At an event soon after that, a group of club members came to see the car and crowded round, as the car was new to them and they were interested. One chap asked how many miles it had done, and when I told him, he asked me whether I had £1500 or £2000 ready.

Why? “Oh, the head gaskets go at 50,000 miles on these engines.” But then another chap said “No, this is an early one with the BMW engine – and they’re good for 250,000 miles!” It was the first I knew of the difference.’

Yes, Alan bought the car with none of the prejudice or preference you might have for one engine over the other,

and jolly sensible that seems too. The history the Arnage’s development and subsequent changes will be familiar to owners of these cars, but perhaps less so to others, and it’s rather surprising.

The Arnage began its development cycle long ago, as an idea with its roots in the late 1980s. Rolls-Royce was enjoying an uplift in sales generated largely by the resurgence of Bentley (see our Anatomy of the Mulsanne Turbo and Turbo R, p54) and was keenly aware of the need to put some groundwork into the replacement for the SZ-generation cars, the Bentley Turbo R and Brooklands, and the RollsRoyce Silver Spirit. A proposal for the new car’s shape was completed by »

J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

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FEATURE CAR BENTLEY ARNAGE

Number plate reads 'Entley', after a young grandson's attempt at the car's name

Steve Harper, under Chief Designer Graham Hull, but the important decisions didn’t happen until 1994.

At this point the firm was undoubtedly profitable but money wasn’t unlimited, and Rolls-Royce found itself with some ‘heritage’ engineering problems – a single engine design dating back to 1959 and some antiquated

production facilities. They could fix one of these but not both, and so took the unprecedented step of deciding to bring in engines from outside manufacturers while they spent what was required to build new assembly facilities and develop the rest of the car.

There was innovation here, too, with external consultancy used throughout

the process. A British company called Mayflower looked after the body engineering while Lotus looked at the suspension and other firms chipped in elsewhere. The big news, though, was that BMW would be supplying the engines. And when the cars were announced in the second half quarter of 1998, it was clear for the first time that

32 VALVES AND TWO TURBOS – BMW’S CLEVER V8 The BMW M62 engine is an allaluminium 90-degree V8 engine with four valves per cylinder, actuated by twin overhead camshafts on each bank. It arrived in 1995 as a direct successor to the similar M60 engine that Rolls-Royce and Bentley engineers would have been able to try in the 1992-onwards 5-series and 7-series models when they were deciding on a powerplant. While it showed promise, Rolls-Royce embarked on some extensive further development with help from another company owned by the same parent, Vickers PLC, and that was Cosworth.

They embarked on the fitment of two

44

small turbochargers, knowing that than one large one, and so should Their housings were cast into the still further and the results were impressive: 350bhp and a useful 413lb ft of torque down at 2500rpm. This small 4.4-litre V8 was doing an excellent impression of a much larger one, yet it could rev much higher, touching getting breathless past 4000rpm.

That decision is up to the buyer.

J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

there would be two different engines: a refined 5.4-litre V12 for the RollsRoyce Seraph and a punchy 4.4-litre turbocharged V8 for the Bentley Arnage.

Despite giving away more than two litres to the old 6.75-litre V8 in the Turbo R, this new engine hurled the slightly lighter Arnage to 150mph and hit 60mph from rest in 6.2 seconds, while achieving a near-perfect front/ rear weight balance and sailing through every emissions standard thanks to its modern fuelling and ignition control. The new car was well-received, bar a bit of sniffiness about the Germanic origin of the engine. Most drivers were impressed with the Arnage’s abilities in the bends, thanks in part to Mayflower’s work that produced a bodyshell 65% stiffer than the old Turbo R. Bentley had another hit on its hands, but almost immediately the rug was pulled out from under them.

We’ve covered the sale of RollsRoyce by Vickers many times over, so we’ll make do with a single-sentence re-cap: in mid-1998, BMW were outbid

by VW for Rolls-Royce Motors itself yet managed to nip in and acquire the R-R branding and logo, resulting in negotiations that meant the end of BMW’s engine supply to VW-owned Bentley, with future Rolls-Royces » R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

Interior just as spotless as exterior, but dated by details like the flip-up carphone

45

FEATURE CAR BENTLEY ARNAGE

No BMW badges here, but then this 4.4-litre engine had UK development work from Cosworth

to made by BMW after 2002.

VW needed a quick fix, and as Crewe’s engineers had apparently already done some work on fitting the old 6.75-litre V8 into the Arnage as a contingency plan, the solution was obvious. So while production of BMW-engined Arnages carried on into 2000, only 1272 of them (including a special runout Birkin edition) were built, compared with almost 6000 of the re-engined cars launched as the Arnage Red Label and developed into the Arnage R, Arnage T and other later variants. VW’s engineers had done such a good job re-engineering the old L-series motor that it outlasted the Arnage and was carried over into the Mulsanne saloon that was made all the way up to 2020.

Be that as it may, the big engine and its wave of almost ridiculous torque has left the BMW V8 somewhat in the shade, which seems silly when you compare them on paper. After all, the Arnage was engineered around the smaller engine and is a lighter, sweeterhandling car with BMW power. And while the Red Label was faster, you’d need a stopwatch to prove it – the difference in top speed was limited to 5mph and the 0-60mph times were only 0.3 of a second apart. Then there are

46

those head gasket issues… but how does Alan feel about the way his car drives?

‘It goes like a dream. It’s certainly powerful and there’s a Sport button; press that and it goes like the clappers.

That’s not how I drive it, mind you – I use it as a Sunday best car for visiting friends, and the odd longer trip, plus of course I take it to shows. We’ve done about 6000 miles in the last five years.’

How has it been to look after – expensive to run?

‘No, not really. The service intervals are 10,000 miles and I haven’t hit that yet, but I keep a regular eye on the fluids and I keep it very clean. Not just on the outside but I get the wheels off, the engine covers off, and I clean everything.

If I spot anything that needs attention, it gets a wipe with WD40 before it can get any worse. It sails through every MoT.’ So it’s been a perfect purchase for Alan. While it’s faster than a Dutch barge and easier to fit through gaps than a fire engine, it’s also picking up prizes at shows. And the family like it too – see that number plate?

‘That comes from a two year-old grandson who couldn’t quite say “Bentley”, so we have a plate that reads “Entley”, more or less. I think he loves it as much as I do.’ ■

S PECI FI C AT I O N

1999 BENTLEY ARNAGE LENGTH: 5389mm Width: 1930mm WEIGHT: 2304kg ENGINE: 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8 POWER: 350bhp@5500rpm TORQUE: 413lb ft@2500rpm 0-60MPH: 6.2 seconds TOP SPEED: 140mph COST NEW: £145,000

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FEATURE CAR 1938 ROLLS-ROYCE WRAITH

THE WRAITH THAT CROSSED CONTINENTS When your profession trains you to the most thorough approach, a matter of mere distance won’t stop the search for the right car WORDS: RICHARD HOLDSWORTH P H OTO G R A P H Y: R I C H A R D H O L D S WO R T H , HOWARD WR AIGHT

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H

oward Wraight is a medical professional specialising in early-phase clinical research in Melbourne, and a leader in that world. He is also the President of the Victorian branch of the Rolls-Royce Owners’ Club of Australia and is not someone to let 10,000 miles and a few continents get in his way in the search for a pristine pre-war example of the marque.

Howard already owned a splendid 1990 Silver Spirit ll, but he was greatly drawn to pre-war Rolls-Royces and this desire was heightened at the Club’s Federal Rally in 2017. It was held in Canberra, the country’s political centre, and attended by cars and owners from across the country. I’ll let Howard explain.

‘It was my first National Rally and on this crisp winter’s morning as the cars gathered for the customary Rally Dawn Patrol, the sight of prewar Rolls-Royce cars in the early light stole my imagination. To say the cars were charming and very elegant was an understatement.’

Howard had entered the Silver Spirit ll in the concours and to his surprise and delight it had won its class. But that didn’t take away his immediate

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love affair with pre-war cars and by the time he arrived back home he determined to seek out one of his own.

‘It is a long drive from Canberra to Melbourne,’ he says, ‘and that time only served to fuel my ambition. It was too late for turning, I was captivated and my search for a pre-war car had begun.’

First stop in the search were the classic car websites, while Howard also scoured classic car dealers’ showrooms, perused Rolls-Royce owners’ clubs’ classifieds and corresponded with various vendors from all over the world.

‘All of this enabled me to gain a valuable insight and knowledge into the unique pre-war Rolls-Royce cars, the mechanical specification, their attributes and the very spirit of a Rolls-Royce built in those halcyon days,’ he says.

A year passed and yet another Federal Rally and the marvellous display of pre-war cars only served to fuel Howard’s desire to find a good example somewhere in Australia – or beyond the country’s shores, if it came to it. On one notable occasion, Howard took a flight across Australia to Perth in the west to inspect a ‘…rather lovely 25/30 Sedanca de Ville…’ But the nine hours in the air and more than 3500 miles covered proved to be unfruitful.

Howard is explaining how membership of the Rolls-Royce Club helped, as did the advice and knowledge that Club members passed on to him.

‘Their good sense and wise counsel helped me to narrow my search.

Taking into consideration the driving experience, driving position, size and handling, a small horsepower car, so »

Full marks for the choice of reading material!

H.J. Mulliner's razor-edge styling works beautifully with the Wraith's proportions

R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

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FEATURE CAR 1938 ROLLS-ROYCE WRAITH a 20/25, 25/30 or Wraith – preferably without division – would be an excellent choice. In the words of the inimitable Commander Hugh Keller, famed salesman of London dealers, Paddon Brothers: “If you like old cars, what better all-purpose car is there than a small Rolls-Royce with a light saloon body. Steering, brakes, suspension and gearbox are second to none and a sweeter running engine does not exist.”’

For my story on Howard, his search and his car, I have to admit to not having the greatest knowledge of Rolls or Bentley cars of this era and so it was rewarding to take on board what I was being told.

‘A pre-war Wraith is particularly attractive as it has the same mechanical advances found on its larger sibling, the Phantom III, with independent front suspension and synchromesh on 2nd, 3rd and top gears,’ Howard

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smiles, ‘So there it is - a Wraith was my quest! As I have said, I was not limiting my search to within the shores of Australia and on opening the Hemmings website in the States one bright June morning in 2018, a RollsRoyce Wraith with bodywork by H J Mulliner caught my eye. It was a 1938 saloon without division, chassis number WXA50, and from the photographs it looked perfect for my needs. It was a very handsome car, with smart razor edge styling and lovely proportions.’

Howard looks satisfied, as well he might.

‘The car was in deep claret over black and looked not dissimilar to the Queen’s Phantom lV. It had a regal presence.’

Buying from some 10,000 miles away and without sight of the car can be a challenge, as Howard modestly puts it. But he was reassured by the description of the car, photographs

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and a plethora of information that backed up the owner’s claim that the Wraith had been lovingly cared for over his two decades of ownership.

Claude Dubois and his wife, Pauline, the owners, had been active members of the Rolls-Royce Owners’ Club of America, the car had travelled extensively and was well known.

‘Obviously a car of this vintage needs work doing to it,’ says Howard, ‘but the history of mechanical and coachwork restoration carried out during Claude’s ownership was reassuring. I researched the many articles in the Flying Lady featuring WXA50. This revealed another body-off, chassis-up, total restoration in the mid 1970’s as well as numerous photos of this very handsome car touring around Canada and the United States.’ Howard is smiling again. ‘If it seemed I was still to be convinced, Claude offered as an inducement their set of 1938-style period clothes.’

Would that tip the balance?

‘The obvious question was, why part with such a fine example of a pre-war Rolls, but the owner’s explanation seemed reasonable enough. They had enjoyed the car for more than two

decades, anno domini was catching up and they no longer toured in the car as extensively as they had done before. It seems Claude Dubois wanted to hand the car over to another good owner rather than let it fade away in his garage.

‘Then, by chance I stumbled on a video of WXA50 posted on YouTube and taken by a member of the public at the 2012 Concours d’Elegance. The unknown enthusiast attending the concours had filmed the car extensively while it was on display and revealed WXA50 to be in marvellous condition.

This convinced me that I had found the right car. The sale was agreed, brake linings were replaced with nonasbestos material (Australia has strict regulations governing asbestos), an import permit issued and soon the car was securely in a container from Canada, crossing the Atlantic for transit through Hamburg and on down to Australia.’

I do like a story with a happy ending, and this is one of the very best. Now that we’ve heard Howard’s story, it’s time to photograph this refined car in some glorious Melbourne sunshine. Couldn’t be better! Let’s see if we can do the car justice… ■

Car's condition is stunning throughout, from neatly-filled tool tray to immaculate engine bay

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WHY SO POPULAR? THE ROLLS-ROYCE AND BENTLEY SCENE IN AUSTRALIA Interestingly, Australia was the third largest market for RollsRoyce and Bentley cars before the Second World War – this being one of the reasons the Club counts such a wonderful array of vintage cars within its membership. Sales remained strong in subsequent decades, too.

The Rolls-Royce Owners Club of Australia (RROCA) came into existence in 1956 and has evolved into an Australia-wide organisation which, today, has almost 1000 members representing some 850 Rolls-Royce cars and 390 Bentleys.

The Club now has branches in all Australian states or territories with Victoria and New South Wales being the largest memberships.

Rolls-Royce cars in the Club represent some of the earliest to be built – including a 1909 Silver Ghost – right up to the very latest models from the Goodwood factory.

Howard Wraight was elected President of the Victoria Branch in September 2021. Howard has continued the good work of his predecessor, Greg Wayman, negotiating various Covid-19 lockdowns – that includes the period in 2021 when Melbourne became the city with more days in lockdown than any other in the world! During this time, the Club held regular virtual events via Zoom and physical events when possible. And the State branch took the opportunity of a break in lockdowns in May 2021 to organise an extremely successful National Rally in Victoria’s second largest city, Geelong.

In 2022, the Club has returned to regular monthly face-toface meetings, taking in social gatherings, technical sessions, plus weekend and midweek runs, driving events and interstate rallies as well as the annual Concours. There is considerable overlap with the Australia-wide Bentley Drivers’ Club and many Rolls-Royce and Bentley owners attend events by both clubs.

See www.rrocavictoria.org.au.

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INTERVIEW OLIVER SMITH, MWS

M E E T

T H E

E X P E R T S

MOTOR WHEEL SERVICE

As the third generation of the family to run Motor Wheel Service, Oliver Smith has a unique perspective on this long-lived cornerstone of the vintage and classic car scene P H OTO G R A P H Y: JA M E S G I B S O N / M W S

Tell us how Motor Wheel Service began, Oliver. It’s a very long history, isn’t it?

‘Yes, the business was founded by my grandad, George Smith, in 1927.

Back then, we were just one of many wire wheel builders and repairers, as virtually every car on the road used them. But as time passed, MWS grew larger and eventually became the UK and world-wide distributor for Dunlop

wheels. When the business began, there were lots of wheel manufacturers, but Dunlop became pretty dominant and was manufacturing most of the wire wheels for British cars. Dunlop had worked with Wheels India since the '60s, and by the early 1980s all the Dunlop wire wheel production had moved to India, and they still supply our stock wheels to this day.’

So what’s the mix of business – have you had to diversify?

‘We’re still about 90% wire wheels, but that includes sales of new wheels as well as repair and restoration work. We sell Blockley tyres, too.

We’ve diversified to meet some clients’ needs, for example Morgan.

We supply the wire wheels for new Morgans and they specified stainless steel, so as well as painted or chromed wire wheels, we do stainless steel in various sizes. We produce all finishes to meet demands.’

What about Rolls-Royce or Bentley wheels? Do they present any challenges?

‘They can do, yes! Pre-war Rolls-Royce wheels are very interesting because there were so many different centres, but it does mean that you often can’t find a spare or a new wheel centre and having them specially made can cost a fortune. Luckily, they’re usually great big pieces of metal and they last well.

Vintage Bentley wheels are a bit more straightforward and use more familiar parts. But the good news is we can supply or repair just about anything; the availability of even very old rims and tyres is better than it was 10 or 15 years ago so when we find early cars that should be on beaded-edge tyres but are running the old centres with later rims, we can rebuild the wheels to the original specification with rolledged rims, if the owner wants to.’

Spinning -edge an old beaded it's k wheel to chec Red e. u tr g in n run und ro press in backg lop n u D came from factory

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How would an owner of a pre-war Rolls-Royce or Bentley know when their wheels needed attention? We’re used to worn out tyres, but how do you assess a worn-out wheel?

‘It can be a bit tricky, but there are things to look out for. If you feel any wheel-wobble or vibration when driving, that’s obviously worth J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

Worshop manager Dan Cooksley checks a freshly-built wheel after adjusting spoke tension

Process starts by inserting sample spokes to check length and angle required

checking, but vintage and post-vintage cars sometimes vibrate and wobble around anyway. A better indication comes from getting the wheel off and onto a wheel balancer to check for runout, but you can learn a lot at home by jacking the car up and spinning the wheel. Does it run true? Is there any movement between the spokes and the hub or rim, and can you see any signs of broken spokes? Uneven tyre wear is another sign to look for. Of course, any significant rust is a bad sign.’

How much can be fixed? What tends to scrap a wire wheel?

‘Because they’re made up of the centre, the spokes and the rim, they’re often quite repairable even if one or two elements are in poor condition. But a R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

rim that’s properly corroded or bent out of shape isn’t worth trying to fix. It’s always hard to tell how much corrosion we’ll find under the paint, as wheels have often had layer after layer of paint slapped on over decades. You may find only light pitting, in which case we can re-use it, or it could be worse. Cracks around the spoke-holes are a bad sign. If you’re unlucky, a couple of broken spokes get replaced, but as they’re tightened, others break, then you replace them and so it goes on. Re-truing a tired old wheel can be tricky! In fact, we’re in the middle of building a new tyre bay specifically for the older cars, and we pride ourselves on being able to deal with every vintage and veteran car that comes our way - even Rolls-Royce and Bentley.’ ■

53

MARQUE HISTORY MULSANNE TURBO & TURBO R

AN ANATOMY OF THE…

THE BENTLEY MULSANNE TURBO AND TURBO R FAMILY When the SZ range of models was born in 1980, it looked like the Bentley variants would linger on as badge-engineered versions of the better-selling Rolls-Royces. But dramatic changes were afoot.

WORDS: RICHARD GUNN

F

P H OTO G R A P H Y: K E L S E Y A RC H I V E /R I C H A R D G U N N

or Bentley enthusiasts, the SZ series of cars was where it all started to get good again.

And then, it went beyond just merely good, and became simply superb. When Rolls-Royce took over Bentley in 1931, they were two very different marques. Rolls-Royce specialised in luxury leviathans for the very rich while Bentley was the builder of the ‘the fastest lorries the world’ as Ettore Bugatti put it. Blunt and brutal as Bentleys may have been - for they did lack the finesse of the cars from the company that swallowed W.O.’s old firm up - they had won Le Mans in 1924, 1927, 1928, 1929 and 1930. That gave them the sort of rakish, sporting appeal that Rolls-Royce could never muster.

However, when the first Rolls-Royceengineered Bentley appeared in 1933 the so-called ‘silent sports car’ 3 ½ litre - it was a derivative of the Rolls-Royce 20/25. And that’s the way the vehicles wearing the Flying B mascot largely continued, with their chassis and engines shared with the machines crowned by the Spirit of Ecstasy.

With the advent of the Standard Steel saloons, the distinction between the two marques was watered down even further. There were high points - such as the coachbuilt R-Type and S-Series

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Continentals - but with the advent of the monocoque Silver Spirit/T-Series models of 1965, Bentley became completely subsumed by Rolls-Royce.

Aside from a few minor details, there was no difference between a Silver Shadow and a T-Series. It was even more extreme with the coachbuilt two-seater saloons and drophead coupés, for they weren’t even differentiated by separate names; the Corniche name was used whether a Rolls-Royce or Bentley. It was a badge-engineering fait accompli.

Predictably enough, with little to make Bentleys stand out, their sales plummeted. By the dawn of the 1980s, they made up just five per cent of Rolls-Royce Motors Ltd’s production. But a revival was just around the corner. In 1980, the business was purchased by engineering conglomerate Vickers PLC.

It started looking closely at its new acquisition to try and maximise potential - and soon realised that Bentley was an under-utilised gem.

Making its cars less like Rolls-Royce clones and instilling them with their own character and personality could well bring big dividends. The decision to bring back Bentley’s distinctiveness wasn’t a moment too soon: in 1981, 3014 of the newly-launched RollsRoyce Silver Spirit were produced. By contrast, there were just 151 examples of the equivalent Bentley Mulsanne.

The route Vickers chose to revitalise Bentley was to re-awaken its performance heritage. And the most cost-effective way to do that was to

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introduce turbocharging. So, in March 1982, the company previewed probably the most exciting new Bentley since the 1950s at its traditional publicitygenerating launch venue of the Geneva Motor Show. The Mulsanne Turbo came as a complete surprise; Rolls-Royce had given no hints that such a machine was planned.

Compared to the £55,240 normallyaspirated Mulsanne with 198.5bhp, the £61,774 Mulsanne Turbo generated 298bhp - although Rolls-Royce traditionally didn’t like to reveal power outputs, new German rules had finally forced it to do so. This was a hefty and very usable power hike and meant a top speed of 135mph, as opposed to 119mph, was achievable, while 60mph from zero was reached a full three seconds faster, in just seven seconds. The 0-100mph time was even more of a remarkable contrast; the Mulsanne’s sprint to the ton took 30.8 seconds, the Turbo 17.9 seconds.

Rolls -Royce Silver Spirit Non-turbo Mulsanne hardly differs at all

LESS POLISHED ON CORNERS Aside from the bulky Garrett AiResearch TO4 turbocharger bolted onto the traditional 6750cc V8 (see Back to Blower Bentleys overleaf), which necessitated the repositioning of the power-steering pump and its belt, there were no other mechanical tweaks save for altering the settings on the GM THM400 automatic transmission, raising the final drive

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ratio and fitting thicker final-drive output shafts. The suspension was left untouched - which meant that, as fast as the car was in a straight line, it was somewhat less polished on corners.

The Mulsanne Turbo’s appearance was also very subtle. The 1980s was a time when turbocharged vehicles liked to scream their status with lairy graphics and colour schemes, but that

wasn’t at all the sort of thing Bentley deemed appropriate. So, instead, the radiator shell was painted to match the body rather than chromed, and there was a small ‘Turbo’ badge on the lefthand side of the bootlid, matching the style and positioning of its ‘Mulsanne’ »

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MARQUE HISTORY MULSANNE TURBO & TURBO R

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“It was all very discreet, almost as if the company was just dipping a toe in the water to see if the turbocharged Bentley had any market potential” counterpart at the other end. It was all very discreet, almost as if the company was just dipping a toe in the water to see if the turbocharged Bentley had any market potential.

It did. Crewe’s initial estimates were that it could sell 100 Mulsanne Turbos every year. Yet after the initial 35 of

1982, 202 were built during 1983 and 209 the year after that. And this was without any sales in the USA, as the turbocharged engine couldn’t yet meet Federal emissions regulations.

One UK buyer, albeit fictional, was James Bond. In the 1984 John Gardner novel Role of Honour, he

Mulsanne Turbo's subtle difference: body-coloured grille surround

returned to his Fleming-authored Bentley roots when he replaced his earlier Saab 900 Turbo with a British Racing Green Mulsanne Turbo.

Unlike most 007 cars, it was light on gadgetry, Rolls-Royce requesting that the only extra gimmick it carried should be a telephone. »

All were still hand-finished products in the 1980s & '90s

BACK TO BLOWER BENTLEYS It was in 1973 that thoughts within Rolls-Royce first turned to turbocharging, spurred on by emerging trends within the automotive world. Of course, Bentley already had serious history with supercharging, from its 1920s’ 4½-litre ‘Blowers’, but turbocharging

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was another matter. Although American marques had dabbled with turbocharging in the 1960s, had Crewe gone down the route in the mid-1970s, it would have been ahead of the European game. BMW’s 2002 Turbo didn’t arrive until late ’73, Porsche didn’t fit its 911 with a turbocharger until 1975 and Saab only joined the Germans in 1978.

However, although Rolls-Royce’s managing director David Plastow was keen on the idea, there was considerable resistance elsewhere within the company, despite it already having some turbocharging experience courtesy of its industrial diesel engines. Nevertheless, a rather worn-out Silver Shadow was sent off to tuning firm Broadspeed in Birmingham. Half a year and £7000 later, the car returned. What RollsRoyce got back was a turbocharged car that was very unrefined in some

respects - tickover was reported as being a particularly problematic - but also very fast. Development continued over the next few years, but eventually the turbocharged Shadow was scrapped, at some point post-1977. However, when the Mulsanne Turbo appeared in 1982, it employed much the same system as Broadspeed had originally come up with, using a sole Garrett AiResearch TO4 turbocharger driven by the right-hand side exhaust manifold providing considerable extra urge, even with boost limited to just 7psi.

As fuel injection was still a few years away, the carburettor choice was between twin SUs or a single Solex 4A1 (as employed on the Corniche and Camargue). Rolls-Royce and Broadspeed opted for the Solex because it could be packaged more easily in a sealed chamber to receive the pressurised feed from the turbo.

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MARQUE HISTORY MULSANNE TURBO & TURBO R

“...James Bond who, in the 1984 John Gardner novel Role of Honour, returned to his Fleming Bentley roots when he replaced his earlier Saab 900 Turbo with a British Racing Green Mulsanne Turbo” However, Gardner also sneaked in a hidden weapons compartment too. The Bentley continued to be Bond’s personal car in the following book Nobody Lives Forever.

In addition to the standard saloon, there was also the little-known long wheelbase Mulsanne Turbo L, with an extra four inches of legroom.

However, just 18 of these were built by the time the Mulsanne Turbo was superseded in March 1985. By contrast, there had been 498 of the standard wheelbase saloons.

The replacement for the Mulsanne Turbo was the Turbo R. The ‘R’ stood for ‘Roadholding’ and was an attempt to address the deficiencies of the turbocharged Bentleys through the twisty stuff (see Keeping to the Road, right). The Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit

Quad headlamps distinguished the Turbo R from mid-'88, with non-Turbo Bentleys following suit

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KEEPING TO THE ROAD How do you make something as big and, well, soft, as a Silver Spirit/ Mulsanne capable of tackling corners as well as straights? That was the question facing RollsRoyce engineers in the mid-1980s when they sought to address the handling quirks of the Mulsanne Turbo. Fitting a turbocharger to the big, bulky Bentley had established there was a desire for a performance model again; now was the time to give it more substance. Fortunately, by the mid-1980s, there was a new development team in place, with Mike Dunn having taken over from John Hollings as engineering

on which the Bentleys were based were intended to waft around with very soft, compliant suspension. The Turbo R, with its substantially modified and harder suspension, improved matters considerably, even if the sheer weight and size of the Bentley limited how much it could be transformed into a true sports machine.

The Turbo R’s price was £68,831 at its March 1985 debut. Aside from the alloy wheels, there wasn’t too much to distinguish it from its predecessor, with the grille painted to match the body colour being the only other thing that really marked the model out from the Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit.

Nevertheless, it continued to fuel the Bentley renaissance; with sales rising to around 300 during 1986, Flying B cars now represented 40 per cent of total Rolls-Royce production, an impressive improvement from five per cent just half a decade earlier. And this was still without the model being exported across the Atlantic to America.

In 1986, steps were taken to make that happen. The Turbo R received more emissions-friendly fuel injection in the form of the well-proven Bosch KE-Jetronic system, with digital ignition. This raised power to 330bhp and gave a top velocity of 143mph.

This was proved - give or take a couple of mph - at the Millbrook proving ground in September of that year when 140.96mph was achieved by a Turbo R, setting 16 new speed records in the process. One of them was the

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director in 1983. He was much less wed to the established Rolls-Royce philosophy of making everything as comfortable as possible, no matter how slushy and soporific it made the general feel. At first, his engineers suggested changes that firmed up the car by 10 per cent, but Dunn pressed for 50 per cent. He got his wish, with the suspension tweaks to the new Bentley Turbo R of 1985 including stiffening the front anti-roll bar by 100 per cent and making the rear one 60 per cent stiffer. There were also stiffer dampers and the rack-and-pinion got a lower-ratio pinion gear to promote more positive

national one-hour speed record, with the Bentley stealing the crown from the Lamborghini Countach. It was a very high profile and patriotic demonstration of just how potent the Turbo R truly was. Anti-lock brakes, slimmer sports seats and higher rear axle ratio were also fresh for ‘86 but, naturally, received rather less attention than the engine upgrades.

THREE-YEAR WAIT

Despite the adoption of fuel injection, the Turbo R didn’t reach America until 1989, by which point Bentleys had moved even further away from their

steering with slightly less power assistance. Alloy wheels were also adopted - something new for RollsRoyce - while a leaf was taken from Aston Martin’s book with the fitment of Pirelli P7 265/55 VR 15-inch tyres.

And if they were good enough to keep Aston Martin V8s from spinning off into the scenery… The result was a model that gave a harder ride than any other post-war Bentley, and while not everybody at RollsRoyce was impressed by the loss of the usual cushioning, customers certainly appreciated a car they could hustle through bends far more effectively - and safely - than before.

Rolls-Royce counterparts with the introduction of a new four-headlamp nose and more prominent front spoiler. When the R hit the USA, sales took off. 319 went across the pond that year, as part of 1046 examples constructed in total. The waiting list between ordering one and receiving it now stretched to three years.

For the 1990 model year, electronic adaptive suspension was installed; the harder a car was driven, the firmer its damping automatically became. It was a boon for those who liked to drive their Bentleys on the limit but also appreciated comfort when cruising.

An air-to-air intercooler also made »

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MARQUE HISTORY MULSANNE TURBO & TURBO R

an appearance. The following year which was when Bentleys achieved sales parity with Rolls-Royces - the Turbo R received the four-speed GM 4L80-E automatic transmission.

By the mid-1990s, Bentley had discovered the joy of special editions, as a means of upping the appeal of the Turbo cars in the wake of the newer Continentals of 1991 onwards. In autumn 1994, the Turbo S was announced. This featured a tuned Continental engine of 408bhp, plus 17-inch wheels. It cost £147,500 and only 60 were constructed but, with a top speed of 155mph, it was the fastest Bentley ever.

The ‘mainstream’ Turbos went up to 385bhp for 1996, thanks to a thorough reworking by engine specialist Cosworth (one of Vickers’ other businesses) which applied its Formula 1 expertise and also dropped in a Zytec EMS 3 engine management system as part of its improvements. 17-inch wheels also became part of the standard spec.

These cars became known as ‘New’ Turbo Rs because of the scope of their modifications, which also included other cosmetic changes.

Bentley wasn’t finished for the year though. In addition to the Brooklands (Bentley’s normallyaspirated entry level ticket from

late 1992 onwards) gaining a light pressure turbocharger during the same year, there was another limited edition, the Turbo R Sports, with the improved brakes and alloy wheels of the Continental T as well as a sat-nav system and carbon-fibre rather than walnut panelling inside.

Traction control was all-new for 1997, but by now the square-rigged SZ style was approaching its sell-by date. That the writing was on the wall for the Turbos was highlighted by the shorter wheelbase R being discontinued, leaving only the

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four-inch longer wheelbase RL in production - albeit renamed as the Turbo R. There was a late blaze of glory though, with the Turbo RT launched in July of that year. This was a £148,990 RL powered by the 400bhp Continental T V8 and sporting a mesh grille, colour-coded bumpers and five-spoke alloys.

Manufacture was limited to 252 plus 56 editions more luxuriously-trimmed

by Mulliner, the old coachbuilder’s name now used for the company’s personal commissioning department.

Thanks to an uprated turbocharger »

PRODUCTION FIGURES

In late-model Turbo Rs, the engine began to disappear under plastic covers. Easier to clean!

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Continental R (1991-2002) 1292 Bentley Mulsanne Turbo (1982-1985) 498 Bentley Mulsanne Turbo L (1982-1985) 18 Bentley ‘Original’ Turbo R (1985-1995) 4653 Bentley ‘Original’ Turbo RL (1985-1995) 1211 Bentley Turbo S (1994) 60 Bentley ‘New’ Turbo R (1995-1996) 543 Bentley ‘New’ Turbo RL (includes LWB Rs from 1996 on, 1995-1997) 823 Bentley Turbo R Sport (1996) 20 Bentley Turbo RT (1997) 252 Bentley Turbo RT Olympian (1997) 4 Bentley Turbo RT Mulliner SWB (1997) 7 Bentley Turbo RT Mulliner LWB (1997) 49 Bentley Brooklands R (1997) 79 Bentley Brooklands R Mulliner (1997) 100

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HANWELLS OF LONDON

2022

2014/14 Bentley GTC Speed W12. Finished in Beluga with 21 inch Speed alloys. The interior hide is in Linen leather, with Beluga stitching and Beluga carpets. Fitted with ventilated massage front seats, neck warmer and park camera. Only 34,000 miles with FSH. Immaculate condition throughout ........................................ Only £68,950

2012/62 Bentley Flying Spur Mulliner. Finished in unmarked Hallmark Silver with 20 inch alloys and electric sunroof. Linen leather interior with contrast stitching and embossed Flying B’s, with Beluga secondary hide and rear park camera. Only 47,000 miles with FSH. Known to us for 6 last years, immaculate ........£41,950

2006/55 Bentley Arnage T Mulliner Level II. Finished in beautiful Moonbeam Silver with Beluga interior and contrast stitching in Cornsilk, with Walnut veneers. Finally, to complete the luxury there are picnic tables in the rear. Only 55,000 miles with FSH. Immaculate condition and amazing value at ...................................£36,950

2004/04 Bentley Arnage T Mulliner. Finished in Beluga with 19 inch split rim alloys. Beluga interior with turned alloy dash and door cappings. Only 40,000 miles with full history, previously supplied by us 6 years ago. Four new tyres just fitted, immaculate condition throughout and outstanding value........£33,650

2003/03 Bentley Arnage T Mulliner. Finished in Moroccan Blue with Silverstone interior, with embossed flying B’s in French Navy and DVD screens in the rear of the front headrests. We have known this car for the last 8 years, only 68,000 miles with Full Service History, immaculate condition throughout.........£27,950

1997 P Bentley Brooklands Turbo. Finished in Silver Pearl with Turbo RT alloys, with Silverstone interior piped in French Navy and French Navy carpets with Silverstone piping and comfort seating design. Known to us for 9 years and maintained regardless of cost.

Stunning and outstanding value at .......£19,750

1997 Model P Bentley Continental R. Finished in Racing Green with a matrix grille and limited edition 17 inch alloys. With London Tan interior, this very rare car has only covered 43,000 miles with a Full Service History and 19 service stamps. Increasing in value and would make a very good investment ..............£52,950

1977 R Rolls Royce Corniche FHC 2 dr Coupe.

Finished in Sand with a Walnut vinyl roof and white wall tyres. Cream interior with Cream carpets, with Walnut piping and Walnut veneers, all in perfect condition. Only 48,000 miles, known to ourselves for last 7 years. Lots of history, a superb investment.............£69,950

1970 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow Series I. Finished in completely unmarked Seychelles Blue with a single Shell Grey coachline. The Shell Grey interior is in almost new condition. The French Navy carpets with Shell Grey piping are as new. Very comprehensive history. Immaculate throughout, an investment at.........Only £25,950

1964 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud III. Finished in Astral Blue over Shell Grey with the most amazing bodywork. Having a Silverstone interior which looks in the same condition as a 3 year old car and fitted with air conditioning. Maintained regardless of cost, keeping the car in superb condition. An investment at ..................£82,950

OVER 60 ROLLS-ROYCE & BENTLEY IN STOCK

All vehicles have a full 20,000 mile service plus a 100 point check and 1 year MoT, together with a 24 month 5 star warranty (parts and labour)

Open 7 days a week for appointments BROADWAY, 86-88 UXBRIDGE ROAD, LONDON W7 3ST Tel: 0208 567 6557 / 0208 567 9729 After Hours: 01932 224872 Email: sales@hanwells.com Web: www.hanwells.com

1937 Bentley 4¼ Park Ward Four Door Sports Saloon Well finished in Dark Green with excellent Buff leather. Very well cared for by one owner of almost 30 years & much spent inc. new head & o/drive, meticulous history file; Just arrived.

Seven other interesting Derbys: open/closed, 3½, 4¼, O/Drive.

1928 20hp Flewitt D-Back Six Light Limousine Correct and handsome with much recent major engine work & full re-wire. Runs & drives very nicely, could be used as is but would benefit from some cosmetic improvement; £27,500 Great choice of 16 pre-war Rolls-Royce cars, open & closed.

1957 Bentley S1 Four Door Sports Saloon Beautifully correct, structurally excellent & a pleasure to drive Lovely soft original tan leather – in fact the whole car is a delight throughout, plenty of history, well substantiated 67k miles: £55,000 Superb S1 Flying Spur, 2 Bentley R-Types, ’53 S/Dawn Automatic Visit us at the RREC Annual Rally at Burghley House.

Visit our eBay Real Car Co Parts shop –follow link on our website.

MARQUE HISTORY MULSANNE TURBO & TURBO R

compressor, these also had 420bhp in addition to their more rounded bumpers, additional venting and flared wings. One unusual option was the provision of a speedometer for passengers in the rear; ideal for backseat drivers. The London dealership of Jack Barclay also commissioned four RT Olympians, based on the Mulliner but packed with as many special features as possible.

Away from the RT, the Brooklands also got a final boost, changing name to become the Brooklands R and gaining the suspension

THE

VIEW John Tupper, managing director of IntroCar, says: The introduction of the Mulsanne Turbo was intended to be a direct reference to Bentley's sporting past, and to differentiate Bentley's offering from that of Rolls-Royce (thus appealing to a slightly different market). Whether this was successful is by no means clear, but it marked the beginning of a change in customer buying habits that would eventually result in customers eschewing the Rolls-

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www.introcar.co.uk

TEL: +44 (0)208 546 2027

settings and alloy wheels of the RL. The last 100 were christened the Brooklands R Mulliner with, as the name suggested, even greater levels of refinement courtesy of Mulliner. The final Bentley SZ models were completed in December 1997, after which attention switched to the new Arnage generation.

Those first turbocharged cars dramatically transformed Bentley’s fortunes though, helping the marque emerge from Rolls-Royce’s shadow and assert its own individuality and performance credentials. The

renowned American magazine, Motor Trend, highlighted the Turbo R as ‘the first Bentley in decades deserving of the famous name’, a statement with which it’s easy to concur.

Without the line that began with the Mulsanne Turbo in 1982, Bentley might well have disappeared during the decade, as its sales diminished further. Instead, by the end of it, the brand was stronger and more desirable than ever before, and a lot of the success of the company today is due to the sporty foundations re-established during the 1980s. ■

Royce marque in favour of Bentley - at least in terms of sales volumes.

This continues to the present day when sales of Bentley motorcars still exceed that of Rolls-Royce.

The Mulsanne Turbo, and the early carburettor Turbo R, was equipped with fierce acceleration for a car of its size, matched by an equally ravenous fuel consumption. This was courtesy of the Solex 4A1 carburettor, which works fantastically well - when it works - and when visits to the petrol station are a happy experience for the owner. These days I suggest that the Mulsanne Turbo (or carburettor Turbo R) is best purchased by those who really want to own a piece of motoring history - for that it is. Most in the know will probably concur that early versions are not for the faint hearted. Apart from drinking petrol, the carburettor has

a limited lifespan, and engine heat often warps it, usually consigning it to the dustbin. Replacements are more-or-less impossible to find, and a non-original replacement, fitted by technicians well-versed in retro-fitting fuel systems is the most practical solution. By the time the Turbo R had been equipped with Bosch fuel injection (far more reliable, fuel efficient and serviceable) you begin to have a more robust ownership proposition. The Turbo R continued through various iterations to 1997. Indeed, if you purchase one later than 1996, with its Zytek engine management system, then you are purchasing - in the writer's view - the finest of the four-door Bentleys of the 1980s and 90s.

Enormously comfortable, powerful and driveable, they can be driven daily without a second thought.

J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

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THE CLUB HOUSE BENTLEY DRIVERS CLUB

WORDS: STUART NEWMAN

GEAR UP FOR CONCOURS The BDC warmly welcomes all readers and fellow Bentley enthusiasts to its annual Summer Concours & Party in June – with fun for all the family guaranteed

A

s this latest issue of RollsRoyce & Bentley Driver hits the shelves, the Bentley Drivers Club is gearing up for its annual showpiece event of the year: the Summer Concours & Party.

And this year’s event – which offers fun for all the family – is particularly eagerly anticipated, with the last two planned annual Concours, in 2020 and 2021, having both been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

It will also be bigger and better than ever – a ‘three-day weekend’ spectacular, from Friday to Sunday, held at picturesque Cubberley House, at Ross-on-Wye, Hereford (17-19 June), in the presence of HRH Prince Michael of Kent.

The idyllic 100-acre country estate

is the home of 2019 BDC Concours Best in Show winner Dean Kronsbein.

To ensure the 2022 event will be one to remember, the superb programme will begin on the Friday evening, followed by a host of exciting activities (tours and excursions, including a visit to the Morgan factory) for Club members and guests on the Saturday, with the highlight being a sumptuous champagne reception and fivecourse gala dinner in the evening.

The weekend’s festivities will climax on the Sunday, which is open to all Bentley enthusiasts and their families, with the following programme: n Concours & Patina class judging (of Members’ cars) and prize-giving ceremony

n R Type exhibition (to celebrate the model’s 70th anniversary) n Bentley Motors Heritage Collection n Peaky Blinders & Downton Abbey display n World War II Spitfire fly-past n Cubberley House garden tours n TV star Richard Hammond filming latest TV series n Entertainment (brass band & singers) n Stands & stalls All RR&BD readers are warmly welcome to join in the festivities. The admission cost on the day is £45 per car. The event runs from 9am-5pm.

The BDC is pleased to announce that this year’s Concours will support the RAF Benevolent Fund and Help for Heroes charities.

And talking of events, don’t forget to put the date of this year’s BDC annual race meeting at Silverstone in your diary – Saturday 13 August.

A packed programme of 10 races is planned, including the blue-riband Bentley scratch race for the Times Challenge Trophy. More details in the next issue. n www.bdcl.org

Phillip Hine has been welcomed in as the new BDC Chairman, following the Club’s 85th Annual General Meeting held in April.

Bentleys of all ages, from Vintage to modern, will adorn the lawns of Cubberley House for the BDC Summer & Concours & Party

Fun for all the family is guaranteed at Cubberley

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New BDC Chairman Phillip Hine (left) takes over the ceremonial baton from predecessor Richard Parkinson

Phillip, who already sat on the Board as a Director and is head of this year’s Concours organising committee, succeeds Richard Parkinson, whose three-year term of office as Chairman has come to an end. Richard will still remain as a Director.

Joining the Board is Competitions Captain Ben Eastick, while Ron Warmington, Club Chairman from 2016-2019, and former Competitions Captain Mike Haig have both now retired as Directors. Long-serving Competitions Steward Harvey Hine has also formally stepped down from his role after 15 years.

J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

ADVERTORIAL

Bentley DRIVERS CLUB

F

ounded by enthusiasts for enthusiasts. The Bentley Drivers Club is proud of its ethos: a club of friends who share a love of all things Bentley. It’s also the only club directly affiliated with Bentley Motors.

While some follow in the tyre tracks of the iconic ‘Bentley Boys’, competing in races and rallies, others take pleasure watching their modern-day counterparts in the latest GT3 race cars.

Off track, some simply enjoy driving their Bentley on the road, frequently in the company of other enthusiasts.

No matter what your inspiration, the BDC can help enhance your Bentley ownership and take your appreciation of this classic marque even deeper.

A great feature of our club is the excellent events we hold, both at home and abroad. These include our annual long-established Concours d’Elegance and Silverstone race meeting plus numerous tours and social occasions organised by our ever active Regions worldwide.

So, with lots of activities to look forward to in the future, what better time is there to join us?

Members enjoy a range of benefits with the BDC:

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THE CLUB HOUSE ROLLS-ROYCE ENTHUSIASTS’ CLUB

BURGHLEY BECKONS

The centre-point of the RREC’s calendar, the Annual Rally and Concours at Burghley House in Stamford is back, with a huge turnout expected. We quizzed the Club’s Events Manager Ailsa Plain about this stately festival of the finest cars.

If I was a first-time visitor, what would I need to know?

‘Well, the show runs over three days from Friday 1st July to Sunday 3rd July, though the Friday is just a half day, representing a gentle start to the weekend. The car park is a central feature of the show, with visitors parking in order of arrival, so just walking amongst the hundreds of members’ cars is a real must. The other main part of the show is the trade area, where many specialists and associated businesses have stands that will be of great interest to Rolls-Royce and Bentley owners.’

Do you have any special events planned for certain days?

‘Yes, the Saturday will feature the

66

centenary celebrations for the RollsRoyce 20hp model, so we’ll have a parade of those cars together with seminars from Fiennes Engineering and others in the Hospitality Marquee.

There will be a jazz band too, and we’re expecting a display of cars from the Gay Classic Car Club. Then, on the Sunday, the cars in our main event, the annual Concours d’Elegance will be assembled in classes before they are also paraded, and judging is completed.’

Any tips for a better visit?

‘I’d suggest you aim to get there before 11am on the Saturday and Sunday, as the traffic flows into the site pretty well in the mornings. Use the main entrance to Burghley House off the A1 junction and especially on the

Saturday, try to avoid going through the middle of Stamford – there’s a local event planned in the town for that day that could cause congestion.’

How do we buy tickets?

‘Members can book online by signing into their account on the club’s website, rrec.org.uk, while a link on the site for non-members takes you to a booking page called EventBrite. But if your plans aren’t fixed in advance, you can still turn up and pay on the gate. The prices are £60 per car, including all occupants, or £80 per car for the whole weekend, and that’s the same for members and non-members. By the way, the price and procedure is the same for a nonclub car – you don’t have to arrive in a Rolls-Royce or a Bentley!’ n

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THE RREC WELCOMES ALL ROLLS-ROYCE AND BENTLEY ENTHUSIASTS TO THE

Annual Rally & Concours d’Elegance Burghley House, Stamford, Lincolnshire 1 - 3 July 2022

Scan the QR code for further info and to book your ticket!* *RREC members please book via The Hunt House as usual.

rrec.org.uk | hello@rrec.org.uk | +44 (0) 1327 811788

FEATURE CAR ROLLS-ROYCE CAMARGUE

AGE BEFORE BEAUTY Pininfarina’s styling for the Camargue was as close as Rolls-Royce ever got to radical. After 47 years, can we finally appreciate the car’s unique looks?

WORDS: NIGEL BOOTHMAN

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P H OTO G R A P H Y: M AT T R I C H A R D S O N

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ost of us with a fondness for classic cars, and especially for Rolls-Royce, will know a little bit about the Camargue. Challenging styling, of course, and we’ll probably remember that Pininfarina was responsible. More or less like a Shadow underneath, isn’t it? And that other pub quiz fact – the most expensive production car in the world, at least for a while. A bit of a flop in its day. But then what?

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You rarely see them, either on the road or on the market, and of those that do appear for sale, many seem to come from the USA. But values have been going up a bit, at last.

That’s probably where our general knowledge runs out. For most petrolheads the reaction to the Camargue varies from ‘Dear me, no thanks!’ to polite curiosity, at best.

True lovers of the model are rare indeed, perhaps fitting for a car that

sold only 526 units in 11 years. It’s interesting, then, that this car’s owner was only politely curious when he bought the car – and has now become a confirmed lover of the Camargue.

He is Nikolai Gurianov, and the tale of how he came to own one of these unusual cars is as quirky as the cars themselves.

‘I’m a big enthusiast for classic cars and I’ve been collecting only British cars for a while now. But this is not »

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FEATURE CAR ROLLS-ROYCE CAMARGUE always easy. My wife is a graphic designer, and she has an eye for a good shape. When she saw an early Camargue in London one day, parked in Cadogan Square, she said “That is the only Rolls-Royce I’ve ever wanted.”

So I noted to myself that this might be one model I was allowed to buy.’

The car Mrs Gurianov saw was an eye-catching lazuli blue, but choice in the Camargue market is limited. And what’s important to Mr Gurianov may differ – history and condition, for instance.

‘I prefer to buy barn finds,’ says Nikolai. ‘I like cars with originality and I don’t mind if they’ve been off the road for a while.’

That’s not to say he wanted a big project or a rust-bucket. Maybe something that survived without being messed about, ideally in a dry climate, like California for instance.

‘In 2017 I saw this car for sale with some dealers called the Beverley Hills Car Club in Los Angeles,’ says Nikolai. ‘I was buying two Jaguar E-types from them and I managed to do a deal to

include this car. So they all went on the same ship, but whoever loaded the car wound down the driver’s window and it arrived with sea water inside!’

PUTTING IT RIGHT Damage was restricted to the left-hand side of the driver’s seat suffering some cracking, but it’s still an annoying way to start. Luckily, the rest of the news was better. The car was 100% complete and even the handbook and history file were

The Camargue's best angle? Bold lines come together at the car's angular tail

Full set of books and American Roadside Assistance letter (right) survive with the car

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present and correct. The documents backed up the mileage and the car started and could be moved, but issues with the brakes and an overheating engine meant it would need some recommissioning work, or even a light restoration. And here’s another reason Nikolai likes barn-find cars.

‘When you restore a car, you put your time and energy into it and you may leave your mark on it. Many cars now are over-restored, I think, especially when it comes to paint and trim. I prefer to keep the true patina of the car’s history, and if something can be left alone, then leave it. Anyway, there was plenty more to do.’

A first step was limited to getting the car through an MoT so it could be registered in this country, and then the work moved on in stages to include a thorough investigation of the brakes, suspension, a new radiator and some rebuilt cylinder heads, plus a few other minor jobs. It wasn’t always a straightforward process, as the Camargue has quite a few components that are not shared with any other Rolls-Royce or Bentley model.

‘I had to wait six or seven months to find the correct seal for the rear window,’ says Nikolai. ‘It’s an unusual square cross-section and the original

“Many cars now are over-restored, I think, especially when it comes to paint and trim. I prefer to keep the true patina...” one was leaking badly. And even now, after several years, I still can’t find an air-conditioning condenser for this car so the a/c doesn’t function.’

These side-effects of true difference are irritating but are certainly outweighed by the Camargue’s individuality. When you look at the car’s history now, it’s a surprising, almost baffling story, and rather than be disappointed the Camargue didn’t sell better we should probably be grateful it existed at all.

ORIGIN STORY Rolls-Royce already had an expensive, exclusive two-door coupé with seating for four and a 6.75-litre V8, in the form of the Corniche. They had only just come to the end of a 70-year history of coachbuilt models as the last of the separate-chassis cars (not including the Phantom V and VI) made way for the unitary-bodied Shadow

in 1965. Building different bodies on a unitary platform is more involved and costly that fitting coachwork to a separate chassis. James Young offered the first two-door Shadow, but it was soon brought in-house and re-styled as the MPW Coupé.

But it’s important to unpack a couple of details. First, Rolls-Royce took a long time to develop new models, meaning anything that appeared in the showroom had several years of R&D behind it. The original intention for the car that became the Camargue was as a replacement for the two-door Shadow / Corniche coupé. But going through the tumultuous bankruptcy and separation from the aero-engine business in 1971 delayed things and changed the emphasis of the business – these cars had to turn a profit. So the Corniche carried on and the new car was developed as a halo model with Shadow underpinnings, different styling and a sky-high price point. »

MORE RADICAL THAN THE CAMARGUE? ASTON’S BIG GAMBLE During our conversation with Nikolai, he mentions another bold design that’s fascinated him – the AstonMartin Lagonda. This car, arguably an even bolder shape than the Camargue and a bigger departure from its maker’s normal output, was styled

by William Towns. It appeared a few months before the Camargue’s debut, launching at the Motor Show in 1974.

‘I think the British car industry made two big steps here, both ahead of their time,’ says Nikolai.

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‘Aston were known for fast twodoor GT cars but made a saloon, and Rolls-Royce were known for safe, soft, comfy cars but made this daring coupé. It was so brave.’

And yet, we think of the mid1970s as an all-time low for our car industry. Yes, labour relations and management were dreadful, so everything that resulted (poor build quality, confused development, delay) did immense damage, but the ideas and innovation were as

strong as ever. Would the Camargue and Lagonda have attracted this reputation as ill-starred, ill-looking flops if their story had started in the prosperous, adventurous 1980s?

‘Look at the Tesla truck from 2020,’ says Nikolai. ‘It looks like a show car from the future but Tesla say they will build it. Yet the basic idea of those forms isn’t so different from the Camargue or the Lagonda. They are both underrated and deserve more respect.’

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FEATURE CAR ROLLS-ROYCE CAMARGUE

Narrow track compared with body width attracted unkind remarks when new. As a classic, it's less noticeable

David Plastow, R-R’s managing director, knew there was a demand from his wealthiest clients for this coachbuilt range-topper, but why go to Italy for the styling? The decision is rooted in a one-off car built for Lord Hanson by Pininfarina in 1968, an angular, square-nosed fastback based on a Bentley T1. It looked aggressively modern if not conventionally handsome, but it led directly to Rolls-Royce approaching Pininfarina in 1969 and asking for some coupé design proposals.

As with the Hanson car, the job fell to

Paolo Martin, and he had some radical ideas. Gone were the soft curves of the early to mid-1960s and in came a straighter, sharper look with plenty of large, flat surfaces. His design for the Fiat 130 coupé, which appeared in 1971, was a variation on the theme – or was the Camargue an adaption of the 130?

They were developed at the same time.

Either way, it seems unfair that Martin won a design prize for the striking 130 coupé while the rather similar Camargue was so widely criticised.

A couple of reasons spring to mind. First, there is timing. Taking

six or eight years to bring a car to market doesn’t matter so much with reserved, rather ageless styling like that of most Rolls-Royces, but dip a toe into fashionable waters and you feel the difference between 1971 and 1975. But second, and much more important, is to do with expectations of what a Rolls-Royce should be.

SIGHT AND TOUCH Nikolai has thought a lot about this, and he has a brilliant way of summing up the effect created by the Camargue’s looks.

‘You could call it “cognitive dissonance”,’ he says. ‘It has all these square forms and the shapes and angles are hard, yet there’s this huge contrast with the way it drives, floating smoothly along like any other Rolls-Royce. It also feels different from other Rolls-Royces » S PECI FI C AT I O N

1986 ROLLS-ROYCE CAMARGUE LENGTH: 5181mm Width: 1918mm WEIGHT: 2347kg ENGINE: 6.75-litre V8 POWER: 220bhp@4000rpm TORQUE: 330lb ft@2500rpm 0-60MPH: 10.9 seconds

Bosch injection adds to visual complexity but is a big improvement over carbs

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TOP SPEED: 119mph COST NEW: £29,950 (1975) / £85,000 (1985)

J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

CATCH-UP TIME! If you’ve missed out on some of the previous issues of Rolls-Royce & Bentley Driver, don’t worry.

It couldn’t be easier to grab some of our great back issues! We even offer free postage to UK residents and reduced shipping overseas. Check out the sample list below and then head online to:

shop.kelsey.co.uk/rrandb EARLIER ISSUES ARE AVAILABLE – SEE THE FULL LIST ONLINE

MAY/ JUNE 2022 Arnage & Seraph Collection ● Silver Dawn by Ghia ● Flying Spur V8 vs our Turbo R ● Anatomy of… Continental R ● Two R-Rs from Indian royalty ● Aussie Shadow II ●

MARCH/ APRIL 2022 ●

Silver Spirit II: first-time buyer ● R-type Continental ● Anatomy of the Corniche ● Bentley Motors Tour ● AX 201 Facts and Figures ● 1951 Silver Dawn

JANUARY/ FEBRUARY 2022

NOVEMBER/ DECEMBER 2021

1972 Corniche Fixed-Head Bentley Arnage Anatomy ● Silver Cloud: Classic Test ● Owning a GT Supersports ● Turbo RT Experiences ● Bentley’s Roaring Twenties

Owning a 2001 Corniche V Turbo R meets Daimler V8 ● Cloud & S-series Anatomy ● Continental R – 30 Years On ● 1933 Rolls-Royce 20/25 ● Experiencing a Phantom VI

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● 132-Page Special Issue 50 Pages of Buying Advice ● Choosing Your Next Classic ● Bentley Corniche Restored ● Seraph and Arnage History ● Rolls-Royce Scale Models

Bentley ‘Blower’ Upgrade Restored Silver Shadow II ● Bentley S1 Mulliner Fastback ● Developing the SZ Series ● Bentley MkVI Classic Test ● Australian Family Collection

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FEATURE CAR ROLLS-ROYCE CAMARGUE inside, because you sit deeper, more in the car than a Shadow, and there is this strange dashboard to explore.’

Ah yes, the dash. Paulo Martin’s look is inspired by an aircraft cockpit, with each instrument fixed onto the fascia rather than sunk within it. Yes, there is still plenty of expensive veneer but now it rests on a deformable aluminium structure for crash safety regulations. Split-level air conditioning was a bold and innovative step, and such features were another reason for the Camargue to exist – you introduce these ideas on the top-ofthe-range car and gather publicity.

‘In general, it’s a very handy, accessible dash,’ says Nikolai, ‘even if some of the controls seem unusual, like

the huge dash-light dimmer switch.

But it’s the details that make this car special: the indicator repeaters, the lights, the door handles that push down instead of pull up. But it’s really on the road that this car speaks to you, not in the garage.’

Yes, in case no-one told you, the Camargue is a great car to drive.

Don’t take our word for it, see this assessment from Motor Sport in the midst of an otherwise rather critical road test taken up by the styling and the huge price: ‘For a car which looks so huge and unwieldy, the handling of the Camargue proved remarkable, making driving the car smoothly at speed intensely satisfying.’

Aircraft-style surface-mounted instruments are a Camargue signature feature

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Nikolai finds this to be true, but believes you need to spend time with the car before it gets under your skin. Then you start to understand it. Some other truly innovative cars have the same characteristic; the Citroën-Maserati SM is one.

‘I just simply love it,’ he says. ‘It’s an amazing piece of design. It’s why I love the best British engineering; it’s about extracting the pure idea of what you want and making it into a mechanism. Add that to my love for special coachwork – my first car in the UK was a Bentley Mulliner Park Ward coupé – and the Camargue is wonderful. It’s also a late example, coming from 1986, which means it was built with Bosch K-Jetronic mechanical

“...you sit deeper, more in the car than a Shadow, and there is this strange dashboard to explore.” fuel injection, only the fourth RollsRoyce to be equipped this way. It makes it much more responsive to drive.’

Indeed, Nikolai likes it so much he says he struggles to see his other coupé, a Bentley T1 with the James Young body, as a Rolls-Royce product.

The Camargue has brainwashed its owner. And it’s intrigued us. After all, for a man with a lot of nice cars under his belt, and a deep understanding

of what they offer, the strength of Nikolai’s appreciation for the Camargue has to be taken seriously.

‘This balance between minimalism and the boldness of line that you get with the Camargue has to be revisited,’ he says. ‘Rolls-Royce need to be brave. I would strongly advise them to do a new Camargue!’

Anyone listening, down in Goodwood? ■

Long doors and generous rear seating make it a spacious car for such a close-coupled coupé design

R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

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ROAD TRIP BENTLEY TURBO R

LONDON TO EDINBURGH EXPRESS

Well, we could have charged up north like an express train, but we had a much more interesting plan – use the magazine’s Turbo R to visit all kinds of Rolls-Royce and Bentley people on the way.

WO R D & P H OTO G R A P H Y: N I G E L B O O T H M A N

Y

ou’re never far from a petrol station in the Turbo R, mentally at least.

Its appetite for super unleaded was daunting, but I had no real idea what MPG figure I would see.

Nigel Sandell still seems fond of our Turbo R goodness knows why!

Ten, fifteen, twenty? I might never find out unless I could get some fuel into the tank in the first place. Pressing the fuel-filler cap’s release button makes a promising ‘clonk’ from the rear nearside of the car, but when I go

round to unscrew the cap, the flap’s still shut. Try again – same result. So I jam the squashy leather fob from the keyring in the edge of the flap and then hit the button. Success! The flap flies open and the key fob falls to the deck.

On the M25, there are lots of temporary speed restrictions so 60mph is about the best we can do. I’m surprised to see the rev counter turning at well over 2500 rpm. Hmm, perhaps the Turbo R is lower geared on purpose to boost acceleration. I must ask Nigel Sandell. His place is our first stop on this trip from Kelsey Publishing’s HQ in Kent to my home in Edinburgh, for an appointment to get the dicky speedo looked at. It’s been more off than on, with some odd behaviour from the other gauges to match.

Nigel’s place is in Isleworth, a mile up the road from Twickenham Stadium, so a quick dodge up the M3 has us there by lunchtime. Before I dare present myself, I take the Bentley through a local car wash and it looks almost grateful, glistening in the sun.

First the fascia comes off, then the DIP unit can be removed

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I’m greeted by Nigel (we Nigels are an endangered species, so meeting another one always cheers us up) and Russell, who is the voice on the phone when you call Sandell’s. The car is straight into the workshop as one of Nigel’s guys confidently removes screws and lifts away dash veneer.

I have a chance to look around. The variety of cars Nigel deals with on a relatively small plot is extraordinary.

There are those that make his core business – SY and SZ generation saloons and Corniches – but also Goodwood-era Phantoms, VW-era Bentleys, a Continental R, an E-type Jaguar and a gorgeous Derby Bentley with a Vanden Plas four-door cabriolet body that’s one of only eight built. Nigel and his team are currently working on a 25/30 which he has purchased from the same owner’s estate.

Nigel’s mechanic was checking the Bentley’s gear selector lever and noted that the detents were getting tired. I realised that despite being in the slot for ‘D’ on the M25, the car wasn’t changing up from intermediate gear – this must be why. Meanwhile, the Turbo R’s dash clocks, a plastic moulding called a DIP unit, were causing strife. The expected simple fix wasn’t forthcoming, so the resourceful Sandell’s solution was to borrow a known good one from another Turbo R and send me off with that. Great for me, less good for the other car, but we’d soon get things sorted out and the DIP unit sent back to the right place. However, all the in-out business with the two dashboards had taken a while, and London’s rush hour was coming on. I wouldn’t get much further up the country tonight, at least not at a suitable hour for visiting.

Outside BDC headquarters

During a quick romp out of the city, I found the gear selector needed a careful touch to ensure the D symbol lit up on the dash, but with this done, the gearbox behaved as normal. The cruise control held me at 70mph, now turning rather fewer revs than I had been doing before at 60mph.

The next morning I enjoyed a wonderful charge across the edge of the Cotswolds to find the Bentley Drivers’ Club in Wroxton, outside Banbury. Noel Trewhela greeted me and made us some coffee, and then to my surprise and delight he suggested we open the double doors to the large meeting room or lecture hall on the side of the building, and pop the Turbo R inside for a photo op.

So we did. A rather more illustrious Bentley lives in the corner, the 1926

Noel Trewhela eyes just part of the club's amazing library

R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

Atrium space in BDC building is a magnificent spot for a coffee

3-litre Le Mans team car. If you get a chance, go and see it, and walk round this wonderful room – the exhibits on the wall are fascinating.

So too is the rest of the building.

Noel showed me round the archives and the library, which continues to expand, and revealed a room with portraits, furniture and even doors from W.O. Bentley’s office at the Cricklewood works. The display engines in the highceilinged foyer would have kept me enthralled for an hour all by themselves, but I had miles to cover. Back out through the lanes, heading northeast, I was aiming for the Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts’ Club at the Hunt House, in Paulerspury, Northamptonshire.

The Bentley was proving surprisingly wieldy on some cramped roads, with those four big paws riding straight »

Driving into the conference room felt peculiar, but a real privilege

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ROAD TRIP BENTLEY TURBO R

“Not too bad for a 30 year-old, 6 ¾ -litre turbocharged car weighing more than two tons and driving through a three-speed auto.” over rural road surfaces without a shudder. It left me wondering what roads would suit it best, and I think it might be the kind we don’t have here: wide, fast ribbons of tarmac that twist up over mountain passes, where you could set a very high average. If you’ve driven inland from northern Spain, you’ll know the kind of thing.

At the Hunt House I was welcomed by the RREC’s Chief, Ian Dorward. He too had plenty to show off, as the Hunt house has long since evolved into a mixture of office space, gracious old library, seminar room and workshops. The latter are home to several dismembered Rolls-Royces of different generations and prove valuable teaching aids during the club’s

celebrated technical seminars, often taught by the likes of Nigel Sandell.

Ian was already looking forward to the annual concours at Burghley House outside Stamford, a focal point in the calendar for all RREC members.

It takes immense organisation and the small team at the Hunt House are putting the hours in through May and June. After saying my farewells, it was time to point the Bentley’s blunt snout at the motorway. The M1 lacks almost everything that makes driving pleasant, so it was nice to get off after Leicester Forest East and fly along the B585 to find Flying Spares, outside Market Bosworth.

What appears to be a house with a workshop and some cars parked

Rear suspension sagging? This Royce crane should help

Much-dismantled cutaway Shadow is terrifying to anyone who's recently bought one!

78

outside turns out to be an amazing rabbit warren of stores, technical services buildings and garages that takes up a huge plot and employs around 60 people, full time. Gary Pinks gave me the tour, and the scope of what Flying Spares do on a day-today basis began to sink in. There were machines for testing high-pressure hydraulic components, engineers and craftsmen who specialised in just one or two important skills – rebuilding rear axles or dynamos or steering gear. And that was before I saw the recycling side of the business.

A significant amount of the parts that FS can offer to keep our cars on the road come from dismantled vehicles. These components get refurbished, rebuilt or just repainted, as required, and not only cut the cost of upkeep for us but add a little more to the argument that enjoying old cars can be an environmentally friendly activity. And it’s not limited to old cars, either – 21st century models are now being bought for scrap and carefully stripped of every useful ECU, sensor and actuator. I ordered a few much humbler parts for my new project car (see p.88) and Gary returned in about ten seconds flat with a cardboard box containing everything I needed.

I left with great reluctance, partly because there seemed so much more to see and partly because the M1 beckoned again. At least we avoided any serious hold-ups,

CEO Ian Dorward with a Cloud he's very fond of.

Cullinan is on loan from RR

J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

Just one of many corridors of spare parts

'Dave' and 'GT Dave' are cars kept to test new products, named after a much-loved late colleague, Dave Terry

Even Arnages get dismantled when beyond reasonable repair

Yorkshire was doing a remarkable impression of Kansas in summertime – flat, with fields of waving greenery or slumbering livestock, all wilting under a hot sun. Blair’s place is a classic car storage and sales company, a business he started after leaving a career in broadcasting with the BBC »

and after filling the tank with more 98-octane juice, I had a chance to settle down to some mental maths.

The answer was 17mpg overall, which took in some London traffic, some fast acceleration through Cotswold lanes and some tedious patches on the motorway. Not too bad for a 30

year-old, 6 ¾ -litre turbocharged car weighing more than two tons and driving through a three-speed auto.

The next day promised some more entertaining driving and I set off from my overnight halt in Leeds to see Blair Jacobs at his business, Pipe Dreams Classics, west of Hull. East

Blair Jacobs left the BBC and has made classic cars his full-time occupation

Blair's Shadow is soon to head back on the road, while the Corniche is already immaculate

R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

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ROAD TRIP BENTLEY TURBO R

and picking up a childhood passion.

‘Opening a storage business is ideal if you already have too many cars of your own,’ he says with a smile, but it must be a serious aid to temptation if you have discreet, secure, undercover storage waiting for any whimsical purchase. Blair has done well to keep his tally of Rolls-Royces down to two: a lovely Corniche, which we shot for a feature in a forthcoming issue, and a Shadow II that he took on as a potentially needy case, but it’s responded well to TLC and should be ready for use – or a new owner – soon.

I had all four windows down as the Bentley gathered speed along the laser-straight roads between the field drains, route-finding by guesswork up to Market Weighton and Pocklington. Should I head over the North York Moors and find the A1 north of Middlesbrough? There was still a long way to go up to Edinburgh and only part of the afternoon and

At Carter Bar, the Scottish Border

One of these cars is worth at least £20,000

80

Coming down the hairpins on the A68

evening in which to do it, so I skirted the edge of York and took the A59 to the A1. The Turbo R was really growing on me, and I found it was becoming more comfortable the more I drove it. Perhaps you sink into the seat as it takes on your shape, or perhaps I was

just adopting the right posture. Lean back, left arm on the armrest, right hand on the wheel, let the old Blaupunkt find Radio 3 and then bury the right foot in the carpet when the traffic opens up.

It was nice while it lasted. ‘A1 CLOSED J62 NORTH’ said a matrix sign, and I said a rude word. But there was still time to divert onto the A68, that great, high, winding road that takes you onto the edge of the north Pennines across the top of Weardale and Tynedale. It’s the classic route across the border, so how could I refuse? With a just-in-case fuel stop at Corbridge I set off across Northumberland, leaving my stomach behind on each of the well-remembered crests on that section of Roman A68 that feels more like a roller-coaster than an A-road. Two lads on superbikes flew past, and I found to my surprise that the Bentley could keep up with them – until I saw what the speedometer was saying, and backed off.

I stopped for a photo at Carter Bar, the pass on the Scottish Border, by which time there was little else on the road. A clear run for the remaining hour and twenty minutes into Edinburgh suited the Turbo R very well, with the big tyres biting into each corner and the active suspension doing a fine job of keeping us unruffled and level. A quick pause to see a mate outside the city brought a surprise encounter with a very smart Mini Moke (and another photo op!) before it was home to rest up and let that big turbocharger cool down.

I’m looking forward to a few months with the Bentley. Yes, it has a few flaws to sort out, but cars with character often do. And my neighbours seem deeply impressed with it, which shows what good taste some people have, doesn’t it? ■ J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

N. SANDELL Specialising in Rolls-Royce & Bentley Motor Cars

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PERSONAL CHOICE ROLLS-ROYCE SILVER SPIRIT

NEVER TOO OLD

You haven’t got round to owning the car you always wanted, and you’re worried the time has passed? Take heart – Franz Spranger says there’s no such thing as ‘too late’.

WORDS: FRANZ SPRANGER

F

rom a young age I wanted a Rolls-Royce. Growing up in Austria under the noisy Hitler dictatorship, it came as a relief when in 1945 the British occupied our region. We were shown a number of James Mason films. The inquisitive mind of a 14-year old soon found a connection with Rolls-Royce, as the quality of James Mason’s voice led me to the discovery of the British class system. Speech is a clear indicator of social standing. From then on, the Rolls also became significant. This car marked a social fixture in a system whose days are now numbered, yet this system worked reasonably well

82

PICTURES: FRANZ SPRANGER, ANNE SPRANGER

for many years. It opened the way for the young and willing to reach a higher ‘station’ through keen work.

So I took courses in English and became a compositor in the printing trade. I got married and wanted to go where they spoke English. I also wanted to get away from war-torn Europe. Canada was too cold and USA too unstable. Australia was right, even more so as the generous Australian Government paid for the trip.

And the language! Howygoinmate.

A far cry from how James Mason spoke. But the friendliest sound imaginable. Everybody arriving in this country was welcomed and

helped. And I’d never seen so many Rolls-Royces – not owned by people sounding posh, but by the ones with the most notorious Aussie twang.

Of course, I still wanted one. But paying for the house, three children, a wife doing belated degrees, these things became priorities. However, I bought a few Jaguars, Rovers and Triumphs and had fun restoring them. Eventually, restoring run-down properties led to financial freedom. Now, to buy a Rolls you do not have to be rich. It normally costs around AUS $30,000 for a 30-year old. But you need to be odd for wanting a car that is reliable only with stressful running costs. So in October 2019 when a 1982 Silver Spirit came on the market for $5000, I lost no time and sent the money to the seller in New South Wales, to buy this car I’d seen only in a photo. I was taking a risk but finally, at the age of 88, I got my Rolls-Royce.

I arranged for the Rolls to be delivered from NSW to our holiday property on the West Coast in Victoria. Plenty of space there with a few outbuildings.

The Rolls was to become a shed

J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

ornament while I restored it to its full glory…but it didn’t work out like that.

One day in October 2019 the Rolls was to be delivered. High excitement all day, but no truck. Then at 10pm a call came, saying the truck was only one hour from its destination. Sitting with a glass of wine on the verandah waiting for my Rolls-Royce, not noticing the mosquitoes around me, was even at my age a great new experience. When it arrived around 11pm, the driver (we’ll call him Joe) was soon swearing about the inconvenience of unloading such ****ing heavy car. Then he tried to start it in order to activate the brakes, but the battery was flat. All of a sudden, the car ran backward off the slanted tray with Joe in the driver’s seat. It gained momentum on the sloped driveway and was aiming for the house. For some mysterious reason the right front door flew open. I had to close my eyes as shattered glass flew through the air and the Rolls stopped. The open door had hit a tree. What luck! But the damage was major. The door had buckled and the wing in front of the driver’s door was badly damaged. My first concern was about Joe, who was okay but shaken.

My second question was about his insurance cover – which he luckily had.

The next part was not that easy – finding a local panel shop interested in fixing a Rolls. Finally, I found a shop in Melbourne that was game. I was warned it would take many months to find a wing and doors through world-wide connections. The owner of the shop, Max, was kind enough to pick up the car from our holiday house to bring it to his shop. Then I remembered a big warehouse building not far from our Melbourne home, packed with exotic British cars and Rolls-Royces spilling on to the kerb.

And I knew the owner vaguely, Robert McDermott, who had noticed my R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

Crumpled door, wing and subsequent repair work made for an undeserved setback

“...he tried to start it in order to activate the brakes, but the battery was flat. All of a sudden, the car ran backward off the slanted tray with Joe in the driver’s seat” craning neck to see his interesting lot.

Robert was over 70 with an extremely sharp mind and a photographic memory for anything mechanical.

Robert was aghast when I told him that a panelbeater wanted to replace the wing. Also the doors contain electric marvels that are difficult to understand by somebody with no R-R experience.

Being an astute businessman, he convinced me to hand over the repair job to him and let him pick up the car from Max. Now, Max was not happy losing this job and demanded payment for towing ($847), for storage ($25 for 21 days = $525) and admin cost of $80 plus $550 for cleaning and polishing the car. So, the car was now one of the 50 Royces at Robert’s garage.

Robert provided the front door and fitted all the electrics. Then he prepared a quote for the insurance company of $12,000, which was readily accepted.

But the truck company initially refused to pay the required excess of $1000 which resulted in a delay of a few weeks.

Robert used this time to work on the

brakes, replaced the A/C compressor, fitted rubbers and seals, fixed leaks, repaired the rusted floor pans before the main job progressed. Then the car was sent to a specialist spray painter to refinish the repair. But the emerging Covid-19 pandemic changed things overnight. Work on my car was nonessential and was shelved, and my RollsRoyce-enthusiasm began to wane.

Also Robert had become quiet, as there was little he could do. But what he did, changed that depressing situation for me. We knew the right front wheelarch liner was missing, so Robert let me use an old arch as a pattern to make one up. I used cardboard and reinforced it with fiberglass. Although not load-bearing, the product is strong and water resistant. The copy I made lifted my heart; it was my first tangible connection with this car. Painted black, it looked huge and important.

Even Robert would be impressed.

But not so. ‘Rough work’ he said.

Of course, it was not mirror-smooth, because there was no need for that, as »

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PERSONAL CHOICE ROLLS-ROYCE SILVER SPIRIT

you cannot see it unless you climb into the cavity between arch and wheel. I tried to build up a healthy argument, but Robert would not argue – he just liked high quality, even if you don’t see it.

Then my beautiful midnight-blue Silver Spirit arrived, detailed and polished.

And to make the cup runneth over, Robert suggested I do some cosmetic work on my car in his workshop while he did some finishing work. Even being close to ninety years old, I was thrilled like a little boy to spend time working in an atmosphere of old cars with a few seasoned mechanics. The lacquer on the wooden door cappings had peeled off and I was renewing the surface. Sanding back, five coats of lacquer, two coats of gloss, sanded gradually to a high grade and polished to get a glass-like finish. Robert, of course, when he saw my masterpiece, was not satisfied. File marks visible, tiny air pockets, specks of dust, brush marks! And the same faults in the wooden ashtray-lids. Okay, sand it back and start again. I was reluctant, but for some strange reason I began

to like this monotonous activity.

For days I patiently sanded down my Rolls-Royce window trims and carefully applied lacquer, letting it dry to repeat the process a number of times for all four windows. It became an automatic reflex that needed no brain interference. This left me relaxed and gave me a feeling of clarity and perfection. What happened? There was more wonderment when Robert praised my Rolls-Royce-worthy window trims. Had I finally discovered the great value of perfection?

After more minor work my Silver Spirit was road-tested and ready for the Road Worthy Certificate and consequent Club Registration. It’s a treasured experience to drive a Rolls with the Spirit of Ecstasy following the arc of your steering. Because of the large distance between driver and mascot, this feels quite dramatic. Engine ticking over nicely, no unwanted noises, and brakes perhaps a bit vague (after driving my Nissan Micra). But the car is old and you are aware that one of many

things can go wrong. Yet it is pure joy to drive this car – the Silver Spirit makes you feel like you’re in another world.

Now at the age of 91 I know how exciting the process of restoring a car is. At the beginning, an appreciation of the style develops, unconsciously selecting the car that will haunt you in sleepless nights. Then you begin to notice that car in the street. The next step is quite enjoyable: find one and buy it. Then sleepless nights again as you feel cheated by the seller as unexpected problems creep up. These have to be solved, but you find other people have similar problems. This leads to new friends and even to some relationships.

Necessary repairs now need to be done. The next step is governed by your financial situation. But if you are happy with a low-quality finish, it would still be an interesting car that drives well and is safe. Then another question comes up. Having gained valuable mechanical insight and relevant knowledge, perhaps restore another car?

Good Luck! ■

SHOW US YOUR PRIDE AND JOY If you fancy seeing your own Rolls-Royce or Bentley within these pages, it couldn’t be easier! We’re interested in any model of any age – and even its condition isn’t important, as we’re just as keen to see ongoing projects as we are potential prize-winners. All you need to do is email us a small selection of

84

good quality jpeg images – and we’ll do the rest. Within your email, don’t forget to tell us a bit of history about your car, details of any work carried out, or perhaps your future plans for it. The more information, the better!

Email us at rrb.ed@kelsey.co.uk – and don’t forget to send your photographs full-

size. The higher the resolution, the larger we can use your images. If you’d prefer to send non-digital photographs by post, that’s also no problem. Simply write to: The Editor, Rolls-Royce & Bentley Driver, Kelsey Publishing Ltd, The Granary, Downs Court, Yalding Hill, Yalding, Kent ME18 6AL.

J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

Jonathan P. Nolan Classic Car Consultant

To advertise in

RREC MEMBER OF THE INTERNATIONAL CLUB FOR

ROLLS-ROYCE & BENTLEY ENTHUSIASTS I’m Jonathan a semi-retired motor trader, RREC member and have been involved in classic cars and everyday cars for over 43 years.

With my love of the Rolls Royce and Bentley marque I am offering my services to Rolls Royce/Bentley and classic car owners.

Please call Laura on

01233 228754

I can assist in looking after your cars, servicing, storage, collection and delivery throughout the UK and Europe.

I can arrange export of cars, chauffeur and joint wedding services. I also act as an agent for selling and sourcing cars on a commission basis, this cuts out any hassle and time wasting that effects your busy lives. References available.

I live in the Hampshire area of the UK. With these uncertain times due to Covid 19, I will help anybody with their cars if you feel you can’t or don’t want to go until this period is over.

PLEASE EMAIL OR PHONE FOR FURTHER DETAILS: Email: fearless@jonnolan.co.uk Tel: 07836 769152 / 02380 760897

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STAFF CARS SHADOW PROJECT

MEET OUR

BLENHEIM BARN FIND Off the road for 35 years, a non-runner with no record of why it was retired? You’d be mad to buy something like that…

WORDS: NIGEL BOOTHMAN

I

wasn’t planning to buy a RollsRoyce, much less a project car, but sometimes these things just happen. I was visiting classic and vintage car specialist Hightone Restorations in Oxfordshire last October. There, in the car park, was a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow looking a bit sorry for itself. It was dark brown, with a cloudy, matt-finish bloom on the paint that reminded me of milk chocolate that’s been in a cupboard for a year. All bar one shiny door. I asked Hightone’s boss, Gregg Alvarez, what it was in for. He told me an intriguing story.

The car came to them from the Duke of Marlborough. It had belonged to the previous Duke, who died in 2014, but it had been off the road for much longer than that. Hightone had examined it

88

PHOTOS: NIGEL BOOTHMAN, WILLIAM BOOTHMAN

and found it would need some labourintensive recommissioning to make it roadworthy, which would come at a significant cost. The Duke was considering what to do, but it seemed the Shadow might soon be for sale.

I went to crawl round it, expecting the usual crusty sills and bubbling arches.

But I couldn’t find any rust, which made me think I wasn’t looking hard enough.

‘No, there isn’t any,’ said Gregg.

‘We’ve had it on our ramp and it really is that solid. I think it’s been in a nice, dry garage at Blenheim Palace all these years.’

But the paint…a full respray on a Shadow soon gets costly, even if there’s no metalwork to do.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Gregg.

‘Give it a rub with a cloth, and it comes

up all shiny.’ I tried, and it did. To a remarkable extent.

THAT CONDOR MOMENT… I thought about the car a lot on the long drive home to Scotland. About that rather exciting ownership, and the service book full of stamps from Broughton’s of Cheltenham. I grew up in Cheltenham and once or twice pressed my nose to Broughton’s window when they were still at No 1 the High Street. Maybe I’d seen this car. So a couple of days later, I asked my pal John Wyatt if he felt like sharing the risk and going halves with me. To my surprise he agreed, and I found myself making an offer. And here I must cut a J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

Factory underseal and no rot!

Polish rapidly makes an amazing difference to the Marlborough Brown paint. Note tiny Ducal crest

long story short, because the process of buying the car ended up taking several months, during which John pulled out and was replaced by his son Findlay, a 21-year-old hereditary car nut. But in March this year, the car finally made its way up north.

A formal inspection by Gregg’s team at Hightone gave us fair warning – fuel system dirty, hydraulics and especially brakes certain to need flushing and potentially extensive replacement, rear discs ruined, transmission unknown, tyres rather old and so on. But the engine had eight encouraging figures from a compression test and of course there was this excitingly un-rusty shell.

The interior trim, in mellow beige or magnolia hide, is a little grubby but undamaged and should be easy to revive. Same with the carpets, we hope.

The dash veneer is a nice enough to keep while the door tops and dashtop strip will need revarnishing.

On each back door is a tiny crest, symbols representing the Spencer and Churchill families with a Ducal coronet above them. The chrome has survived amazingly well with only a bit of spotting to the top of the front bumper, and that may clean up. The paint, as we know, needs only a bit of light polish and a cloth, but we’ll save that for last. So R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

what about the mechanical side?

Here it was clear we’d have plenty to do. And this led Fin and I to our first big decision – crack on by ourselves or get some help? Because the plans for storing the car were changing fast, and would ideally suit a vehicle that could at least be started and driven in or out of a parking bay, we chose to get some help while we arranged where it would end up.

A FRIEND TO THE RESCUE Our friend Stephen is a clever mechanic, but more importantly, someone you can interest in a silly project.

He seemed amused by the Shadow, enjoying the daunting level of technical complexity and detail that Rolls-Royce built into the design, so I flooded his computer with PDFs of workshop manuals. We decided to try and make it run. This, apparently, had been done some time before at Hightone and possibly even before that, but using only a surrogate fuel supply.

Stephen found both carburettor float bowls full of gunk and with punctured floats, soon replaced with some from Flying Spares, the first of many parts we were grateful to find in stock. The points needed cleaning and I bought

'One titled owner'...in this case, it's true

a fresh battery. We had a spark!

Stephen had already replaced the fuel filter element and blown through the car’s fuel pipes with compressed air. He rigged up a clean jerry can full of Super Unleaded and fed it into the fuel line, as we hadn’t yet had a chance to clean the fuel tank out.

When Fin had first tried the ignition »

89

STAFF CARS SHADOW PROJECT

key, it produced nothing at all – not even an ignition light. Nothing worked in the auxiliary position either. Yet when Stephen tried it a few days later, it behaved as it should and we had power in the ignition circuit. More on this gremlin later, but then Stephen turned the key the engine burst into

life. Great news! Well, good news, at least. It wasn’t going on all eight and there was a nasty ‘tick-tick-tick’ from somewhere around the top of the engine that got louder and more unpleasant with increasing revs.

As the car was living at Stephen’s place, and Fin and I were only able

to turn up and join in from time to time, we spent the next week or two discussing various options for the cause of this noise while Stephen investigated. Prime suspects were one or more sticky hydraulic tappets or the brake pumps. As you may know, the complex hydraulic systems are driven not by a belt-powered pump like you’d find on a Citroën, but by two plunger pumps that live in the middle of the ‘vee’ and are actuated by special lobes on the camshaft. They can get stuck, the lobes wear, their springs break and any of these can cause a noise. Or maybe they were just starved of fluid?

GREEN GUNGE AND RODS THAT DON’T PUSH The hydraulic fluid reservoir is the metal tank the size of a modest garden pond that lives on the nearside inner wing. To our astonishment, the

Car has eight-track player visible through wheel plus separate radio between seats

Rear seat looks almost unused

90

Furred-up thermostat has been replaced

Interior should clean up very well

J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

bottom two inches of the contents were a green, slightly gritty sludge that strongly resembled pesto. No pump was going to function while trying to shift that. So we removed the tank, a wrist-aching challenge of awkward fixings, and I took it home so my son William could help me clean it thoroughly and re-paint the rusty lid.

With the tank reinstalled and fresh fluid (just Dot 3, to flush it through – the proper R-R juice can wait until we know everything’s ready) in the system, we thought the engine was quieter…but only a little. I rang Nigel Sandell, who generously offered to answer any questions that came up, and explained the engine noise. He gave me various possibilities including scary things like a piston skirt that had corroded and picked up on the inside of the bore, but near the top of his list was a bent pushrod.

Stephen had been concerned about

“...I couldn’t find any rust, which made me think I wasn’t looking hard enough.” starting a long-stored engine without removing the rocker covers to see if any valves were stuck. However, Hightone had it running within the last year, albeit briefly, so we went ahead. Sure enough, when Stephen removed the offside rocker cover to have a look, two pushrods were bent right out of shape and jammed in their apertures. Removing the nearside cover revealed another one, with a fourth slightly bowed. So whenever the engine was first started after the decades of inactivity, four valves had indeed been stuck, and refusing to move, caused the pushrods to bend – which they do by design, being the easiest part to replace.

Stephen managed to heave the bent ones out with mole grips. Would there be any other damage? With four straight second-hand ones from Flying Spares dropped into place, we had a nervy moment as the engine fired again. And there, for the first time, was a lovely quiet, smooth Rolls-Royce V8. I should end on this victorious moment but soon after that, when we attempted to re-start it, the ignition gremlin returned and has been with us ever since. After much study and a noble effort by Fin to try and get the lid off the ignition switch-box in situ, Stephen concluded the switch-box had to come out. And we’ll save that horror for next time. n

Pesto-like gunge was spooned out of hydraulic reservoir

Removing each of those pipe connections beneath reservoir is challenging

Rather grotty engine bay conceals much work to do

Scimitar GTC makes unusual bedfellow as work continues

R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

91

FROM THE ARCHIVES AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Status is important in the music industry, as demonstrated by the number of artists who have used a Rolls-Royce on an album cover. Some work better than others!

WORDS: NIGEL BOOTHMAN

TINA TURNER The Rolls is on the back cover of Tina’s 1973 album ‘Nutbush City Limits’ and was suggested by Danish reader Allan Wright. The front shows Tina angrily kicking a steaming and presumably conkedout Chevrolet pick-up truck, while

the back shows her in furs, resting on a rather beautiful pale metallic blue Silver Shadow I…such is the progress that talent, luck and hard work eventually brings.

The number plate on the Shadow reads ‘BOLIC”, and the car was

probably registered to Ike Turner’s Bolic Studios, where the album was recorded, but we’re guessing. Does anyone know? The car was shot by Fred Valentine and the cover put together with Dave Willardson’s illustrations by Lloyd Ziff.

WILLIE NELSON By 1972 Willie Nelson was on to his 14th and final album for RCA, after years of increasingly mismatched expectations. RCA, under guitar legend Chet Atkins, wanted the traditional Nashville Sound, while Willie was morphing from a clean-cut balladeer into an outlaw cowboy hippy, which he’s hinting at on this cover. The Silver Shadow wasn’t normally the kind of vehicle you were allowed near if you were a scruffy troubadour in flares, a leather jacket and a straw cowboy hat. Like Willie says, the words don’t fit the picture. By the way, this shot by Jimmy Moore features Willie’s wife Connie and his producer Felton Jarvis, dressed as the chauffeur.

J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

HOWARD RUMSEY’S LIGHTHOUSE ALL-STARS Durable double-bass playing bandleader Howard Rumsey saw at least 75 musicians pass through his band over the course of the 1940s, 50s and 60s, including Miles Davis and Chet Baker. ‘Jazz Rolls-Royce’ was recorded live at the Josiah Royce Hall (hence the idea for the album name) on the UCLA campus on October 28th, 1957. The album came out as a mono LP in 1958 on Lighthouse Records and was reissued several times. The car seems to be a Sliver Cloud 1, but more than that we can’t tell you.

ROSE ROYCE Los Angeles soul-disco outfit Rose Royce contained no members named either Rose or Royce, with singer Gwen Dickey attracting most of the attention. It’s hardly a surprise that they resorted to some Rolls-Royce-related imagery on their covers, and perhaps it was only the disapproval of Crewe’s finest lawyers that kept them from being more overt. Their 1977 album ‘Rose Royce II, In Full Bloom’ features a relatively tasteful adaption of the Spirit of Ecstasy but the rather cheesy ‘Best of’ album with the toy car on the front is more questionable.

R R & B D J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2

G BATTLES While Rolls-Royce hasn’t attracted quite the same following amongst America’s hip-hop elite as some other luxury brands, it was bound to catch on somewhere.

Mr Battles is a hip-hop artist and songwriter from Oakland, California, and this cover to his 2019 single ‘Rolls-Royce’ reinforces the message: it’s about a Rolls-Royce. In this case a Wraith coupé, chosen to match Mr Battles’ jacket – or is it vice versa?

93

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THE FINAL PAGE

NIGEL BOOTHMAN

On a triumphant day for vintage Bentleys, a Rolls-Royce of the same age made a big impression on our Editor

n the last issue, I touched on the earliest years of RollsRoyce and Bentley, when of course they were independent companies with little in common beyond an upper-crust clientele and a reputation for fine engineering. Just how different they might have seemed was illustrated for me on a damp Sunday trip up to the Gleneagles Hotel for the finish of the Flying Scotsman rally, as featured in our News pages this month.

All around us were the booming, blattering exhaust tones of burly vintage Bentleys, some of 3 litres but most of 4 ½ litres or indeed rather more – the mechanical upgrades are as common as the sporty new bodywork in this competitive, exciting world.

Such cars have come to dominate the entry list with over 20 of them taking

I

“It has charm to spare, with the kind of personality and appeal even the best restorers and rally preparation outfits can’t install.” part as opposed to one solitary RollsRoyce, a 20-25 Drophead Coupé. Yet the car that sticks in my head from that day out is indeed a Rolls-Royce, though it wasn’t even competing.

Amongst the spectators’ cars was the unusual and rather splendid 1928 RollsRoyce 20hp Doctor’s Coupé, pictured here, owned by Alec MacDougall of Glasgow. This Hooper-bodied car has been well cared for and is very original, retaining lots of interesting features fitted either early in its life or in the long ownership of the keeper previous to Alec, a London-based gentleman

Fascinating 20hp Doctor's Coupé at Gleneagles

Decorative glass ashtray on dash is one of many charming features

98

Wood veneers are exquisitely book-matched

called Roy Berry. These include a shock-absorbing front bumper with oil-filled dampers that can be topped up via grease nipples. Alec says this is an American feature, though the car’s original destination was supposed to be in another direction entirely.

‘I was told it was ordered for an Indian customer,’ said Alec. ‘That’s why it has all the louvres in the bonnet sides. But apparently it never went to India and was in fact sold to a customer here in Scotland. It’s a very unusual body, with such a wide cabin that it’s actually classed as a three-seater.’

It carries a set of trafficators in their own pods, a blue glass sunshade for the driver and dainty little frosted glass ashtray on the dash. The wheel discs, badge bar and smart blue paint complete a very distinctive look. It has charm to spare, with the kind of personality and appeal even the best restorers and rally preparation outfits can’t install.

‘I don’t think of it as anything precious,’ says Alec. ‘I use it and look after it and enjoy it, and it gets driven.’

As do all the cars competing in the Flying Scotsman, of course.

But it was heartening to see that some pre-war Rolls-Royces come out in the rain too, even when there aren’t prizes to be won. ■

Unusual bumper bar has oil-filled shock absorbers

J U LY/AU G U S T 2 0 2 2 R R & B D

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