Rolls Royce Classic Car Models

Rolls-Royce, whose cars have been awarded the accolade of The Best Car in the World', has always been a typically British institution, derived initially from a partnership between electrical engineer Henry Royce and car salesman Charles Rolls. Henry Royce 's first car was a noisy and unreliable 1901 Decauville and, being a perfectionist, he was sure he could do better. Using the Decauville's design as a basis, he built his own version - and two others - in 1904. It was immediately obvious that these were excellent machines, and their reputation soon reached the ears of the Hon. C.S. Rolls.

The patriotic Rolls, who until then had been forced to trade mostly in imported machinery, was highly impressed and offered to sell everything Royce could make. Three of the new cars, bearing the name Rolls-Royce, were then exhibited on Rolls's stand at the Paris Motor Show in December 1904. Rolls, a pioneer competition driver, enjoyed a great deal of success with these early cars, including winning the Tourist Trophy race in 1906. He also provided the basis for publicity stunts by advertising man Claude Johnson, who became known as 'the hyphen in Rolls-Royce'. These stunts included taking the world reliability record with 7089 miles (11,406 km) non-stop in 1907 in the first really great Rolls- Royce car, the six-cylinder side-valve engined 40150, later to be called the Silver Ghost.

The 40/50 - first shown in 1906 - set new standards in silence of operation, seemingly unlimited power, supreme reliability, superb steering, and excellent brakes (by the standards of the day). It put the chassis - Rolls-Royce did not make its own bodywork until after the Second World War - into a class of its own and promptly received the title of 'The Best Car in the World'. One of Johnson's most successful stunts was to have the 40/50 Motor Show chassis clad in silver-painted and plated bodywork and christened the Silver Ghost, because it was so silent. Demand for the Silver Ghost was so high that Rolls-Royce had to move from Royce's old factory in Manchester to a new works at Derby in 1908. Rolls, in the mean time, extended his sporting activities to flying, becoming the first man to fly to Franceand back non-stop. He was the first Englishman to be killed in a flying accident.

Johnson then took over much of the running of the business as Royce's health deteriorated after years of overwork. From 1911, much of Royce's design work would be carried out from his villa in the South of France. Thus the 40/50 continued to be modified, but with no major changes, until 1925. Production continued on a reduced scale throughout the First World War, when many 40/50s made magnificent armoured cars weighing more than 6 tons (6000 kg). Numerous other makes were used but, by general agreement, there was nothing to match a Rolls-Royce for armoured cars.

Under pressure from the government, during the First World War Rolls- Royce began to build 12-cylinder aeroengines. Like the Silver Ghost, these proved so reliable that they had a great effect on the British war effort, later powering the first 'plane to cross the Atlantic. However, after the war, the demand in Britain for very expensive luxury cars and aero-engines was low and Johnson decided to open a subsidiary factory in Springfield, Massachusettes, to cater for the American market. The Silver Ghost was made there until 1926, usually complete with a body built by Rolls subsidiary Brewster of New York, as not even Johnson could persuade the Americans that it was normal to purchase a car chassis, then take it to a coachbuilder to have a body fitted. Strangely enough, they preferred to buy a complete car from the showroom!

To counter the drop in home sales of the 40/50, which continued in reduced production at Derby, Rolls-Royce introduced a new, smaller, model called the Twenty, which became very popular from 1922. In 1924 this became the first Rolls to be fitted with four-wheel brakes. The new overhead-valve engine which had been designed for the Twenty formed the basis in 1925 for the power unit of a revised version of the 40/50, called the New Phantom later called the Phantom I). Production at Springfield was switched to the Phantom I in 1926. Johnson died in the same year, but Royce soldiered on with a good management team, replacing both the Phantom I and the Twenty in 1929. Construction of Rolls-Royce cars at Springfield ceased in 1931.

The Phantom's chassis, the ancestry of which could be traced back to that first Silver Ghost in 1906, was lowered, with half-elliptic springing all round and renamed the Phantom 11.The Twenty had its engine enlarged, and with chassis modifications, became the 20/25. Royce's design team at the time included Ivan Evernden, who was to help create the Bentley Continental after being responsible for the most attractive 'Continental' bodies built by Barker on the Phantom 11 chassis. Rolls-Royce was able, in 1931, to buy the bankrupt Bentley Motors, and stop rising competition from its 8-litre.

Rolls-Royce's ever-increasing involvement with multi-cylindered engines for aircraft and ships was reflected in the Phantom III of 1936. Its V12 power unit owed much to aero-engine design and developed approximately 170 bhp at 3000 rpm: as ever, Rolls-Royce refused to reveal its car's power output, merely describing it as 'adequate'. There were considerable changes to the chassis, too, involving the use of the General Motors' system of independent front suspension. This had been developed largely by Maurice alley, formerly of Rolls-Royce's now-obsolete Springfield factory.

One of the most favoured Rolls-Royce coachbuilders had been Barker, which specialized in heavy formal limousines, but when Park Ward, which normally produced lighter, more sporting, bodies, ran into financial trouble in 1938, it was taken over to act as the company bodybuilder. As the demand for aero-engines increased in the years immediately before the Second World War, Rolls-Royce was already preparing to switch the emphasis of car production to the less labour-intensive smaller models, using ready-made bodies. It was in this climate that the Wraith, developed from the 25/30, was introduced in 1939. Rates of pay soared during the war, and it was no longer possible to base production on tremendously labourintensive cars. Consequently, a standard steel body was adopted, with an overhead-inletlside-exhaust military adaptation of the earlier six-cylinder engine.

At first, the factory felt embarrassed about calling these cars Rolls-Royces, partly because it had no control over the specification of the steel available immediately after the war. As a result, when production began in 1946, all cars bore the Bentley badge. There was a strong demand, however, in the more prosperous American market, for 'a proper Rolls-Royce', so the Silver Dawn model was created from a Bentley standard steel saloon basis in 1947. In this case an optional automatic gearbox, based on the General Motors' Hydramatic, was fitted. The basic chassis was available, however, for the use of whatever specialist coach builders were left, as the Silver Wraith. This chassis then remained unchanged, in essence, until the end of the next series of models, the Silver Cloud and Bentley SI in 1960, taking in the Bentley Continental R type. The Rolls-Royce standard bodywork was restyled as the Silver Cloud (and Bentley SI) which continued to make up the bulk of production - with the purchase of coachbuilders H. J. Mulliner consolidating body supplies - before a new V8-cylinder engine was introduced in 1959. This was a completely modern unit with overhead valves which has remained in production into the 1980s. By the time these series II versions of the Silver Cloud and Bentley S-series had been introduced, refinements from America, such as power-assisted steering, had become standard fittings. Twin headlamps were also 'imported' for the series III and with the same running gear, from 1962