I wonder why people buy them, other than the pose and prestige value?
If you had a poll of all Backroomers (genuine petrolheads) as to their money no object car I doubt if many, or even any, would pick a Roller.
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And the remainder of that company is essentially Bentley. BMW only purchased the rights to use the name from Rolls-Royce.
What was Rolls-Royce (which took over Bentley) became Bentley after VAG lost the right to use the Rolls-Royce name.
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I've actually seen AX 201 In all its glory. A fantastic car. Sadly RR seemed to loose it in the 1970's and never really recovered. However don't forget the legacy of the Rolls Royce Aero business I know it is a separate company but it was formed from the same original company and now they are one of the worlds largest aircraft engine makers.
Sadly in Manchester at least the only thing which remains from their history is the Midland Hotel were they originally first met.
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I remember a name plate on a building in Hulme where the original Rolls-Royce factory was located. Not sure it survived the redevelop of Hulme years ago - the factory was long gone of course.
Sadly when VAG got annoyed they lost RR to BMW they got rid of everything at Crewe to do with Rolls Royce including cars from the museum. Everything. And then years later employed the mastermind behind BMW getting the RR name for little money as the new chief exec (Bernd Pischetsrieder).
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By way of a bit of BR trivia, I once drove one of Elton John's Rolls Royces. Long time ago and a long story.
It was a pretty cool car but even if I could afford one I wouldn't want one.
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the legacy of the Rolls Royce Aero business
But that is what is left of the original Rolls Royce company now I suppose. Well RR went bankrupt I think and Vickers ended up with the car company and the aero engine part was spun off. Had an interesting chat with an ex senior employee of RR aero engines on holiday earlier this year. You then realise how long ago design work on the lift fan of that new F35 jump set started. A long time!
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Indeed it is why there are very very few companies in the world making aircraft engines. It is not something you can do in your shed.
I don't think I would want a Rolls Royce either, if I had a bit of money it would be an Aston Martin without a doubt. However if I didn't want to drive then I can't think of any where better than in the back of an extended Rolls Royce.
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RR (Good initials for this thread)
If I had enough money for one exotica car, it wouldn't be a Rolls.
However if I had enough for several on my driveway, one would definitely be a big huge Phantom!
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I moved a lot of Rollers in my self-employed recovery days.
If I could drive them, perhaps on trade plates, then I did. Driven 1926 20HP, 20/25 and most others including Silver Dawn up to Shadow. Shadows were OK but sloppy...easy to drive with a lovely ' whoof ' of power when you booted them....the whole front end lifted in the air !
Here's one I didn't drive.....I picked it up in Cambridge for a customer in Southport...I think he just wanted it for the title. He was converting them into ragtops and selling them in the US for about £250K at the time...not that he did the work, just wrote the cheques ! Double click to enlarge.
tinyurl.com/ycopwuo
It was a pig to load up, only a hand winch in those days....mind you, they all were !
Ted
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Wow how on earth could you do anything with that. Looks like a cat A write off without a doubt.
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Wow how on earth could you do anything with that
Ted said... "I think he just wanted it for the title." I assume little if any of this shell was used??
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Found another photo...after exhumation and ready to go.
I'm not sure if any bits were salvaged, maybe the chassis plate but I doubt that survived on this one !
I have another pic of one, finished and going off to trimmers and painters. I think I moved a few Bentley Continentals as well...for the same treatment.
tinyurl.com/ycopwuo
I've got a lot of photos, I used to take one of every interesting car I moved. Then my camera got nicked with a full film and I didn't bother much after that. Got quite a few of the 6R4 Metro...but that's another story.
Ted
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I've had brief drives in a Phantom VI limo, Shadow and Silver Spirit.
At the time - late 70s/80s - people looked at you as you went past.
I defy anyone not to derive some pleasure from that.
I've always thought those that say 'wouldn't have one' are those that have never had a Roller or even a drive in one.
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Been sat up all night trying to remember the name of the burnt out one ! ( Well, a few minutes anyway )
Of course, it's a Silver Cloud...a mark 3 with the twin headlamps
I think the buyer gave me a set of wheels to take down with me.
In the garage photo....Im pretty sure there was another one behind it and something older to the right of the picture.
' Business not too good after the fire ?' 'SHHHHH, that's next week '
Ted
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A shadow of its former self....
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Quote:....""I've actually seen AX 201 In all its glory."" I've actually ridden in it on more than one occasion - a long, long time ago.
I belive the man who created the Rolls-Royce company was Claude Johnson, who brought Charles Rolls and Henry Royce together.
Edited by Sofa Spud on 21/11/2009 at 13:39
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The Rolls-Royce aero engine company still retains the right to the name Rolls-Royce - they only licenced it to Rolls-Royce Motors and when Vickers sold their car manufactiuring business to VW, they didn't get the name so had to call the cars Bentley.
BMW managed to obtain the rights to the RR name, but had to start their super luxury brand from scratch.
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Rolls-Royce certainly existed as a brand name before 1906. There was a 2 cylinder Rolls-Royce of around 1903 and there was a V8 car of around the same time, called the Legalimit because it was limited to 20 mph, which was the limit at the time. The Legalimit was the first ever V8 car and was a total sales flop.
Originally the cars were called Royce cars, but they were Rolls-Royce, with the famous radiator shape, even before the Rolls-Royce as a company was formally founded in 1906.
tinyurl.com/yg7txxn
Link made Tiny to avoid formatting problems with the long URL used, Rob
Edited by rtj70 on 21/11/2009 at 14:48
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i have been to the rolls-royce factory in chichester many times and the quality of craftmanship in the entire car is astounding.
ive drive the new phatom sedan and convertable and cuope and now the new ghost and they really are a technical marvel.
for the work that goes into making these cars then they are worth every penny.
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Rolls-Royces had character and a unique feel. They made (muted) noises that no other car made. They were complicated as bell boy says and expensive to maintain, but if maintained pre-1960 examples lasted almost indefinitely. They weren't terrifically fast and reacted badly to being driven flat out. Three of their most distinctive features were the r/h remote gearchange, the centralised chassis lubrication system worked by a pedal, and the mechanical brake servo cribbed from Hispano-Suiza, which worked through a clutch on the side of the gearbox. A bit pernickety in neglected examples, and the braking could suffer.
Design policy was so conservative it put the Metropolitan Carriage Office to shame. My 1953 Bentley only had hydraulic front brakes, the rears being entirely mechanical worked by rods. Auto gearboxes, bought in from GM I think, were used from the fifties in some cars, as an option, but by the early sixties were standard. By the time the V8 engine - was that, too, GM-derived? - started being used a vacuum brake servo had become standard. However the flag of complexity was kept flying through the sixties, seventies and eighties by an adapted version of Citroen's hydro-pneumatic suspension. They were still Rolls-Royces. But the new ones are BMWs. They may be as good or better, but they aren't real Rollses.
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I think Rolls-Royce, despite their conservativeness, did have a couple of firsts. One was the V8 engine of the unsuccessful Legalimit I mentioned above - of 1905, of which only 3 were made. I think they also were the first to employ synchromesh, in the early 1930s.
I think you're right that the RR 6.25 litre V8 introduced in the late 1950s on the Silver Cloud ll was based on a GM design, but redesigned and made of aluminium instead of cast iron. Rover did exactly the same thing to a smaller GM V8 design.
Edited by Sofa Spud on 21/11/2009 at 14:50
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This is a proper Roller. Scroll down for photos.
www.rrab.com/frua1.htm
Imagine doing a three point turn in that.
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In my youth I worked (as a washer-up in one of a chain of coffee houses she was running in London) for a grand between-the-wars Paris bohemian woman, married to some sort of French aristocrat. I didn't like her much although she knew Henry Miller, Anais Nin and all sorts of people like that and was up to speed with Beat poets and the like although she scorned them: she was a foul-mouthed cockney most of the time and hard as nails, although for some reason venerated by the flamboyant male homosexuals who ran the actual coffee house business.
But this formidable lady's daily driver in around 1960 was an utterly magnificent sombre black Rolls-Royce Phantom, a very early II I think but with a conservative carriage six-light body, a sort of very large small limousine if you see what I mean. The old Triplex had yellowed in the windows but apart from that it was impeccably turned out, with patina. They don't make many of them like that any more, either the Rolls or its owner.
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Indeed, Lud, nor do they make people like Nubar Gulbenkian and cars like his 1956 Wraith open-drive landaulette.
I seem to remember he still wore spats, like Hercule Poirot, even into the '50s
tinyurl.com/y8psyyc
You've either got, or you haven't got style !
Ted
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The Gulbenkian car in the link above looks like a fairly standard late design by the bodybuilder Hoopers, though I stand to be corrected if need be!
Nubar Gulbenkian was by no means infallible in his extravagant tastes. He had a special body built on an Austin FX4 London taxi chassis.......
data.motor-talk.de/data/galleries/611436/4731984/g...g
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I like the Javelin ted, but topic drift y'know...
As for Nubar Gulbenkian, he had another taxi-based job - not the one in SS's link - but with basketwork rear carriage, which I used to see when I worked in the West End in 1960s, in Dover Street just across from the Ritz and St James's.
Edited by Lud on 21/11/2009 at 16:22
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Rolls-Royces may or many not have been the 'best car in the world' (I suspect there's no such thing), but they have a kind of presence that nothing else quite matches.
I don't think I've been in a Rolls since I was at prep school in rh late 50s / early 60s, where the headmaster had a magnificent 1939 Silver Wraith limousine, complete with division. He was one of the finest headmasters of his time, and it was typical of him to have a car like that - certainly a work of art, but also a very practical people-carrier which would take most of the first XI to away matches.
He sold it when he retired, but I do hope that FLU 670 is flourishing somewhere. The online numberplate index says it still exists.
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FLU 670 is no longer a Rolls Royce what ever it is :( just checked. The car may well stick exist on another plate though.
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I don't know where you checked, Rattle, but according to www.mycarcheck.com (data claimed to be supplied by DVLA),
"The vehicle FLU670, a Rolls Royce Wraith (Limousine), is on our database"
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I checked the DVLA site, the car tax part.
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The only car my wife goes on about is the Silver Mist (the 1980s model which was renamed) one of her employees used to have. She only went in it a couple of times for a few miles, but she said it was like being in a car which wasn't making contact with the ground.
We sat in a Phantom at a Rolls owners meeting during the summer and both agreed we would have one when the lottery numbers come up - everything about it oozed quality. The paint was very dark burgundy over black and looked stunning in the sunlight.
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