Rolls-Royce & Bentley Driver May - June 2022

Regular readers will know that Rolls-Royce & Bentley Driver’s previous Editor, Paul Guinness, signed off in our last issue and promised to leave the magazine in safe hands. Those hands are mine, and I’ll be doing my utmost to live up to Paul’s expectations. And more importantly, to yours. It’s been 20 years since I started working for classic car magazines and in that time, I’ve been asked one question pretty often: ‘you spend all day thinking about cars, so which is your favourite?’ The answer changes almost daily, but as the years have gone by, I’ve noticed a few themes: high-quality marques, often British, with a reputation for impressive engineering and innovation, sometimes with an aeronautical connection. Bristol, Lancia, Saab, Armstrong-Siddeley, Alvis and always Rolls-Royce and Bentley. So when…

One Australian Rolls-Royce club finally celebrated its 2021 Concours in brilliant sunshine under a cloudless sky…in January 2022. RR&BD’s Australian correspondent Richard Holdsworth explained the delays endured by the Victorian Branch of the Rolls-Royce Owners Club of Australia. ‘It’s quite understandable that the event might be postponed because of Covid-19, but it was scarcely creditable that the re-scheduled Rally and Concours could be abandoned on account of a waterlogged venue! This is Australia, isn’t it?’ Nonetheless, both virus and weather intervened, and the entrants had to wait until earlier this year. Concours judging was carried out at the Club’s Technical Centre in Rowville – 12 judges covering every facet of the Rolls and Bentley cars – while the Rally and Presentation was held under the Melbourne sun at the beautiful Xavier College…

It’s a simple question: why have you got three of them? The answer, of course, is not simple. Although it hardly needs answering at all if you’re a proper car nut; we all know how these things can happen. You start with one, you find another, you can just about manage the storage space and funds for a third, and it was such a good example it would have been a shame to miss it… Philip Robinson has applied a good deal more logic than that during the assembly of this trio. Before we get to his acquisition of these lovely cars, we need to step back a little way. Right back to Zimbabwe, in fact, where Philip was born and where he lived until he was 13. We note down…

Rolls-Royce Motors was under the ownership of Vickers PLC when, in October 1990, design work began on the car that would eventually replace the SZ series of Rolls-Royce and Bentley models. Progress was painstakingly slow but 1998 finally saw the launch of the Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph and the Bentley Arnage. For the first time in Rolls-Royce history, the cars would be powered by non-Rolls-Royce engines: a BMW 5.4-litre V12 for the Silver Seraph and a BMW 4.4-litre twin turbo V8 for the Arnage. But something else happened in 1998 – Vickers decided to sell Rolls-Royce Motors. We’ve touched on this tale before in RR&BD but it’s particularly relevant here. BMW were outbid by Volkswagen, who acquired everything bar the really important bits: the Rolls-Royce brand name and logo. BMW scooped…

CHEAPEST ROADWORTHY VINTAGE ROLLS? Finding a pre-war Rolls-Royce project isn’t difficult. Finding a useable car ready to use and enjoy while you improve it is less straightforward, especially if the price is south of £30,000. This 1928 Rolls-Royce 20hp Limousine may well be the most affordable roadworthy vintage Rolls-Royce (in the proper sense of the ‘V’ word – 1919 to 1930) on the market. The car was bodied by Flewitt of Birmingham, who only bodied a few 20hp and 40-50hp Silver Ghost chassis in the 1920s, making this a rare survivor, though there was a time when its survival seemed unlikely. Owner Tom James recaps the history. ‘Sometime in the 1930s an owner decided to “modernise” the car by changing the shape of the front wings and adding a swept down panel to…

Many illustrious coachbuilders have their roots in Italy – think of Pininfarina, Bertone, Giugiaro, Zagato and many others. Another name that belongs in this list is Ghia. Carrozzeria Ghia was founded in Turin by Giacinto Ghia in 1916 and when the founder died in 1944, his wife offered the company to his colleagues Mario Felice Boano and Giorgio Alberti, on the condition that her husband’s name would be preserved. It was. In the early years, Ghia designed special models for marques such as Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Volvo, Rolls-Royce and Ferrari, and produced car bodies on a small scale. In total, only two Rolls-Royces were fitted with Ghia bodywork: a Silver Wraith from 1951 (LWOF48) and a Silver Dawn from 1952 (LSHD22). It is this unique Silver Dawn with a Ghia four-door, six-light…