German Car Zone

1924 Rolls-Royce Boattail Silver Ghost








1930 Rolls-Royce Phantom II Boattail (built by Barker)

You see that Phanthom III in the first post? I know who has one here in Greece and he is a close friend of another friend of mine, who is a collector of classic cars (the guy with the 540K). Maybe in one or two months i will get to see this car in person.

PS. I just got a camera and asked the guy above to see his 1939 540K again. He said ok, and if the weather is nice, we will take it for a ride on Saturday!

I'm sure we will also see some unique & exceptional contemporary RR model as well - coming from RR's coachbuilding programme, named "Bespoke": meaning every customer's demand that is technically executable can be done. Eg. lately a $2+ million Phantom LWB have been delivered to a Chinese customer.

Sounds great Giannis.

I like the sound of this EnI. The problem really comes down to cost. These old Rolls-Royces had a separate chassis and body. When you bought a Rolls-Royce (or Mercedes, Bugatti, Duesenberg, etc.) you essentially were buying and engine and chassis -- then you could choose a coachbuilder to build the body to your own requirements. The traditional separate chassis and body construction ended in the 1950s with the development of the monocoque. The monocoque was first used in the the design of aircraft -- the 300 Adenauer was the last Mercedes with a separate chassis and body ...and the Silver Shadow was the first Rolls-Royce to use a monocoque construction -- and many purists saw it as the end of the "real" Rolls-Royces ...athough Rolls-Royce did continue production of the Phantom VI until 1992 with a separate chassis and body. Obviously, the coachbuilders, a number of which had been in business for well over a century, were no longer viable and so closed down.

Coachbuilders who built bodies for Rolls-Royce customers were mostly British ...but there were American, French, German, Italian, Swiss, and even Argentinian, coachbuilders who were commissioned.

Below are some of the well known coachbuilders ...I don't think any are still in business today. H.J.Mulliner and Park Ward were both bought by Rolls-Royce ...and Rolls-Royce continued to use the name Mulliner Park Ward to designate its own in-house customizing service.

Abbott
Allweather Motor Bodies
Arnold
Barker
Binder
Caffyns
Carbodies
Carlton
Cockshoot
Claude Hamilton
Cole
Connaught
Crosbie & Dunn
Flewitt
Franay
Freestone & Webb
Fuller
Fleetwood
Gill
Grosvenor
Gurney Nutting Ltd
Hall Lewis
Hamshaw
Harrison
Hooper
James Young Ltd
H.J.MULLINER
Lancefield
Lawton
Mann Egerton
Maddox
Mauslay
Mayfair
Maythorn
Meluish
Morgan
Motor Bodies
Nordbergs
Offord
Park Ward
Ranalah
Rippon
Salmons
Thrupp & Maberly
Vanden Plas
Vanvooren
Victor Broom
Watson
Weymann of Paris
Weymann (UK)
Windovers
Wylder

1971 Rolls-Royce Phantom VI (one off) 4-door Cabriolet limousine designed by Pietro Frua.

The vehicle took just over 20 years to be built. It was finally completed in 1992 by Mulliner Park Ward in London and was the last Phantom VI built.










I wonder what the torsional rigidity is like on this ....I shudder just thinking about it.

Here is a recent article about the other Frua Phantom. It is quite hideous ..but intriguing I think.

Supersize me

Martin Buckley describes a bespoke Rolls-Royce convertible that puts even the new Phantom in the shade

The manicured lawns and red carpets of the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este, set on the elegant shores of Lake Como since 1929, have always made a great showcase for specials and one-off rarities. This year it was the usual mix of prototypes and coachbuilt exotica, with Ralph Lauren's Mercedes SSK - looking as if it had just emerged from the Batcave - as star of the show.



My personal favourite was something very different but, in its way, just as dramatic. I spotted it instantly, towering above an otherwise unremarkable cluster of Rolls-Royces: a bespoke car from the 1970s that I had only ever seen in books and my Top Trumps Supercars card game - the Frua Phantom VI. An enormous, two-door drophead coupé worthy of its own postcode, it would be easy to dismiss this magnificent, metallic green machine, with Fiat 130 Coupé headlights flanking the towering radiator, as a homage to Lady Penelope and FAB1, but there is much more to it than that.

If we ignore the Sultan of Brunei's various modified Bentley Turbos and Silver Spirits, and a much uglier four-door Phantom that Turin stylist and coachbuilder Pietro Frua failed to finish before his death in 1983, it's safe to say that this car brought the era of the properly coachbuilt, owner-driver Rolls-Royce to an end when it was signed off in December 1973. Even the much-anticipated, nautically influenced 2007 Phantom Drophead Coupé driven for this week's cover story isn't coachbuilt in the true sense.

Nor is it as big.

All other Phantom VIs were limousines, usually built for heads of state, but Frua was commissioned to fashion this two-door, four-seat convertible on the same vast (12ft) wheelbase. With those proportions it could have ended up looking like a five-star open-topped coach, but he succeeded in making a car that only looks truly huge when people are sitting inside it: it makes adults look like children.


Like the car's current (second) owner, Rolls-Royce collector Walter Steinemann, the man who originally commissioned it was Swiss. Simon van Kempen was a diplomat who wanted a glamorous vehicle to use as everyday transport while impressing his colleagues from rival embassies in Monte Carlo. Mercedes wouldn't build him a special and Rolls-Royce couldn't supply anything outside its normal catalogue, but it would sell him a left-hand-drive Phantom VI chassis. So a rolling frame was delivered to Frua, via the Rolls-Royce agents in Geneva, in November 1971 at a price of £6,265.

The job soon turned into a nightmare. Frua was keen to use as many genuine Rolls-Royce parts as possible, but he couldn't speak English and nobody at the Crewe factory could speak Italian, so getting the right fittings for the body - in an age long before email or even proper faxes - was a long-winded trial. Several foreign parts, such as Mercedes door locks, had to be used to save time.

Van Kempen decided he didn't like the way the front bumper slashed through the grille on Frua's wooden styling buck, and the required modifications set the job back even further. At one stage the frustrated customer threatened to cancel his order altogether, but he must have been glad he didn't when the car was finally delivered at the end of 1973, after a public debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show.

The interior wasn't much bigger than, say, a Rolls-Royce Corniche, but the massive seats were a special design and the silver steering wheel boss had the owner's initials etched into it. Other interesting features included dual heaters for those nippy Swiss winter mornings and stowage bays for tools beneath the centre-hinged bonnet. Powered by the familiar 6.3-litre V8, the car was said to be surprisingly wieldy to drive, despite being perhaps the biggest two-door convertible built in post-war times.

Like so many one-offs, it could have disappeared into some dusty collection, but van Kempen, true to his word, really did use the car, clocking up the best part of 200,000 miles for business and pleasure. It's tempting to think that half of that was spent looking for a parking space…

Telegraph.co.uk

The largest gathering of Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts ever, took place on Saturday at the Rolls Royce head office and manufacturing plant at Goodwood, West Sussex. More than 60 of the historic motor cars, built between 1907 and 1926, were displayed before they embarked on a 17-day, 2000-mile tour.

The event marks the centenary of a reliability trial that established the reputation of the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost in 1907 as the world’s finest car. The commemorative cross-country tour includes stopovers in Derbyshire, the Lake District, Inverness, John O’Groats and Dundas Castle in Edinburgh. The tour has been organised by the 20-Ghost Club, which encourages the restoration, maintenance and use of Rolls-Royce cars built before 1945.

Members of the club have brought cars from as far away as the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and India. The vehicles represent some of the finest examples of their type, including the car that carried out the actual endurance test in 1907.

Two special new cars were also on display. The limited edition Rolls-Royce Phantom Silver has been built to mark this centenary and only 25 will be made. In tribute to the specifications of the original, the car is finished in a new Bespoke paint, Metallic Ghost Silver and includes a host of special features, including a solid silver Spirit of Ecstasy.

The second car is the recently launched Phantom Drophead Coupé - a two door, four-seat convertible. This spectacular new car is exciting customers around the world and a substantial order bank has been established. The whole of 2007 production has been sold and there are currently only a few build slots left in 2008. Production of the new model begins in the summer.

Speaking at the event, Chairman and CEO, Ian Robertson, said, “We are delighted to support the 20-Ghost Club on this unique occasion. We are especially pleased and honoured to present these wonderful motor cars together at Goodwood, the new home of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. The Silver Ghost was designed and built with an obsession for quality combined with the highest level of engineering and this remains the foundation of our company today.”

1925 Rolls-Royce Phantom I Aerodynamic Coupe