I did like the second picture at the top of the page
......spent more than half a million pounds on restoring the car. That is expensive elbow grease!
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There's something not quite right about that story.
That looks a very streamlined body for 1932: maybe it's not the original shape, or it's late 1930s. Interestingly, FMO 731 (Berkshire, post-war) doesn't appear on the website you can use to look up car numbers - mycarcheck.com.
If the body isn't original, it wouldn't be worth anything like £1m.
Last edited by: Avant on Sat 3 Jul 10 at 11:42
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The currant bun strikes again.
Just a load of journalistic hype. Sounds to me as though someone in the Sun motoring department - if there is such a thing - has started coping old cars. Ref the equally hyped piece the other day about the old Bentley.
A couple of years ago I saw, at a dealer in southern France, a fantastic restored Phantom II that had belonged to some Indian potentate. The price tag was 400k euros plus. Even that was optimistic and the Sun may not have noticed but auction prices for old cars in the UK are starting to head south, at last, as predicted by Jeremiahs like me.
I hate the word 'Roller', enthusiasts call them Royces, after the man who designed and built them. It's almost as bad as 'Jaaaaaag'.
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>>It's almost as bad as 'Jaaaaaag'<<
But not quite as bad as Beemer :(
Re: the £1m ticket, well - he's obviously talking the price up, and as for the £500k spent on the restore,
show me the bills Mr Raynsford ... it is a unique 'Royce' and the only one ever built (according to the article)
but as my ole mate used to say "Don't believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see".
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Love the reader comment (which I suspect is t-i-c) "it would look beter with a nice set of mag alloys on it
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'mag alloys'
Yes, I thought that was funny too.
Of course the chassis size isn't specified anywhere in the Sun piece, but it looks like a 25/30 (4.25 litre ioe engine) rather than the 20/25 (3.5 litre). My father had one of the latter, a 7 seater limo with a coupe de ville roof at the back, with pram irons on it, that no longer opened. It was a lot less curvaceous looking than that one.
I'm not sure Avant is right to say that it is later than it is said to be. And all RRs in those days were 'unique' in the sense that the bodies were made by coachbuilders and stuck on the RR chassis. Of course sometimes owners looked through a catalogue and said 'That one', so some models were made in largish numbers. But another thing that sometimes happened was that owners had a car rebodied.
I wouldn't begin to know what it's worth, but a million quid sounds a hell of a lot for a relatively cooking Rolls-Royce. If it was a stark Phantom II tourer or small four-light saloon, it might be quite valuable though.
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Did they have 'juggernauts' pre 1939 ????
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Ever seen a Renault 45 tourer Fullchat? 9 litre engine, could cruise at 90, front end like a cowcatcher, big klaxon, a true Toadmobile and absolutely enormous, from the twenties though.
Must have taken a bit of muscle wrestling it along bumpy old French A roads though.
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This is a nice old tool ~ www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C79190/#
A 'Royce' Silver Dawn ... I'd never heard of a Silver Dawn before,
It would look nice outside my country mansion (if I had one)
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Sold first in the US, some with auto transmission. The first RR model buyers didn't have to specify a body for: it was the Standard Steel Saloon Bentley body. A few Dawns were made with a Mk VI body I think, but most of them had the more elegant, larger-booted (or trunked) R Type.
At the time - I was 12 to 15 or so - I thought the Dawn was a bit of a swizz, no Mulliner or Park Ward or Thrupp and Maberley to add to its name. A poor man's Rolls-Royce, almost a Jaguar really... Heh heh. Nothing can beat the snobbery of a small boy.
(Edit: yup, that one has the R Type body).
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Sun 4 Jul 10 at 13:14
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You certainly know your Rollers Lud ... Do you think this would make a 'sound' purchase?
www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C120764/
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Er... cough, choke, tee hee (reaches for ear plugs and shades and runs for cover)...
Very strange piece of culture clash, sort of voodoo Latino low-rider effort... perfectly possible that the actual car is well worth the money if you don't mind 10mpg, but the aesthetics are, choke, a bit of an acquired taste.
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I do believe that the Silver Dawn, like the Wraith, had one carburettor instead of the two the Bentley had. Perhaps though it needed them both with a GM autobox.
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Roller now worth £1m after a bit of elbow grease - henry k
