There was a time when the Rolls-Royce badge rightfully sat on the grille of ‘the best car in the world’.
That was a long time ago however, when the automobile was in its infancy, back when reliability and refinement didn’t come as standard.
The once proudly British marque was a purveyor of fine machines, whose characteristics would lead to ‘Rolls-Royce’ becoming a byword for outstanding quality.
It dates back to the company’s founder, Frederick Henry Royce. This working-class boy got his first job as a nine-year-old, and at 14 he was an apprentice at the Railway Works where he discovered engineering.
He would establish Royce and Co in 1884, making electric contraptions such as dynamos and motors.
The first automobile he owned was a second-hand French Decauville, which he found fault with and vowed he could do better. In 1904 he turned out his first car, the Royce 10hp.
Royce would eventually meet up with a Charles Stewart Rolls, from the upper class, schooled at Eton, and whose company, Rolls and Co sold cars.
Rolls was so impressed with Royce’s creation, he wanted rights to sell it exclusively. And so Rolls-Royce Ltd was born in 1906; Royce making the cars and Rolls selling them.
While you had the engineer in Royce and the salesman in Rolls they were in need of marketing and publicity. Step in Claude Johnson to the role of managing director.
Rolls-Royce’s new 40/50hp model required promotion and Johnson decided to enter it in a series of reliability trials to demonstrate its world-class engineering.
He took chassis no. 60551, and fitted it with an open body from Barker & Co. This he specified to be painted silver, with silver-plated fittings. The car was dubbed the ‘Silver Ghost’, the spectre alias referencing the car’s quiet, refined engine and its smooth ride.
In 1907, the car entered in a number of reliability trials, popular at the time to prove a car’s worth. Its performance saw it complete the Scottish Reliability Trial without a breakdown.
It would later cover 24,000km, driving day and night (except for Sundays) to set a world record for continuous travel.
These feats were well publicised and earned Rolls-Royce its reputation as the best car in the world from the fledgling British motoring press at the time.
Fast forward a few decades, and it was 1965 when Rolls-Royce first produced the Silver Shadow, a car that would include a few firsts for the marque.
It was quite a departure from the more regal Silver Cloud it replaced. The Shadow was smaller, both in length and width, to be a more usable luxury sedan. Still, it was no shrinking violet at over 5.1m in length, and 1.8m wide.
Where the Cloud had big flowing guards and a bulbous profile, the Shadow was a more modern design, simple, elegant yet still with an imposing presence.
It was R-R’s first car to utilise unibody construction, and the first with an independent rear suspension set-up. Every car up to that point had rolled along on a separate chassis and had a live rear end.
So the Shadow displayed a big advancement in ride refinement, which was enhanced further with a hydropneumatic self-levelling system, used under licence from Citroen. The braking department utilised discs for the first time too.
Behind the big grille lived a V8 of Rolls’ own design, first displacing 6.2 litres, before being bumped up to 6.75 in 1970. The 90-degree V8 was of the overhead valve variety, nothing particularly fancy, but majoring on torque production and smoothness.
The six-and-three-quarter-litre eight would live on long after the Silver Shadow and was last used in the 2020 Bentley Mulsanne. Outputs were never stated by Rolls-Royce, though power was estimated at between 120kW and 140kW for the 6.75.
Early models used a four-speed Hydra-Matic auto sourced from GM, though from 1968, export models were using the more robust three-speed Turbo 400 from GM.
That became standard from 1970 to handle the increase in torque from the larger V8.
The Shadow rolled on through the decades, the Shadow II appeared in 1977, with a few mods to the suspension and the addition of rack and pinion steering, along with rubber bumpers to adhere to safety regulations in the US.
The final example was made in 1980, Rolls having produced just over 30,000 of them. That made it the most numerous of the ‘real’ Rolls Royce models, those made in Blighty, by the English.
The Rolls was upper class luxury, its price in 1965 in the UK being £6500, or around 10 times what your average Ford Cortina cost at the time.
Its price now isn’t so astronomical. One might look upon it as affordable classic luxury with pricing in the $25-$40k range. Though it appears the term ‘caveat emptor’ is one that should be added to any sales listing. Which we’ll get to.
This example, loaned to us from North Shore Motors in Auckland, was in reasonable shape. AROLLS exudes a definite sense of occasion.
Popping the button on the handle, the door feels solid as it swings open. And it closes with a certain precision, and a pronounced clunk, such is the substance of the Roller. It’s prime British beef, all 2200kg of it.
The interior is lounge-like, the wide flat seats still with their original tan hides, and still feeling cushy.
Sitting behind the exquisite, thin-rimmed, twin-spoke steering wheel allows you to take in the heritage; the organ pulls, the dials, the abundance of leather, plush carpets, the wooden dash.
This 1970 model has less of the latter, the dash redesigned with more leather padding to meet safety rules. But everything is solid, crafted, not mass produced.
The V8 fires easily, hardly audible as it settles into a purr. Its column-mounted shifter slips the trans into drive and it eases away from rest. The Silver Shadow is all about refinement.
While the V8 is perhaps not quite as silky as it once was, it oozes easy urge. There’s nothing so vulgar as a tacho on the dash, but it feels like the eight never exceeds 3000rpm.
It’s all very relaxed, the auto, like a good servant, going about its duties without being noticed.
The steering is ultra light, not wanting to bother the driver with any untoward vibration. It feels like there’s a tub of butter at the bottom of the steering column, which is churned up as you twirl the wheel.
And this stirring motion then encourages the front wheels to turn; it feels that disconnected.
The ride is sublime, genuinely wafting down the road. It’s properly good at isolating you from the world outside. But it handles as you’d expect. We’re not sure if anyone was in charge of tuning the suspension for corners.
The chassis dynamics department can’t have been a big one back in the day, if one even existed. The lean is laughable even at town speeds.
About the only thing that requires effort is the brake pedal; it demands a decent heave and don’t expect to stop in a hurry either.
The Shadow garners an interesting response from the public; a member of the proletariat saluted us as we wafted past.
Another character we met at the servo asked if we could pick him up later that evening and wondered if there would be two princesses in the back for him? I guess people are naturally inclined to align Rolls-Royce with the British aristocracy and their odd ways.
Now, getting back to the relative affordability of this classic Rolls. While the ask of a Shadow might seem reasonable, it’s also reasonable to assume you’ll need a healthy amount in reserve to keep it running.
Lifting the bonnet to reveal the complexity of the engine will surely get your mechanic’s eyebrows rising. Devotees claim mechanical reliability all comes down to proper regular maintenance, though there are many tales of woe out there.
Correcting engine mishaps can be costly, electrics can give problems as can the hydraulic suspension. This apparently requires vast quantities of specialty fluid to be replaced regularly.
The brakes are tricky customers too. So plenty to keep the home handy mechanic busy.
We couldn’t help thinking the Shadow could be a prime candidate for an engine transplant. An LS swap is popular in the US, but maybe an electric conversion is what it needs.
It would deliver the right refinement and effortlessness, but we aren’t sure it’d go down well with the faithful.
This article first appeared in the November 2024 issue of NZ Autocar magazine.
