Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 34 - Jan/Feb 2023 i Rolls-Royce & Bentley Driver

As this issue covers the festive period, allow me to wish every reader a very merry Christmas. It's a season with some compensations for the car nut, like extra garage time or the chance to put your feet up in front of the fire with a good read. But it's also tricky not to look forward to longer, lighter days when there's no salt on the roads and no ice on the windscreen. If you're ready to make plans for the summer, turn straight to page 83 to see our new collaboration with Scenic Car Tours for a trip to the Isle of Man, shown above. Our cover star this month could have been designed for a modelling career, but those glorious fastback looks evolved not only from the good…

The 2022 Annual General Meeting of the Rolls-Royce Owners' Club of Victoria was held in October to coincide with 100 years of the 20hp model. More than 60 members attended along with representatives of the 'Twenty' model. The meeting was chaired by Howard Wraight, Victoria Branch Chairman while Ian Berg, author and authority on 20hp cars, gave a talk on their history in Australia. Australia was a leading market for Rolls-Royce cars from the very outset; some 130 20hp cars were imported to Australia between 1922 and 1929 as against around 50 crossing the Atlantic to the United States and 100 going to India. Of the 130 20hp models that arrived in Australia, around 70 were bare chassis and were bodied by local companies of which Smith & Waddington of…

COVER STORY S-SERIES CONTINENTAL FASTBACK Í have an image from childhood,' says Ian Owen, 'it's a memory of seeing a fastback Bentley for the first time. I don't know whether it was an R-type or an S-series, but I know I walked around it, trying to work out what it was. I thought it was such an elegant shape.' Like many of us, Ian's early exposure to a particular car sowed a seed. It would be lovely to own such a thing one day, wouldn't it? Ian was fortunate - he had a business he was able to sell in 2008 and that mental seed finally had a chance to grow. Perhaps, after all, he could try and find a Bentley fastback - or at least look seriously at the…

FEATURE CAR ROLLS-ROYCE 20-25 It started with a phone call. Jeff Lipman’s business, First 4 Service, has a regular client who is a collector of Rolls-Royces, amongst other things. He had bought a few cars overseas and brought them into the country. Jeff and his team, who normally work on the service and repair of modern cars, would inspect the new arrivals and carry out any necessary tasks, then register the cars for use in the UK. 'The phone rang and I found myself speaking to this client,’ says Jeff. ‘I was asked to collect an old Rolls-Royce from an underground car-park in Berkeley Square in the West End of London. All I gathered was that it had a boat-tail body and wasn’t in very good condition, but it would…

We know Padgett's is a family business, Jeremy, but can you tell us about its origins? 'My father bought a 1926 Bentley 3-Litre in the early 1950s and worked part time for a specialist to get to know the cars, until he founded his own business in 1957. He worked on lots of famous vintage Bentleys that were active in the BDC, and then in the 1960s developed a design for Mk VI-based specials that involved moving the engine and transmission backwards for more traditional sporting lines. I joined the business in the 1970s and we ended up building more than 45 of these. We then used this knowledge to develop and enhance performance on the Crewe-built cars for touring and endurance events. In particular, we built a reputation for…

The 1998 split between Rolls-Royce and Bentley allowed both marques to press a reset button and reinvent themselves for the new century. Despite the famous drama of VW out-bidding BMW for Rolls-Royce and Bentley, only to miss the Rolls-Royce branding rights that BMW snapped up, the two German giants sorted out their differences amicably enough. Volkswagen continued to build both Rolls-Royces and Bentleys at Crewe up to 2003, which allowed BMW to build a new factory at Goodwood in West Sussex and come up with a completely new Rolls-Royce model sporting the Spirit of Ecstasy and the Palladian grille. The result was the new Phantom, or Phantom VII. Knowing that BMW was introducing an entirely new Rolls-Royce in 2003 practically dictated that Volkswagen had to do something similar for Bentley.…

As this issue of Rolls-Royce & Bentley Driver went to press, the 2022 motoring season was drawing to a close and Christmas fast approaching. Traditionally a time of reflection, the Club's Competitions Committee has been busy reviewing the past motorsport season to decide who will be recipients of the various trophies to be awarded at the forthcoming annual Competitions Day at the end of January. One accolade that will be up for grabs is the prestigious Frank Clement Memorial Trophy for Racing Driver of the Year. The seasoned Clive Morley has won it for the last two years - can he make it a hat-trick? Among others, the likes of former recipient Oliver Llewellyn, Competition Captain Ben Eastick, winner of the blue-riband Times Challenge Trophy (Bentley scratch race) at the…

Season Five of the Netflix drama The Crown, based on the life of the late Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the Royal Family, held a red-carpet premiere at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in London's Covent Garden on November 8th. To match the period covered by the new series - from the early 1990s to the end of the decade - the cars chosen to transport the leading players were all Rolls-Royces and Bentleys from these years. The cars were all supplied by one company, Auto Couture, a business established by ex-Jack Barclay staffer and former dealer principal Anthony Kearsley, who is a life-long enthusiast for both marques. He explained how the hire of the cars for the premiere came about. 'We supplied 28 Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars…

Bentley Motors Ltd reported astonishing third-quarter results for 2022, posting €575 million in operating profits, a figure that already smashes the previous sum for the best full-year total of €389 million. The 23.1% return on sales is the highest recorded in Bentley history. It's part of a pattern that would seem utterly impossible to the 20th-century incarnations of the marque, with 11,316 cars sold between January 1st and September 30th 2022. This looks on course to beat 2021's all-time record of 14,659 sales in a full calendar year. Compare that with a figure of just 151 Bentleys sold in 1981, before the turbocharged models started Bentley's resurgence. But even at the height of the model's 1990s popularity, sales in low four-figure numbers were as good as could be expected. Equally…

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars created the first of what would eventually be three Boat Tails through their Coachbuild department, working with the clients over more than three years before the car’s public debut at Villa d’Este In October 2021. The process is as old-school as can be, in many ways, with full-size clay bucks eventually transformed into hand-built aluminium, all of it based on an exhaustive design process with sketches evolving over months and years in collaboration with the eventual owners. The engine, taken from the current Phantom, is about the only piece of the car that has moved across unchanged from another Rolls-Royce model. There are dozens of unique touches, from the pair of hand-built Bovet watches created especially for this car (the client collects watches too) to the extraordinary…

ADVENTURE STORY SILVER SHADOW - PEKING TO PARIS Treading in the footsteps of the very earliest pioneers in motoring history, two Australians set out on the most arduous of journeys, taking in 11 counties and some of the most inhospitable terrain on planet Earth. It was, of course, the Peking to Paris Rally - and their chosen mode of transport? A wellused 1975 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. The two brothers, one a company director and the other an engineer for a charter airline, both have loving families and a good life in Australia. Yet one day they went out and bought a secondhand Rolls-Royce and entered arguably the most daunting competition for any form of wheeled transport. If that wasn't enough, consider the fact that neither Alan nor Steve Maden had…

FEATURE CAR ROLLS-ROYCE SILVER SPIRIT Maybe size has something to do with it. When James Martin was a lad in the early 1980s, he would often be taken to Southend sea-front when there was a bit of a car show going on. There was a major 'scene' in the area back then, not just for British classics and fast Fords, but American cars and hot-rods too. Such enormous and outlandish cars can make an impression at an early age, and even if your tastes don't lie in a transatlantic direction when you reach adulthood, a fondness for really sizeable motor-cars is understandable. Thankfully James has better reasons for being fond of Rolls-Royces, which shoots a hole in our feeble armchair psychology. 'A couple of streets from where we lived, there…

What was, at the time, the world's fastest and most powerful production saloon saw the public light of day at the Geneva Motor Show of March 2005. The Flying Spur was penned by Dirk van Braeckel and was clearly a metamorphosis of the Continental GT shape he'd come up with alongside Paul Pires. Both the Continental and the Flying Spur shared the same nose, but from that point back, the bodywork was completely reworked. Although technically the Continental was a four-seater, the restraints of its two-door coupe shape meant that in reality, it was more of a 2+2. The four-door Flying Spur, with its conventional and more practical saloon profile, addressed that and offered a less expensive but more up-to-date alternative to the existing Arnage. To provide more space, the…

We have just come back from the NEC in Birmingham, and we have seen some new faces and some familiar ones. We were delighted to attend and get to know some of our members face to face. Thanks to our volunteers and to our fantastic team here at the Hunt House who have made it possible. The next event we have is the Classic Car & Restoration Show, once again at the NEC. It will be held between the 24th and 26th of March 2023, and we hope it will be equally as successful as the one we have just held. Again, a huge thank you to everyone who has made it a successful event. Lalique dragonfly mascot gifted to the owner by wellknown racer Peter Blond…

A sunny day in late autumn is something to treasure, so we took the chance to get the Rolls-Royce out and begin one of the jobs we'd been looking forward to for months: making it shiny. This should be the fun part, when we can put down the spanners and reach for microfibre towels and soft yellow dusters. After all, the car's original paint seemed to have survived very well under a peculiar pale coating that could be some form of surface oxidation, or perhaps a bloom of old wax reacting over years of slumber in the car's garage at Blenheim Palace. Whatever its origin, it came off remarkably easily with a bit of gentle rubbing. So we thought we'd start the engine and drive outside. The car had been…

Like the first Spirit, the second one James acquired came through the grapevine, when he heard a friend of a friend passed away and left a 1991 Silver Spirit II. This time James took both his son and his brother to see the gentleman's widow, and as soon as they laid eyes on the car, they both said 'This is number two!' 'I realised it needed a couple of small bits doing,' says James, 'but it had been the owner's pride and joy and it was a good car. I told the lady I'd like to buy it and drive it and keep it, not just buy it to sell on. She said she'd think about it, and the next morning phoned me up and said that if I raised…

Super Sports in white Here's the car as it was when new; bodied as a brief little two-seater skiff and painted white, or perhaps pale yellow. It was owned by a Mr L H Jackson and seems to have been enjoyed as family transport for picnic duties - despite its near-supercar performance for the day. Frank Dyos In its second form, the car is seen here on a 9ft 9½in wheelbase with a body apparently fitted by H.M. Bentley following a front-end accident. It was used extensively on the road and in competition by Frank Dyos, a keen member of the BDC, sometimes given to racing in an old ARP warden's tin hat. Trip to France The earliest photographs of the car in its Vanden Plas replica body, apparently on…

Walter Owen Bentley learned a great deal about durability, power output and efficiency in engine design during the First World War, when he created the Bentley BR1 rotary engine in 1916 that powered the Sopwith Camel. When he founded his own car company in January 1919, he already had ideas in his head for the engine design he would use, and laid these down on paper to be refined and developed by the small team he assembled: Frederick Burgess, whom he'd met at Humber when developing the BR1; Harry Varley from Vauxhall who would add his expertise to the cylinder head design; motor trade expert Arthur Hillstead, and Clive Gallop. Bentley met Gallop, a pilot in No. 56 Squadron, when he was liaising with squadrons on the Western Front, but…

Things soon started to come together. Tony Huggins, my trimmer had completed a full rear cabin refresh, including cushions with the RR logo embossed, foot rests, new jump seats, all new door cards and lining, some small storage areas in the front seat door panels, storage for large iPads in the rear door panels, and finally a magnificent rear seat armrest that folds down to store the best wine available, with a lid that opens to provide a bottle opener, corkscrew, cheese cutter and more. It's a deviation from what was originally shipped by Park Ward, but I'm sure they would have done this if asked. It is modelled on the latest Silver Ghost rear armrest wine cooler. After suitable time and effort, the repaired engine was going beautifully on…