ROLLS-ROYCE SILVER SHADOW
The Silver Shadow reinvented and revitalised Rolls-Royce for the modern era and enjoyed the longest production run in the marque’s history. We look at how this epoch-making car came to be, and how it changed over its life.
For much of its existence Rolls- Royce had a rather uneasy relationship with innovation. It wasn’t a firm to push the boundaries of technology – the boundary it pushed was in the execution of existing technology to hither to-unknown levels of quality and reliability. Whenever it was deemed necessary to make advances, they were introduced after years of analysis, development and testing, at a pace that would not be rushed.
Which made the arrival of the Silver Shadow in 1965 all the more shocking, since this was not only the most innovative car ever to come from Rolls-Royce, but it marked an entirely new approach to both design and marketing at Crewe. The Shadow positively bristled with the very latest engineering and design the industry had to offer – not since the days of the Silver Ghost had a Rolls- Royce been so close to the cutting edge of automotive development. And while it seemed that this technological marvel had appeared virtually overnight, of course that was decidedly not the case. The project which ultimately resulted in the Silver Shadow had taken four years, but that was building on various projects and proposals that had been in train since 1953.
The impetus for what would become the Shadow was a sense that Rolls- Royce was at risk of being left behind by a technically-advancing mass market. By 1950 even cheap cars like the Morris Minor and Ford Consul boasted unitary construction, independent front suspension, hydraulic brakes, overhead-valve engines and so on. It was unitary build which really interested Crewe, and in 1953 Project Tibet got under way to design a chassis-less successor to the traditional Silver Cloud, which itself would be launched in 1955.
The sales returns for the Cloud proved enlightening, as for the first time in nearly 25 years more Rolls- Royces were
being sold in Europe than in North America, and they were increasingly being bought by a new demographic of affluent professionals, businessmen, entrepreneurs, creative types and others from the uppermiddle class rather than the British aristocrats, Hollywood celebrities and foreign monarchs who had made up Crewe’s traditional customer base. These new buyers actually drove their Rolls- Royces too, generating a new requirement for the cars to give at least some consideration to if not exactly driver enjoyment, then at least driver contentment.
These Silver Clouds were also becoming increasingly old-fashioned in a changing world, a world of high-speed motorways, well-surfaced trunk roads, crowded cities and increasingly sophisticated mass-market cars. In Europe the Citroën DS out-rode, out-steered, out-braked and out- glamoured the galleo-nlike Silver Cloud, while in America even fairly ordinary cars now had V8 engines, automatic transmissions and airconditioning. Crewe changed tack and Tibet became a smaller car which would sell for a lower price and be made in greater numbers – all these values being relative in the world of Rolls-Royces of course. As development came to an end after a decade of work, the bar kept rising with the introduction of stylish, hightech, compact and affordable executive saloons from Triumph and Rover. Nonetheless, any concerns that it would be too little too late were swept away when the Rolls- Royce Silver Shadow (and the Bentley-badged T-Series equivalents) were unveiled at the 1965 London Motor Show. The Shadow’s low-slung, low-waisted, high-arched body with a three-box shape, fully blended ‘pontoon’ style and an unbroken French curve waistline flowing from bumper to bumper was dramatically fresh and modern; even the traditional nods such as the temple-like radiator shell and the razoredge rear roofline couldn’t hide that. That roof covered a cabin which was wider, longer and contained more foot and leg space than that of the Cloud, even though the Shadow was a foot shorter and ten inches lower than its predecessor. Mind you, at nearly 18 feet long overall and tipping the scales at over two tons unladen, the new car was hardly small.
The body carried its mechanical parts on front and rear subframes, each mounted to the shell by a series of wire-mesh pads which acted as compact variable-rate springs – conventional rubber mounts had transmitted too much noise and vibration. The 6.25-litre V8 was familiar from the Cloud and Crewe declined to do anything as grubby as give out actual power figures, but it was enough for a top speed of 118mph and (if one indulged in dramatically un- Royce-like behaviour) a 0- 60mph time of just under 11 seconds. The engine exhausted through four stainless steel silencers, and the entire exhaust pipe was dynamically balanced and tuned to minimise vibration.
Crewe had not fully lost its distaste for bringing in components from out of house – at this time the works still produced its own nuts and bolts! – but the Silver Cloud had featured a GM Hydramatic three-speed transmission and home-market Shadows retained this, while export models had a newer four-speed GM unit. Both had electric remote gear selector mechanisms, since a mechanical connection led to unacceptable transmission of
noise and vibration. Crewe had also, for the first time, gone to an outside source for the Shadow’s steering, using a recirculating ball-type Saginaw steering box instead of its own pre-war cam-and-roller design as used on the Cloud. This was lighter, yet also featured a quicker action of four turns lock-to-lock which, combined with the car’s wider track and shorter length, also allowed a significantly smaller turning circle. The Shadow was also the first Rolls- Royce with a collapsible steering column.
Europe had provided the solution to the Shadow’s suspension. At its heart the new Rolls- Royce had relatively conventional suspension. Fully independent springing was a first, but by fairly normal steel coils mounted to wishbones at the front and hefty trailing arms at the back. However, these operated in parallel with a hydropneumatic system licensed from Citroën, using 2500psi of pressure from an engine- driven pump to provide self-levelling, thus keeping the car at the optimal height regardless of load while allowing for very absorbent spring rates. The Shadow’s high-pressure hydraulics also powered fourwheel disc brakes, providing formidable stopping power at the lightest of pedal pressures. Interestingly, although radial tyres had been on the market since the late 1940s, the Shadow still rode on cross-plies; Crewe maintained that this was the quietest and most refined option, and that the Shadow’s roadholding, stability and braking abilities made radials unnecessary.
The Shadow’s cabin was carefully designed to retain the style and ambience expected of a Rolls- Royce, but with a more up-to-the-minute character and appearance. All the instrument faces were redesigned with more modern graphics. The air- conditioning and heating system featured a pair of four-speed blowers and exited through eight vents scattered unobstrusively around the cabin. Connolly leather, burr walnut veneer and Wilton carpets (overlaid on the floor with optional lambswool rugs), all of the highest quality, made up the interior which was also well provided with reading lamps, picnic tables, map cases, cigar lighters and arm rests.
A British-market Silver Shadow without any optional equipment or customisation cost £6556. Or, putting it another way, enough to buy a three-bedroom semi on the northern fringes of London with a garden and a garage and still have budget left over for a new
Rover. But the press universally agreed that it was worth it, and that Crewe had pulled off a masterstroke in updating the Rolls- Royce without losing any of its essential qualities. The Shadow’s ride, refinement and effortless progress, even in long high-speed trans- European journeys, was unmatchable. Before long there was a lengthy waiting list for the new car, and Silver Shadows were soon worth more on the secondhand market than they were new, such was the demand.
Only two criticisms were aimed at the Shadow. One was that, while it was perfectly good, the car’s handling was still decidedly unsporting – the steering was light and vague and the suspension allowed a high degree of body roll when cornering, although even testers demeaning the Shadow on these lines found that the roadholding was essentially beyond reproach. The second, usually stemming from Rolls-Royce’s more traditional clients, was that the monocoque Shadow sounded the deathknell for the coachbuilding industry and buyers – within the limits of the options catalogue – had to take their car the way Crewe built it.
It wasn’t long before this last group had something to placate them. In fact the first ‘custom’ Silver Shadow was introduced by independent coachbuilder James Young less than a year after the car’s debut, in the form of a two- door saloon variant. This was quickly followed by an official version on very similar lines by Rolls- Royce’s own ‘house’ coachbuilder, Mulliner Park Ward. In 1967 came an MPW drophead coupé. With monocoque construction, these two- door cars were not bespoke as the coachbuilt Rolls- Royces of old, consisting mostly of new outer panels on modified inner shells plus the necessary longer doors. A longwheelbase Shadow, with four inches more wheelbase added at the rear footwell at MPW and a standard-fit vinyl roof, was launched in 1969. In 1971 the two- door models, already costing 50% more than a standard Shadow, were elevated further in price and specification and renamed the Corniche, while the long-wheelbase model continued under the Shadow name.
By this stage the four-speed GM transmission had been fitted on all cars and airconditioning had become part of the standard specification, having been near-universally chosen in any case. Shortly after the introduction of the longwheelbase model, in 1970 the engine was increased in size to 6.75-litres, mostly to make up for the power loss caused when fitted with ‘anti-smog’ gear for the American market. American demands also led to the Shadow’s fascia, originally featuring a padded top but then a deep panel and centre console of veneered wood of sufficient grandeur to be known at Crewe as ‘the Chippendale dash’, to be revised in 1970 with a black padded surround and top and bottom garnish rails, plus a slimmer centre console and correspondingly less wood.
With the Shadow in service, other changes were made in response to feedback and discoveries that even the drawn- out testing programme hadn’t uncovered. From 1969 an uprated front anti-roll bar and a rear bar was fitted to all Shadows sold outside the USA (the latter preferred the more wallowy ride). The following year the self-levelling system and hydro-pneumatics were removed from the front end, since it proved to do very little work (the variable weights such as passengers, luggage and fuel were born almost entirely by the rear springs) and actually slightly hampered the ride quality. One notable absence from the Silver Shadow as presented in 1965 was radial tyres. Crewe maintained that the stiffer-walled radial tyres then available produced an unacceptably fierce secondary ride and transmitted too much noise. By the 1970s, when even Minis were available with radial tyres as standard, this was becoming untenable so for 1972 the Shadow’s suspension was redesigned – quite significantly in the case of the front suspension, which is almost entirely non-interchangeable with the original design – to work with radial tyres which then became standard-fit. Although called ‘compliant suspension’ the overall result was not noticeable to the driver – the point was that the softer suspension cancelled out the stiffer tyres.
In the Shadow’s first decade on sale, over 2000 more technical and cosmetic changes were made, although most of these were discrete in the extreme such as a different make of PAS pump, fixed front quarter-lights and revised boot lid seals (1967), reprofiled wheel trims and a slightly more direct-ratio steering box (1968), standard-fit alternators (1969), revised
valve timing and a different windscreen washer system (1970), a switch to mineral oil in the hydraulic system rather than brake fluid and the fitment of ventilated brake discs (1971), a modest increase in track to accommodate wider-section radial tyres also requiring slightly flared wheelarches (1974).
A more comprehensive midlife update arrived in 1977. It is very typical of the marque that the bulk of development time and resources for what would become the Silver Shadow II was spent on perfecting a new airconditioning system, featuring both automatic temperature control and twin-zone output. The Shadow II also featured a revised dashboard and facia, partly to accommodate the new A/C system, with repositioned instruments contained in a ‘hump’ in an otherwise lower top rail. Outside, the most dramatic (and controversial) change was the swapping of the chromed bumpers for thicker, deeper ones with plastic cladding for better impact resistance. Below the front bumper was a chin spoiler, designed to improve cooling, stability and (if it can be believed!) fuel economy.
From the rear, as well as new ‘Silver Shadow II’ badging, the updated car could be identified by standard-fit rear fog lamps. UK-spec cars now also received the headlamp washer system, using nylon-filament brushes rather than rubber wiper blades, as standard. The 6.75-litre V8 had already received electronic ignition by this stage, and the Series II cars had updated SU HIF-type carburettors and a different free-flow exhaust made entirely from stainless steel. The biggest mechanical change was to the steering, with the old-fashioned steering box making way for a Burman steering rack with a reduced 3.5 turns lock to lock, which gave the car much more accurate directional control and made the entire car feel usefully more positive and engaging to drive. The front suspension was revised to work with the new steering system, and the new geometry was chosen to resist roll which helped to make the Shadow II feel less cumbersome and also reduced tyre wear. Finally, mechanical and body alterations were made to further reduce the cabin noise levels when at cruising speeds.
While the standard saloon was named simply ‘Silver Shadow II’, the long-wheelbase models from this point gained their own name and became the Silver Wraith II – despite there being no Series I Silver Wraith beyond the mid-size 1950s model of the same name. The Shadow II also carried a price rise of £3000 more than the last of the Shadow Is, with a standard saloon now costing £22,808. This was more than Aston Martin’s V8 Coupé and enough to buy eight examples of the newly-launched Ford Fiesta supermini in 1300S spec.
Although minor alterations continued to be made to the Shadow II, most effort and attention now focussed on its replacement, which had been in the works since the early 1970s. That car, the Silver Spirit, was launched in late 1980, with the last orders for Shadows being taken that summer and the last Silver Shadow itself (actually a Silver Wraith II) being built in November 1980. The Corniche models (still a Shadow at heart) would continue until 1995. A total of 25,142 Silver Shadows of the first and second generations had been built, plus 4915 long-wheelbase models and 1108 two- door cars before the introduction of the Corniche name – enough to comfortably make it the best-selling Rolls-Royce model of all time.