Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith
MARTIN BENNETT, Dalton Watson Fine Books, £95, ISBN 978 1 85443 288 9
In a road test from 1946, The
Autocar described the first new Rolls-Royce model of the post-war period as ‘a car for the connoisseur in cars’.
‘The particular charm of the Silver Wraith’, it continued, ‘lies in the effectiveness with which all the undesirable manifestations incidental to the development of power by machinery [‘noises’, we think they meant] have been skillfully exorcised.’
That the Silver Wraith was reviewed in such glowing terms must have come as a relief to the top brass at Rolls-Royce, which for the first time had produced a car built down to a price – sort of. It is with the company’s ‘rationalisation’ of its range and production practices that Martin Bennett’s information-stuffed book begins.
Previous Rolls-Royces had been painstakingly crafted with little regard for the bottom line; the 1937 models (Phantom III, 25/30hp and Bentley 4¼ Litre) shared few components, and chassis prices had not been increased in years. The Silver Wraith, offered with off-the-peg bodywork by Park Ward, was one iteration of a superbly engineered platform that could become, well, almost anything that Rolls wanted – a Bentley MkVI, say, or a fire engine. The frame (with standardised gearbox, suspension, rear axle, steering and brakes) could be lengthened or shortened, and the engine could be built in four- or six- or eight-cylinder configurations.
Said platform is pored over here with dozens of close-up photographs and useful technical drawings, but more ink still is spilled in documenting the many coachbuilders beyond Park Ward that clothed the Silver Wraith. Bennett lists 31 more, among them such unlikely suspects as Vignale, responsible for the long-wheelbase saloon pictured bottom right, below.
Much of this section is written in picture-caption style, making it easy to dip in and out of – a nice bonus given that the book is clearly intended as a heavy-duty reference rather than coffee-table fodder. Indeed, its vast appendix is arguably the main attraction, featuring as it does a chassis-by-chassis record of the 1883 cars built, as well as technical specifications and excerpts from the various handbooks issued over the years.
It should be noted, though, that the 391 pages contain many pretty period pictures as well as all those hard facts. Among the best is a shot of a Rolls quality inspector, ear pressed to a standardised gearbox to check for absolute silence in operation. Rationalisation, Rolls-Royce style…