High roller
Arwel Richards discovered that his Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow had a former owner with a storied past
Silverstone Auctions for about a year when I bought the Rolls. Seventyodd auctions and some 10,000 miles later, I’m one of the longest-serving classic car specialists there and I’ll never sell the car.
By the winter of 2015 I’d started to look for a big old classic to travel to my brother’s wedding in Galway. One evening this cropped up, with £13,000 recently spent on recommissioning, and I became the proud fourth owner of a 1976 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow I LWB in Ming Blue without division. The black interior is totally original, its leather worn to a lovely patina – which only dark leather does – the carpets have never been up, and the black lambswool rugs are beautiful. The paint is shabby and a few rust spots are coming through, so it will need a bare-metal respray at some stage, but I enjoy it too much to be precious.
The black Everflex breaks up the slab-sided look of a Shadow, especially a LWB. Questionable colours abound for ’70s RollsRoyces but Ming Blue suits this car better than any other. It looks rich in daylight and turns into a mellow purple at night; retro without being naff, and I can tell you it looks great outside a Swansea nightclub at 2am.
l advise my vendors to open a bottle of wine and organise the history file in date order, receipts back-to-back in plastic pockets, so it tells a story. I’d already drunk a bottle organising the letters and receipts before I applied to the RREC for the car’s build sheets. The chassis was first ordered by the Rank Film Organisation, famous for the gong, but they jumped up the waiting list and the allocation was then issued to Sir Michael Sobell after a cheque for £17,000 was handed over to Jack Barclay. In 1975, you could’ve bought five new E-types for that and had change left over for a house in Wales.
I find it fascinating that I drive a car that was ordered and specified by somebody born in 1892 – I had never heard of Sir Michael Sobell before. An émigrée to Britain from Galicia (now in the Ukraine), he owned the General Electric Company at one stage and, as a racehorse owner, saw wins at the English and Irish Derbys, Royal Ascot and the St Leger. Poignant for me because I had a share in a horse that had a successful but shortlived career. Sir Michael’s son-in-law was Lord Weinstock and together they sold their stud farm to HM The Queen in 1982. He was knighted in 1972.
When Sir Michael died in 1993 he had given away most of his wealth through the Sobell Foundation, establishing a number of hospices, building leisure centres in deprived areas and supporting educational and medical charities. One evening I found a Christie’s catalogue on eBay for £10 for the auction of his furniture: a Chippendale desk had an estimate of £40,000 to £50,000! I’ve sold plenty of celebrity-owned cars, and I’ll never sell mine because I love its story. I feel I have a connection with Sir Michael, cheering a horse over the finishing line, and as a patron of the British Stammering Association I try to do my bit.
Naturally I am the Rolls and Bentley specialist at Silverstone Auctions and our sister company Classic Car Auctions: as an ownerdriver I can spot a good one and buyers trust my advice. I know what it costs to run a Rolls, and I know how much it takes to get a car back on the road if it’s been neglected. When the sun is shining I drive the car as much as I can.