We’ll do a CC shoot-off on the best wagon ever (the Vista Cruiser will be in the running). But then we don’t live in Switzerland, where this superb 1931 Rolls Royce station wagon once ferried passengers from the train station to the Schweizerhof Hotel in Interlaken during the fifties. Yes, that’s how the station wagon got its name, but you already knew that. What did it do before the fifties? It was originally a fashionable Sedanca bodied by Barker. Classics were often rebodied, but this is a bit out of the ordinary. Here’s what it looked like before:
Fabulous. And even from the tiny thumbnail on facebook I could tell it was a Rolls-Royce.
Magnificent proportions, a sort of Vitruvian car. The front axle is in front of the radiator. The rear half “cargo hold” rests evenly balanced on top of the rear axle. So, the seemingly larger weight of the rear half is balanced by the front axle being moved forward, like how you balance a seesaw by moving the weight along the axis. The underside of the car begins in a straight line from the center of one wheel to the next. The horizontal line of the hood from the radiator to the scuttle extends backwards over the cargo hold, dividing it evenly in half. The cargo hold is also divided vertically in three, like a classically proportioned portico. It is very seldom one see a car proportioned in such a truly classical way, i’ts almost Palladian.
I agree, Ingvar. I’ll add that it was the common practice in the teens through early thirties for the upright radiator or grille to line up with the front axle, and also for the rear axle to be near the rear of the body. It wasn’t until the mid-30’s that the idea of moving the motor/radiator/grille forward took hold.
I have no real comment on the vehicle, but of one of the colors. The lower color looks to be “cream” which was a ubiquitous color on trains, trucks and many other objects a long time ago. I came to absolutely hate that color for many years, but the color has returned on a local Cincinnati dairy company’s delivery trucks as part of the livery scheme, and guess what? I love the color “cream” again!