A Bentley in its natural habitat: a steady rain! This was a month on and a few blocks south from where I saw that 1911 Ford; I drove the rest of the way home, parked, and walked back up the hill to see if it would still be there. Or more like sloshed back up the hill as an atmospheric river was making Vancouver soggy while homes, farms, towns, and highways in outlying areas and the BC Interior were getting flooded and mudslid off the map.
Yup, sure enough, there it still was. Parked at the curbside with water obligingly beading up on its well-waxed paintwork and fog on the insides of its windows.
I know not much about cars like this, and I don’t see them very often (there was that one time I sold a set of headlamps to a workshop here in town for one of their customers’ Rolls-Royce. That was about 15 years ago, and I’m still kicking myself for not including a jar of Grey Poupon in the box).
There are fabulous details all over this car, including several suggesting this is not a doesn’t-drive-it-just-rubs-it-with-a-diapermobile. It’s got regular rather than Collector-type licence plates, for example…
…and shelf-stock American sealed beam headlamps made sometime after 1981 or so:
It’s got lovely Lucas frog lamps I’m betting are not the visually spectacular but optically lousy Chinese-made reproductions; here’s the starboard one…
…and here’s the port one, behind which is what gives every appearance of being a modern engine block heater plug:
Vehicle inspections are done here only when registering a vehicle brought in from out of province. I had to get one when I brought my (not-Silver) Spirit from Ontario. They tell you to display the decal, but there’s no reason; once the car has passed inspection it’ll never have another and it’ll get licence plates the same as any other car. Nevertheless, this car’s owner did as he was told, and the decal in the upper corner of the windscreen suggests this car was brought in this past March:
We also see the dashboard-mount rearview mirror, the central radio aerial, the left-hand drive, the blue shade at the top of the windscreen (was that original? An image search suggests maybe not), and a very high standard of coachwork fit and trim alignment.
“Elegant” is applied without warrant to so many cars, so much too often, that it scarcely stands out from the tiresome din of car-adjective buzzword bingo. I don’t consider many cars elegant, but this one surely qualifies:
And speaking of tiresome-tripe tropes, I almost always curdle at the notion of a car having “hips” or “haunches”, because just no.
Almost always:
This car is fine art, designed and built and maintained with great skill, talent, and love. I can’t find a faulty line, curve, angle, or bit of trim. Everything is shaped and placed and finished and fitted just right:
These look like little orange telltales for the driver at the top of the park/turn signals (“sidelights/indicators” in British English):
Such presence:
Parked there at the curbside, in the rain, with the owner probably on an errand in one of the shops and restaurants around—many of which are quite good, and none of which (that I know of) is at all snooty. It’s parked nearest an Italian cheese shop and deli where they make a terrific meatball sandwich.
I think I’ve done a fine job keeping quiet about a detail that caught my eye first and hard, and now my resistance runs out. Look at the taillights:
They’re all amber!
At first I thought this was the second British car I’ve seen with amber tail and stop (brake) lights; the first was a Jaguar of similar vintage I saw in traffic about 15 years ago in Frankfurt. That used to be a thing in various places round the world, amber tail and/or stop lights. In the 1930s Germany legislated for red tail and orange stop lights:
That requirement went away when Europe standardised on red stop lights in the ’50s-’60s. In North America, SAE standards allowed stop lights to be red or amber until 1970, though almost all vehicles had red ones. So what’s the deal with this Bentley’s amber rear lights? I found the replacement lens:
And then I found the complete replacement lamp:
Ah, there’s a red filter in there between the tail/stop bulb and the outer amber lens. I looked anew and saw the same in my pics of the lamps on the white car. Very clever; you only see it if you know to look closely. This way Bentley provided red stop/tail and amber turn signal lights from a lamp appearing to be all one colour.
Here’s the back of that lamp, showing the unsealed sleeves apparently meant to accept the tinned (leaded?) brass bullets Lucas liked to put on the ends of their wires:
These—like another kind of unsealed Lucas connection described by Bill McCoskey—relied on the integrity of lamp-to-car-body sealing to prevent corrosion. That’s certainly an imaginative idea:
Very few countries required amber rear turn signals in 1959-’62; the list gets sparse after Italy and Australia, though many countries allowed them. In the States, this car would’ve had red lenses instead:
Maybe they used the amber-with-hidden-red setup in Canada. Maybe the car started with the red lenses and got the amber setup later on. Only its hairdresser knows for sure!
I came for the Grey Poupon, but stayed for the great photos and lighting knowledge 🙂
I came bc my family moved here in 1959, but left Vancouver bc my feet are morphing into webbed DUCK feet! This looks like west Broadway in Kitsilano area of Vancouver.
Not Kits, not Broadway, not west. Got another guess? Clues abound.
Clearly Commercial Drive…where international chain stores go to die. Even the Starbucks across the street eventually gave up, and is now a (local) Mexican restaurant. McDonalds and Subway have also retreated in shame over the years.
Some say that on quiet evenings you can occasionally hear ‘The Internationale’ playing faintly from upstairs apartments just before bedtime. 🙂
Eeyeah…that Mexican restaurant probably won’t be around very long, if my experience is predictive. Mediocre food just doesn’t find much of an enduring market on the drive.
On further investigation it is on Commercial Dr. in East Vancouver, only a few blocks from where I used to live in the 80s.
There y’go!
Great find, great photos and great write up.
Just beautiful. “Stately” is the word that comes to mind. And I love that it’s just out running errands on a rainy day.
A splendid automobile for sure. I’d think that Lucas tripod headlamps would be nice on this, Daniel are the old tripods any good from a lighting standpoint?
I do miss those old Lucas bullet connectors from my TR4, made replacing the wiring harness fun because any wire could go anywhere! You’d have thought that system would have been invented in Australia or some other dry-ish country, not England.
The old Lucas tripods were useless at night, and all “reproductions” of them are vastly worse. There’s a high mountain of other rubbish on the market, too, but there are also modern lamps on the market that tremendously improve the night vision while looking appropriate on a car such as this, as seen on this ’53 Silver Dawn (there’s a dishwashing liquid by that name, see?)
The Swedes, Finns, and Norwegians make unusually good snow-and-ice tires because of that region’s long, severe winters. Makes perfect sense.
Likewise, the Brits made the likes of these unsealed wiring connections—and bicycle brakes that don’t work in the wet—because of that region’s notoriously arid climate. Makes perfect sense.
Yup! I use GOLD Dawn dish soap instead of the Silver bc I’m…..hoity toity! (;
Does the ‘TRIPOD’ come with the headlamp, or is that ‘extra’?
Daniel,
I suspect this car was originally destined for southern Europe. 3 things lead me to this possibility; The left hand drive, the amber rear lights not used in North America, and the Tri-plex windscreen with the sun band at top, a fairly rare windscreen typically found in sunnier regions like the bottom of Italy, the French Riviera, or the Iberian peninsula.
While it’s easy to find RHD examples of the S series cars, LHD examples are not common, and rarely seen even at Rolls-Royce Owner’s Club national meets. I would love to see the original factory car building information cards, as they will note various special requests, along with it’s original destination. If the owner is a member of the RROC, the club has all the original build cars for “Pre Silver Shadow” Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars, and he can request a copy of his car’s build sheet.
I wonder what was in the headlamp nests before those American sealed beams went in, then; European countries mostly didn’t like them.
While the Feds really didn’t care if the car had sealed beams or not when it was brought in as a used car, some states did require them to be installed for the state inspection. I wish I had the chassis cards for this vehicle.
If you see the car & owner again, If you have the opportunity can you ask the owner if he has the chassis card? You will be giving him an opportunity to discuss details about the car that most casual observers wouldn’t ask. Many owners of “Proper motorcars” keep a copy of their chassis cards in the boot.
Germans have weird ways of naming or describing things…
As a noun, “das Rotgelb” is also used to describe one specific type of potato: russet. Yeah, that Bentley does have a russet-coloured taillamps. (Insert sarcastic tone here). Actually, the term today is gelbrot to describe amber and yellow-red colour.
I find it odd that Germans would choose the colours differently back then. One theory of using the red colour for night illumination was from the railway where the red lamps were illuminated at the end of the train.
Inexplicably, the German traffic code from 1937 required the Winker (trafficators) to be gelbrot (§ 54 Abs. 1 der Verordnung über die Zulassung von Personen und Fahrzeugen zum Straßenverkehr (Straßenverkehrs-Zulassungs-Ordnung, StVZO, RGBl. I Nr. 123/1937, S. 1215) vom 13. November 1937). Confusing, isn’t it?
Germany mandated that from 1 July 1961, the new vehicle over 4 metres in length and 1.6 metres in width to be equipped with flashing turn signal indicators at front and rear ends (§54 (3) der Neufassung der Straßenverkehrszulassungsordnung (StVZO) vom 6. Dezember 1960). The owners of vehicles older than 1961 had until 1963 to retrofit their vehicles. The front turn signal indicators must be yellow (gelb). Like the United States today, Germany allowed the rear turn signal indicators to be either yellow or red until 1970 when red was no longer allowed.
What a lovely find! I grew up thinking that a Bentley was for those too thrifty to spring for the Rolls, but I have decided that I like the more subtle grille on this car even better than the more formal and more familiar version.
I have had it up to here with white cars in my own life, but will concede that a white car with a reasonable amount of brightwork (and a lack of black plastic) makes for a beautiful ride.
The last couple of evenings Mrs. JPC and I have been enjoying some English Miss Marple movies from the early 1960s. (Who doesn’t love Margaret Rutherford?). Who would have thought that I would see one of these cars here and not in those movies? And why do I suddenly have the desire for some tea with ladyfingers?
Beautiful car, beautifully photographed. The Bentley version of these was so much less common than the R-R version, but I liked it better then and still do. The rounded aspect of the grille harmonizes much better with the rounded elements of the front end, as well as the rest of the car.
The Bentley version of these….WHAT?
This Bentley S2 version of the same basic car as the R-R Silver Cloud. Is that not clear enough?
Agree with you, Paul. The Bentley versions were pretty rare in the UK when I was young, but one would see quite a few of the RR versions. Like you, I have always preferred the more rounded radiator, as it seems to be more sympathetic to the overall form of the car…The architectural RR grille fits the “Razor Edge” bodies much better, where the Bentley grille looks a little out of place.
Curiously enough, and contrary to my kid-sighting of these as “old” cars from the ’70’s on, it seems about half of all S1, S2 and S3 cars were Bentleys.
But the Grey Poupon cars were Rolls-Royces. Such extravagance. Such conspicuous consumption. Bentleys were the intelligent choice, less expensive for the same car except the radiator grille.
By $300!
Wow, What a find, the finish looks as smooth as porcelain or fine China. The quality of every aspect, fit and finish are impressive. The design was old fashioned looking, even when it was new, but it remains timeless. Compare it with a Cadillac or Lincoln from this period, it’s quite obvious that a person of refinement ( and great wealth) would choose a car like this over a tacky American luxury car.
Wow, Daniel, what a find! I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these in person.
My parents were Anglophiles, and my father would tell stories of the excellence of the Rolls Royce. He claimed you could put a pencil on the hood, drive across town, and find the pencil still in place.
I didn’t get it though – as a child I thought they looked dated, almost quaint. Now, with age, I can appreciate them.
There was the apocryphal story of the new hire who was fired on his first day after examining a piece he had fitted and said “Good enough”.
The printed material describing the German taillights is strangely ominous – I imagine a documentary, with the narrator saying “January, 1935 … the storm clouds gather …”, with Wagner increasing in volume in the background.
Twenty-odd years ago I met a friend of my parents-in-law, visiting from New Zealand. He told me about his old Rolls, with its “square” V12 engine (that is, where bore and stroke were equal). Only some 325 in^3 if I recall correctly, so between the inherent balance for the two inline-6s conjoined, and the very low displacement per cylinder, it must have been incredibly smooth.
As a German friend of mine told me long ago: German is good for barking orders. I am sure all documentation was in order attesting that this printed material was fully in compliance with all applicable DIN standards.
For what it’s worth, we visited Germany a few years ago. It was delightful – yes, “all was in order”, but the people were also warm and friendly and at times extremely funny. We had many good laughs.
Darn it, I hate it when my preconceptions are dashed.
That’s my experience, as well. I didn’t say anything about Germans, the people; the comment was about German, the language.
Agreed on the language, and I did not in any way mean to imply that you were insulting the people themselves – that would be completely out of character. Your COALs have consistently demonstrated your fair-mindedness. Tschuss!
I Googled the DIFFERENCE between a Bentley and a Rolls Royce, and found this….
“For almost seventy years, Bentley was owned by Rolls Royce, and in terms of vehicles, they offered customers almost identical models. The only way to differentiate the two brands would be through their badges, and unique radiator surrounds. … Rolls Royce, on the other hand, is now owned by BMW but based in Goodwood.”
Who owns Bentley and who owns Rolls-Royce?
Image result for H. M. Bentley; W. O. Bentley founders of rolls royce
There was a time in the 1960s, during the nearly 70-year stretch that Rolls owned Bentley, that the brands were virtually identical, save for their distinctive hood ornaments. But today Rolls-Royce, now owned by BMW, and Bentley, a unit of Volkswagen AG, have found separate paths to success.Feb 13, 2018
Looks like the driver about curbed the right rear tire. Nice car.
Lovely car, but not in white (or antique English white) with white wall tyres. A bit too much wedding car for my taste.
Compared with Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, a Bentley of this generation and the T series (alongside the Silver Shadow ) said “old money” rather than just “money”
Hehe! `For me, the white n’ white can be a bit Flash ‘Arry, a bit West Coast rather than Home County, but it varies like a mood: this looks superb here.
On an irrelevant footnote, the only time I’ve been in one of these was to a wedding of a slightly snooty (former) friend – it was of course a black one, with blackwalls.
I agree with a poster above. These cars confused me as a kid: I was so devoted to “progress” and “modern” (my parents took me to the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle in 1962!) that to my eyes the RR/Bentley were grotesquely old-fashioned – just look at that steering wheel – but at the same time I thought they were fabulous. This is one unbelievably fabulous example.
The 1960’s version of the TV show Burke’s Law was a must see because Gene Barry’s LA homicide police captain was a “millionaire” (anyone remember the show and when that financial status really meant something?) and was chauffeur-driven in this gen RR. Good times.
CA Guy, I was a little guy of 5 when my parents took me to the Seattle World’s Fair, and it impressed me a lot. Rather than a Rolls or a Bentley (or my parents’ 1949 Monarch), I thought cars should look like Seattle’s monorail. As a real-life approximation, I thought the ’59 Chevy was pretty good.
My wife and I visited the site in 2007, and I still thought it was great.
Either you’ve seen this and it’s worth another watch, or…here:
🎵🎵”But you can’t escape death”🎵🎵
LOL
I miss Mystery Science Theater 3000…..
-Nate
That is marvelous!
I watched the original after our trip to Seattle in 2007; this version is rather more amusing.
Thank you so much.
Nice looking car .
-Nate
And here’s Don Andreina’s excellent piece on John Blatchley, who styled the car.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-john-blatchley-of-rolls-royce/
Quite lovely pics, Mr S.
The raindrops look like jewelry all over it. And when you mention the usually tiresome nature of haunchly-inappropriate references, why, there’s a Nissan Humour – Joke? Jest? I forget – in the background to complete your argument for you.
Elegant isn’t really a thing any more. The best we get is “striking”, like the ugly modern Phantom bulgemobile that took its cues from this (through a glass darkly, one presumes). This car is still in the times when the word had a bit of meaning left, and, for sedans, was high up the list of ones to whom it definitely applied.
For all their raised-nose handmade claims, truth was that Rolls were getting a bit out of whack with the times in the Cloud. The auto was GM’s, the brakes from a ’20’s Hispano, the springs leafy, the chassis available separated, a Caddy was quite some faster, and no-one dared report on handling because lever-arm shocks and such didn’t really lend the machine to more than a stately pace if the road turned. Their famous claim about the clock at 60mph could only be true if that clock was Big Ben – which really would make it cramped in there – because engine aside, they stuck up stiffly in the wind and whistled. They leaked oil like ordinary mass-mades, they rusted just as badly, Lucas made their electrics, and their long-livedness was as much a myth as truth: in truth, they were hugely expensive, and thus, by and large, carefully and expensively owned, which of course kept them humming along longer.
All that said, the Shadow took all the necessary leaps out of the past, but never looked as good as these. And by reputation, wasn’t a great car anyway.
I mentioned above that I’ve been in one, and gorgeous though it was, it wasn’t up to much as a car. Lovely motor, clumsily abrubt Hydramatic, weavy at freeway speeds and plain tipsy round bends, whistly, quite cramped, and on every bump, it FELT remarkably flexy on the chassis. (It appeared to be in excellent order).
In the UK, in the ’80’s, you could buy a handling kit for these, and a kit for a modern 4-speed GM auto (meaning new disc brakes too, as the servo came off the old gearbox). That’s a car that would fix a lot of the ills of old design, and one I’d take home in a flash. (Well, it’d be a theft, in reality, but I digress).
Meanwhile, I’ll happily contemplate the beauty of this sparkling iceberg scultpure in Vancouver, and give every acclamation the owner deserves for using it as an actual car, the better for CC scouts to spy and capture.
Justy baum,
I owned it for and operated a large automotive restoration & repair shop situated between Washington, DC and Baltimore, one of the areas well known for it’s large amount of Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars. I’ve restored and repaired hundreds of older Rolls-Royce & Bentley cars, and I’ve owned about 30 examples, 1932 to 1985. I had known the service manager of the local R-R & B dealership, and knew the head of the corporate service division in NJ. So while I was not employed by the dealership, I’ve managed to attended multiple factory service courses as well. I’ve researched the corporate history and written numerous articles for the local & national club publications. While I’m not one of the best historians who focused on these 2 makes, I think I can offer a fairly accurate defense of the marques.
Your 3rd paragraph:
“For all their handmade claims, truth was that they were getting a bit out of whack with the times. The auto was GM’s, the brakes from a ’20’s Hispano, the springs leafy, the chassis available separated, a Caddy was quite some faster and no-one reported on handling because lever-arm shocks and such didn’t really lend the machine to more than a stately pace if the road turned. Their claim about the clock at 60mph could only be true if that clock was Big Ben, because engine aside, they stuck up in the wind and whistled. They leaked oil like ordinary mass-mades, they rusted just as badly, and their long-livedness was more of myth than truth: in truth, they were hugely expensive, and, by and large, carefully and expensively owned, which of course kept them humming along longer.”
Yes, the automatic transmission was indeed based on the GM Hydramatic. It was actually built by a French company by the name of Hersey. They also built the gearbox for other marques including the large BMC Princess DM4 limousine and it’s variations. It was also used in rare examples of European trucks where an automatic was desired.
But all the Hersey gearboxes built for R-R and B cars were constructed to a far higher specification level, and many individual parts like bearings and clutch packs, along with the rebuild kits, were not interchangeable with the GM versions. As the owner of both Rolls-Royce and Princess limo cars equipped with the Hersey-built Hydramatic, I’ve compared the various parts in both versions of the rebuild kits. The specs for the R-R kit were different in some of the crucial parts like bearings.
Hisso brakes? Yes, portions of the brake system were based on the Hispano-Suissa patents for a power assisted brake system. When properly adjusted, the power assist varied based on the speed of the car. The faster the vehicle was running, the more power assist was provided. I have had the need to stomp on a Rolls-Royce brake pedal at high speeds, and I can say with experience, they are incredible, even using 4 wheel drum brakes. In the 1950s when vacuum power assists were becoming standard on other luxury cars, They tended to be touchy at low speeds, and of course if the engine stopped while the vehicle was traveling at high speeds, you quickly lost all power assist.
When it comes to speed parameters, and the springs and suspension design, in all the thousands of older cars I’ve driven and worked on over 50 years, I can say the Rolls-Royce designs work very well for the size of the vehicle. Yes, most of them are not fast, but down thru the years they have made vehicles that were indeed VERY FAST. I know of only 2 other makes who offered a better riding suspension system; The Citroen hydraulic system first found on the DS cars [and adopted under license by Rolls-Royce for the Silver Shadow], and the other was the 1955 and 1956 Packard “Torsion-Level ride” with interconnected torsion bars [front to rear], and an additional 2 torsion bars providing automatic leveling, a system that no other manufacturer adopted due to high costs.
Separate chassis design: When the S series of cars was developed in the first half of the 1950s, the limitations of a united chassis and body were not well known, and at the time these cars were built, the technology needed to build a LARGE unitized body/chassis that could be changed and lengthened was not yet fully developed. The exception was a small number of 1960s stretch limousines built by Lehmann-Peterson on the unit body Lincoln Continental. I have also owned a 1965 L-P limo. I know from personal experience that these cars performed terribly on rough roads. Mine had excessive body “wiggle” when hitting a pothole at higher speeds. And the wiggle was worse than experienced on my 14,000 mile 1966 Lincoln Continental 4-door convertible.
The clock: I owned a nice low mileage 1960 Bentley S-1. A past owner had changed the clock over to an early digital version, and it needed to be replaced. I was lucky to find a NOS, never used Veglia clock, still in the original Rolls-Royce box. On installing said clock in the car, and having seen the Ford LTD ad about the R-R clock, I found at high speeds the only noise to be found was wind noise, The level of wind noise was far lower than other cars from the 1950s or 1960s. A major part of ensuring a lower wind noise in the Rolls-Royce cars is the side glass. All the flat glass pieces are a lot thicker than typical glass found in other luxury cars. Plus, according to the factory, their glass panels have a higher lead content to keep noise down.
Leaking oil? I know of many Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars having well over 100,000 miles on them without any rebuilding of drive line components, etc. And these cars DO NOT leak or seep oil, unless they’ve not had the regular maintenance as required, performed by someone who knows what needs to be done. A personal friend of mine has a Flying Spur with twin turbos. His car is driven hard, and on a regular basis. He attends the club national meets all over the country. The car has a mileage number closer to 200,000 than 100,000. Yet his car actually looks like it has about 25,000 miles. You will find no oil spots on the garage floor. But he also makes sure the car gets it’s regular maintenance. Leaking oil on a Rolls-Royce? Sure, it happens, due to poor maintenance or incorrect repairs using non-factory parts, like neoprene instead of leather rotational seals.
Body rust. Yes, these cars rusted, sometimes in extremely wet environs [like it’s home country!] they rusted terribly. Severe body rot is probably the primary reason for parting out one of the S series cars. [The second reason is the cost of rebuilding an abused Rolls-Royce V8 engine.] Having the power to look back on history, I am at a loss how body engineers didn’t seem to understand where and why a car’s body would deteriorate. Yet even the superior minds at Rolls-Royce were unable to create a production car that was designed NOT to rust. Yet sometimes the engineers got it right.
For example, in the early 1950s, body engineers were beginning to see the results of rust thru on older cars. Studebaker saw rocker panels [sills] that suffered ugly body rot. When the area below the doors on the new 1953 Studebakers was designed, it was not a long square tube where the inside of the tube was not painted. Instead, it was simply a single outer panel that covered the frame. There was no hidden unpainted area that encouraged body rot. Now if only they had designed front fenders in this manner!
Long-lived? It’s not a myth. Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars, in general, are very long lived. As you pointed out, they do have an advantage of ownership by those who have the financial ability to do the maintenance these cars need and crave. But by the time many of these cars are on their second or third owners, most of the owners have other vehicles that were more expensive for the owner to purchase, as the purchase price of a new Rolls-Royce or Bentley has generally depreciated quickly compared to other cars.
I’ve heard a story that when Rolls-Royce was considering adopting the Hydramatic, they tore one down and thought that one of the internal components had a rougher finish than they liked. They fabricated a similar component with smoother finish, reassembled the transmission using the smoother component, and found that now the transmission didn’t work.
Truth, or urban legend?
I’ve heard that comment before, years ago. I asked Cal West if there was any truth to it. At the time Cal was head of Rolls-Royce North America service. He had also heard the same claim, and was quick to let me there was no truth to the statement.
I’m still trying to understand my anyone doesn’t like the Hydromatic drive tranny….
I remember them in trucks and large, heavy V8 powered autos that were driven hard with little or no service and no failures .
*Firm* shifts like they ought to be .
Nate
I certainly respect the respectable Hydramatics—the Turbo-Hydramatic 350 and 400, maybe the 700R4, and I’m sure some other Hydramatics cannot correctly be called unworthy. Others can’t correctly be called worthy (TH-200, etc). That said: I’ve never met a Hydramatic that shifted pleasantly. They very well might exist in stock or modified form; I’ve just never experienced one. I prefer the shift quality of a 904 or 727 Torqueflite.
Firm? Why, neck-snapping sir, I tell you!
Not really, but it just felt funny in a Rolls to get the same firmness I’d felt in wheezy little Holden Hydramatics. As for longevity, just their stellar 25-year service across such a range of stuff answers any doubters on its own.
But they did always shift with a delay, and a muted thump. And that nearly spilled me Grey Poupon in the Bentley, it did. (In the Holden, it was only cheap beer what got disturbed).
LOL!
People who rebuild automatic gearboxes will all tell you that the harder the original 4-speed Hydramatic shifts, the longer it will last. This is because if it’s a smooth shift, this means the clutch packs are slipping longer during the shift.
This was well-known to the GM engineers working to create it’s replacement, and top GM execs insisted the new gearboxes be smooth shifting. Some of the other early GM automatic transmissions were not so successful in part because of this expectation. Hence the clutch packs on the later GM gearboxes were larger and had many more clutch discs per shift.
The 3 very harsh shifts in the original pre-war Hydramatic were the main reason that Packard engineers kept the number of shifts to a minimum, and the lock-up torque converter was as smooth as possible. This was also the situation with Chrysler in designing the original cast-iron Torqueflite. They wanted a quick shifting change while not being so hard a shift. I have always thought they did a damn good job.
Well Mr. Stern ;
I was referring to the original four speed ‘Dual Hydromatics’ .
The TH 350 & 400’s are fine but no where near as sturdy IMO .
-Nate
Bill, I was speaking slightly tongue-in-cheek – Big Ben, for example, wouldn’t fit very well in the cabin – but of course I defer to your vast experience and knowledge here. And may I compliment you on admitting some faults and failings of the cars, which an annoyingly rabid enthusiast (of anything) stridently will not.
I didn’t know the GM box was remade outside of Rolls itself, and certainly not by the French (and only 600 years after the Battle of Agincourt). The brakes had a name for being perfectly good even into the disc era, though you must admit the combined mechanisms are pretty fiendish. However, I only recently found out that the giant Phantom used them till the very end in 1990, and no-one would risk ‘er Mag at risk of fade and crowd-plowing, so they must’ve indeed been right-royally good.
The unitized body point you make is somewhat proved by the Jag Mk1, with its crazily over-thick pillars, etc, though again, Lancia was making a pillarless Aurelia that was sturdy enough to survive tough rallies. (Neither, of course, are very large). I was surprised, though, by the distinct separate-chassis feel of the S2 I went in: it had, to use an inadequate description, that delayed-reaction wobble you get on a bus. It just felt old-fashioned. Perhaps it’s the way the body is attached, for quietness?
As for leaks and longevity, I do (slightly) stick to that one, at least in this sense: they are old designs, and old designs need a LOT more maintenance whoever made them. Things like leather seals, or rope, need lots of time to fit (to soak, etc), fiendish brakes need time to adjust correctly, and that time is no longer measured in ’30’s (or ’50’s) labor rates. I accept entirely from you that it all CAN be done, but only at a time and price. And the post-war Rolls had a long time – in my era, born late ’60’s – of not being very valuable cars, and they always had drip-trays at displays.
Anyway, as mentioned, I defer to actual knowledge, absolutely. I’ve only been in the one, and nice as it looked, it might well have a neglected wastrel below decks.
Justy, no worries!
There are far too many vintage cars, especially Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars, who have been sourced cheaply and then forced into rental limousine service, especially for weddings and other special events. Typically the people running these rental companies fail to perform maintenance on these “highly maintenance-critical” vehicles, because the costs of maintenance are offsetting profits.
Many people who only have a slight insight into Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars, get their only real experience riding in one as a result of a rental use. So the cars are often worn out and patched up. I’ve even seen rental S-1 cars that have had their engine and trans replaced with a modern drive train, with a very bodged-up vacuum power brake system added, to compensate for the original missing mechanical power brake.
I mention these situations because most people see these cars in less than ideal situations. I know from experience as an operator of vintage limousines in a large metropolitan area, and a member of the National Limousine Association, as well as owning a company that repairs these cars, that when these cars as abused, the costs only escalate! So if your ride was on such an occasion, that might explain your less than stellar experience!
An interesting side [at least of interest to me!] is the difference in leather and neoprene seals on rotating shafts. Leather seals are flexible along the sealing area. Synthetic seal surfaces are not. When vehicles are allowed to sit unused for long periods of time, seal surfaces [in a microscopic sense] will adhere to the metal surface they are tasked with protecting. When the shaft is rotated again after a nap, they have tiny pieces of the seal surface that tear and adhere to the shaft. Even the Silver Shadow cars use Leather seals for some of their locations. I’m not familiar with the later cars, so I don’t know if they still use them or not.
The synthetic seal can’t self-repair, and begins slowly leaking. The leather seal surface, being made of a more “forgiving” natural material, does repair itself and keeps on sealing, so they last longer before finally failing, after they have exceeded their capabilities.
As for drip trays; I’ve had my vintage cars on display in many indoor events, and with few exceptions, the event hall owners have strict requirements the cars all have something on the floor to catch errant drips and seeps, even if there is zero evidence the car is leaking. In Europe, it’s even worse. I’ve seen cars on inside display at the big Essen car show in Germany, where the cars actually had disposable petroleum ‘diapers’ wire onto the cars so all parts of the drive train were protected.
As soon as my eyes locked on the lead image of this car, my brain cells started straining… there’s no red! The reflectors are red, but the lamps… no red?! How could this?? *laughing*
I’ve seen a number of prewar cars with amber brake lights (as well as a few very early ones with green or blue), but have never seen one with anything other than red for a tail light. Interesting to find out that amber was a legal color in certain places at one time. But even more interesting that this car posed as one of those, yet had a trick up its sleeve (ala 1960’s Cadillac). Now that I’ve taken that in, I can expand my focus beyond the rear lighting and take in the rest of the car, which is quite magnificent! This is actually the first time I’ve even seen photos of a Bentley of this generation. Sweet catch, DS!
And lastly, the optics in those lenses remind me of the parking/turn signals on the 1953-54 Studebaker:
Hey, yeah, those Studebaker lenses are very similar, eh!
Once I discovered the Bentley’s taillight trick, the ’62-et-seq Cadillacs and the ’65 Chryslers came to my mind on that score, as well.
Elegantly Huge by today’s standard
Superb, Mr Stern. I’ve been trying to get some pics of a black one that lives nearby in Tokyo, but no luck so far. The white + whitewalls is a tad OTT, but the rain makes those photos exquisite.