"Incredible, Mr. Rolls!" "Mind-Boggling, Mr. Royce!"

Has another business firm, a mere corporate entity, ever operated on the lofty level where Rolls-Royce lived for so long? Maybe, but alternatives don't leap to mind. Rolls-Royce was much more than the name of an automobile. It transcended mere commercial eminence; it seemed to be, with the throne, the Royal Navy, the Bank of England, a pillar of empire. Hadn't Lawrence of Arabia campaigned in Rolls-Royce armored cars, and didn't the RR Merlin engine power the Spitfires and Hurricanes that won the Battle of Britain? Wherever wheels rolled, and some places where they didn't, the words Rolls-Royce were lingua franca for ultraquality, mechanical perfection, triumph of handcraftsmanship over the machine age and the probity of British businessmen. When, without more than a preliminary rumble, the company went bankrupt not too long ago, it was as if the dome of St. Paul's had fallen in or Prince Charles had renounced his claim to the throne to join a hippie commune: It was not to be believed. And worse: The British government didn't think it worth while to save Rolls-Royce. And worse again: The company hadn't been put to the wall by agents of evil nor by uncontrollable circumstance. Its executives stood accused of incompetence, and words like stupidity and mismanagement were heard in the land. The debacle seemed to be complete.

But two facts, one obvious and one obscure, were generally overlooked. Rolls-Royce's aero-engine division had gone down, but the car division was merrily making money, as it usually had; and while news that a factory is in trouble has nearly always meant that its cars become pariah, word of Rolls-Royce's bankruptcy brought a run on the showrooms. Clearly, people were thinking, "If I don't get one now, I never will." The most prestigious motorcar the world has seen was still just that, bankrupt company or not.

Best-informed opinion in London was that the root of the trouble might have been the thing that had made it great: dominance by engineers. The founder of the company once signed a guestbook "Henry Royce, Mechanic." That was how he thought of himself, and in his organization, men who could shape metal always stood above those who merely made decisions. Sadly, it was the determination of engineers to make the best jet engine in the world that pulled Rolls-Royce down.

The engine was typed the RB-211. It was planned to be lighter than its competitors, have fewer parts and produce more thrust; and, in fact, it met these specifications. It was a disaster, nevertheless.

The biggest order in sight for the RB-211 was for Lockheed's TriStar--540 units. Rolls-Royce put on a blitz, the biggest and most costly sales campaign any British firm had ever done. In 18 months of trying, the company's task force of 20-odd people racked up 230 transatlantic crossings--cost, $200,000--produced a stack of literature two feet high and spent, in all, over $1,000,000. But Rolls-Royce got the order, estimated to be worth two billion dollars, and David Huddie, the engineer who led the effort, was knighted for it. In the executive offices the picture seemed rosy, indeed, but back at the foundry it was rather less so.

Determined to replace Pratt & Whitney as the world's number-one jet-engine producer, Rolls-Royce had taken the Lockheed contract on tough terms. The company looked back longingly on 1957, when it had made 54 percent of the world's jet engines. While the RB-211 engine was, overall, brilliantly conceived, it was rushed. For example, it was designed to use turbine blades of pressed carbon, cheaper and lighter than the usual titanium, but untried in service. However, testers found that carbon blades would not stand up to two common flight hazards--a deluge of rain or hail or a bird sucked into the fans. With the engine already in production, the cost of changing to titanium was formidable. There were other gaffes. But the engineers pressed on, knowing that in the end they were certain to come up with a great engine. And Rolls-Royce's cost-accounting methods, admittedly Stone Age, lighted the looming disaster only dimly. The company arranged to borrow $100,000,000 from the government and $43,000,000 from private sources, but curious outside accountants came with the deal. Unromantic, indifferent to all but the numbers, it was they who came up with the definitive bad news: Each of the 540 engines was going to cost more than $264,000 over what Lockheed had agreed to pay. The answer was either bankruptcy or massive government financing. The government declined, the roof fell in, a receiver was appointed and a Tory government, dedicated to damning the socialist tide, found itself nationalizing one of Britain's proudest private enterprises. A separation of the failing aero-engine division from the profitable car division was arranged; a new company, Rolls-Royce Motors, Ltd., took over and automobile production went on, having hardly skipped a beat through the whole upheaval. (Later, in October 1971, Rolls-Royce shareholders, faced with $288,000,000 of indebtedness, voted heavily to put the company into liquidation. The automobile division will probably be sold, not to another manufacturer in a unit, as had been widely bruited, but in a public stock offering.)

I visited the factory at Crewe on the day the new company was announced. No faint sign of crisis marred the accustomed hushed serenity. A limousine waited at the railway station; the reception room still seemed vaguely church-like, quiet and remote, one of Sir Henry Royce's favorite maxims on the wall: Quidvis Recte Factum Quamvis Humile Praeclarum ("Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble"). Luncheon was in the civilized mode of British business: a preliminary relaxation abetted by an adequate flow of sherry, excellent food, suitable wine and a minimum of shoptalk by the executives at the round table. The page-one headlines in every significant newspaper in the United Kingdom appeared to have left managing director D. A. S. Plastow determinedly unmoved: "The position of the company is more nearly unique now than it ever was before," he said. "Rolls-Royce once had competitors--Hispano-Suiza, Lanchester, Bugatti--but we are now the only manufacturer in the world concentrating on large high-quality saloon cars . . . we intend to improve them, concentrating on refinement, elegance and longevity, and at the same time to produce, every year, a few more."

It was an attitude Frederick Henry Royce would have appreciated. Few men can have been more single-minded than he was, more rigid in refusal to allow nonessentials to divert him from his primary purpose. For most of his life he was profoundly disinterested in anything but work--food and sleep included--and he was driven always by a furious pursuit of unattainable perfection.

Royce seemed poorly prepared for his role as creator of the best thing of its kind in the world. He had little education, not always enough to eat, and he was working hard, selling newspapers, running telegrams and the like, before he was into his teens. He was apprenticed to a railroad-locomotive shop when he was 14. The apprenticeship cost £20 a year, but he couldn't afford to finish it and got a job with a toolmaker at 11 shillings a week; the work week was 54 hours. Royce later found time to go to school at night, and by the time he was 21, he was a specialist in electricity and he set up a company, which made electric cranes. They were good cranes and the firm made some money, enough to put Royce into the select company of those who could afford a motorcar. His was a two-cylinder Decauville. It wasn't at all a bad car, but it seemed to Royce that he ought to be able to make a better one. It was running on April 1, 1904.

It's probable that more nonsense has been spoken about the Rolls-Royce than about any other car, beginning with the first one. It was not an innovative wonder. Royce never claimed eminence as an inventor. He was a good practical engineer, not more. His great strength lay in a nearly unerring ability to find the best way of doing something, backed by a flinty refusal thereafter to do it any other way. His first engine was finely finished and balanced, so it was notably quieter than its contemporaries. His electrical system--then and now the primary cause of internal-combustion-engine breakdown--was superior, and because he had taught himself a good deal about gas flow, his carburetor was excellent: It was the first one that would allow an engine to pick up instantly and smoothly from idling without argument and without a lot of fiddling with spark and air-control levers. The car, an open two-seater, was heavy for its size, but it had respectable performance, nevertheless. Royce made a second and a third. He had no facilities for effectively marketing them, however, and if he had not, reluctantly, met Rolls, he might not have gone on.

Rolls, Charles Stewart, the third son of Baron Llangattock, was rich and an aristocrat. In his time--he was born in 1877--the emerging concept of mechanical travel was as exciting as space exploration is today. Rolls was fascinated by it, and he had the means to indulge his interest. He was one of the first British balloonists and airplane pilots and he (continued on page108)Rolls-Royce(continued from page 94) was well known as an "automobilist" while he was still a Cambridge student, and when there were more than merely mechanical hazards involved: The law of the land specified a speed not to exceed four miles an hour, the vehicle to be preceded by a man on foot carrying a red flag to warn other road users of the imminence of mortal danger. Rolls, sensible of the privileges of birth, consistently drove his Peugeot over the limit and without flagman, his purpose obviously publicly to flout an absurd regulation. This attitude persists today in British drivers of an independent cast of mind. When England set up a 70-mph limit a few years ago, a friend said to me, "My dear man, this country is run by and for the five percent of us who matter, who are, in one way or another, aristocrats. I shall drive as fast as I please, where I please and when I please, and be damned to their silly speed limit!"

In 1896, the four-mph limit was raised to a blistering 12, and in celebration of what was called Emancipation Day, the first London-to-Brighton run was organized. Rolls was a prominent entrant. Four years later, the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland ran a 1000 Miles Trial, and he won it in a Panhard et Levassor. With Claude Johnson, the secretary of the automobile club, he set up a London dealership, selling, among others, the Panhard and the Belgian-made Minerva. One of Royce's associates, a Henry Edmunds, thought Royce's car should be on the London market, and undertook to bring the two men together. It wasn't easy. Royce was shy, taciturn, disliked meeting strangers and flatly refused to go down to London from Manchester. Rolls was accustomed to having people come to him, but he went to Royce. He knew the car for what it was as soon as he saw it, and so did Johnson. A deal was worked out, money was found and C. S. Rolls & Co. undertook to sell all the cars Royce could make. Logic indicated that on the basis of weight of contribution the name should be Royce-Rolls, but the reality was that Rolls's name was well known in the motoring community and Royce's was not. So much for the name. (But to call the car a Rolls has always been to utter a vulgarism, although to call it a Royce is acceptable--among factory people and second-generation owners.) The famous slogan, still the base of the company's European advertising, "The Best Car in the World," was picked up from a journalist later on. The hallmark radiator, essentially unchanged from the beginning, was probably derived from a short-lived automobile called the Norfolk, but Royce improved it, advantaging himself of the principle of entasis: The human eye sees a truly flat surface as concave, so to make it appear flat, it must be slightly convex. The squared radiator shell demands to be handmade and hand-finished, and this accounts for the $200 price difference between the Rolls-Royce and the otherwise identical Bentley, which carries a die-formed shell.

The first Rolls-Royce to be shown in England was on the floor at the 1905 London motor salon. A four-cylinder, four-passenger open touring car rated at 20 horsepower, it was priced competitively with cars of similar pretension. Knowing observers noted the heavy, rigid chassis, the meticulous detail and, when the car was run, its remarkable sound level. The strength of the chassis was evidence of Royce's characteristically long view. The coachwork of the day, mated with light, flexible chassis, soon developed distortion-made squeaks and rumbles. Chassis rigidity was the answer--that and stringent control over the ways the coachbuilders attached their bodies. (Until 1946, Rolls-Royce built chassis and engines only; all bodies were custom-made.)

The Rolls-Royce troika management, Royce, Rolls and Johnson, showed a rare conjoining of abilities. Royce created, Rolls drove the cars brilliantly and successfully in competition, Johnson had a most perceptive grasp of publicity and promotion. In 1907, a six-cylinder model, designated by the factory as the 40/50-hp six-cylinder, came out--a nearly flawless automobile destined to be a legend and an imperishable classic. Johnson took the 13th 40/50 produced, had it finished in aluminum paint and silver-plated hardware, gave it a silver-plated cast brass dashboard plaque naming it Silver Ghost. With suitable fanfaronade, he had it run 15,000 miles over ordinary roads under strict Royal Automobile Club scrutiny. Stripped, it showed zero wear in engine bearings, transmission and cylinder bores; and to bring it back to "as-new" condition cost less than three pounds in coin of the realm, an outcome that shook the opposition and impressed motorists, who had thought of breakage, warpage and general dilapidation as part of the game. Later, Johnson caused a slightly more powerfully engined Ghost to be run from London to Edinburgh and return in top gear only. In all, 7876 Silver Ghosts were made from 1907 to 1926, 1703 of them in the Springfield, Massachusetts, branch factory, a 1919--1926 experiment in tariff reduction that ultimately failed--the factory closed in 1935--because it lessened the car's snob value. The Silver Ghost had the second-longest single-model run the industry has seen, one year more than the Model T Ford, four years less than the Citroën traction avant. The original Silver Ghost still exists and with 500,000-plus miles on its odometer, still runs with the smoothness and near silence it was born to. The 1971 value of mint-condition Ghosts was in the area of $50,000 for openers, but they are a market rarity.

About 20 models of Rolls-Royce were built before World War Two, including, in 1905-1906, a V8 and a three-cylinder; but the Ghost, the six-cylinder Phantom I and Phantom II and the 12-cylinder Phantom III were the cars on which the RR reputation prospered. New designs showed few startling innovations; change was gradual, if inexorable, and never for novelty's sake. A 1931 looks remarkably like a 1921 and the resemblance is not due entirely to the radiator shells.

Royce's engineering was not universally applauded by his peers--accusation of overweight, for example, being not uncommon. But if weight was partially responsible for the sheer durability of the vehicle, then it had to be accepted. The Silver Ghosts seemed almost indestructible. For World War One, armored bodies, weighing more than twice what the car was designed to carry, were put on Ghost chassis, often well-used chassis at that. Even in desert warfare, chassis did not give way, springs didn't break and engines ran for miles on the boil when the bulletproof radiator slats were closed. Only tires made trouble, T. E. Lawrence reported afterward. (Someone once asked Lawrence what he would like most as a gift. A Rolls-Royce, he said, with tires and petrol to run it forever.)

The cars ran that way because Royce had decreed it. For him, the best was only marginally good enough. His steel was smelted and rolled to his specification, and he kept inspectors in Sheffield to see to it that no one slipped. (Old Rolls-Royces are remarkably rust-free, even those that were sold in the home market and worked for years in one of the dampest climates in the world.) To be doubly sure, a testpiece, or "ear," was formed in every part at the factory, broken off, numbered and sent to the laboratory. An adverse report meant that the part, and perhaps the entire batch, would be discarded. Royce devoutly believed in testing. One device in which he put great store was called the bump machine, a simple enough rig made of big irregularly formed wheels set into a floor. A finished car would be chained down over them and the power turned on, with an effect far more wracking than 40 mph over the roughest kind of road. Company engineers claimed that the bump machine would break up quite good automobiles in a few minutes; their own cars were expected to take it indefinitely. Assembly methods were meticulous: Chassis members, for example, were bolted together, the bolts tapered, set into hand-reamed holes and tightened by torque wrench. The locking hub fasteners were costly (continued on page 166)Rolls-Royce(continued from page 108) and complicated, but few Rolls-Royces ever had loose wheels, and so it went. Some of the things Rolls-Royce engineers insisted upon were surely over-detailed and unnecessarily expensive, but they had Royce behind them: "Quality will be remembered," he said, "long after price has been forgotten."

The car lasted longer than the men. Charles Rolls was killed in an airplane crash in 1910. He was a national hero by then--he had made a 90-minute round-trip Channel flight when it was infinitely more hazardous than doing the Atlantic solo today. Flying a Wright biplane in a short-landing contest at Bournemouth, he came in too high and apparently overstressed an elevator component in a correcting dive. The plane dropped an estimated 27 feet; Rolls was thrown free and died almost instantly. He had, by that time, lost interest in automobiles, and he had probably even sold his stock in the company.

A year later, Royce had a complete physical collapse, clearly the result of years of overwork and malnutrition. From the beginning, he had worked obsessively, often 20 hours at a stretch, and he grudged taking time off even to eat. If he hadn't remembered to put an apple or a roll into a pocket, he wouldn't bother. He apparently truly couldn't understand men who labored to lesser standards. In the early days, when he handed out the week's pay on Saturday morning, he would often tell a man, "You don't deserve it if you're not going to work this afternoon." Since he himself was probably going to work until midnight, he thought it a reasonable observation. The doctors could find nothing organically wrong with Royce, so they fell back on the recommendation of "a change of air." Egypt was favored for the purpose then, and Claude Johnson took him there with all speed. It didn't seem to make a lot of difference, and on the way back they wandered in the south of France. In Le Canadel, Royce remarked that it might be pleasant to have a house in France. Johnson immediately bought land and had two villas built, one for Royce and a smaller one nearby for a staff. During the waiting interval, Royce fell seriously ill, there was surgical intervention, most likely for an intestinal malignancy, and he was never really well for the rest of his life, most of which he spent in Le Canadel, working. He had a housekeeping staff, a nurse, draftsmen and secretaries. A steady stream of directives, ideas and designs began to flow to England, and it never stopped. (They were gathered into a book, six copies were made and it is still consulted.) He rarely saw the factory again, but he dominated everything that happened in it until his death in 1933. He was Sir Henry Royce by then, indisputably a titan.

Royce is hard to place as a personality. He was a kind man, he raised tremendous loyalty in his employees, but he was irascible and short-fused, too. Someone who was with him when he heard a workman remark that a certain part was "good enough" said that "he carried on in an alarming manner." He had small talent for recreation. Sometimes he played the flute, but he was more interested in its air flow than in the music it made. He liked flowers--but his garden was artificially lighted, because he couldn't find time to dig in it by day. In the literal sense, he was a workman.

Claude Johnson, who had probably saved Royce's life, had held the company together and had been helmsman from the beginning, died in 1926, plainly a victim of overwork and exhaustion. The production of aircraft engines during World War One, at small profit and in the face of incessant interference by an ignorant bureaucracy, had hurt him most.

Well after the Hitler war, in the Fifties, it was sometimes said that the cars were nothing like as good as they had been. It wasn't true. Standards hadn't been lowered. Today, at Crewe, one still sees painstaking thoroughness: binned parts, stub axles, for example, covered with protective plastic, partially to prevent their scratching each other but more importantly, as an engineer told me, "for discipline." Oil-pump parts are individually inspected, and after assembly the whole unit is checked. At that point, in the ordinary manufactory, it would go into the car. Rolls-Royce hooks it to a test rig, where it must pump oil in rated volume for a specific time. Some disk brakes are noisy because of bell-like resonance in the metal mass. RR disks are muted: A groove is machined all around the periphery, a soft iron wire fastened in, the whole covered with a strip of stainless steel. Cars on the production line still move only about once an hour, and not far, and by manpower. Engines are still bench run under a constant wash of fresh oil and every car, before going to the paintshop for finishing, is taken on the road by a tester who is far more knowledgeable than the fussiest customer, and more critical, too, because that's his job. This systematic overkill largely explains why, of circa 50,000 Rolls-Royces that have been built, some 30,000 are still running, probably the highest survival rate of any production automobile. Too, it explains why the Rolls-Royce is one of the cheapest cars to run: Overall, maintenance cost is low and resale value very high.

It is true that the Rolls-Royce of 1950 or so was not so notably superior to its competitors as, say, the Silver Ghost had been. Silver Ghost devotees believed that their cars had no peers. They might grudgingly have conceded that the Napier was a fair motorcar, but that would be the limit. In 1910, few makers were willing to spend as much in effort and money as Royce was, and nothing else would do.

In time, technology overcame hand-crafting. Rivets banged into place in a few seconds held a chassis together as well as tapered bolts; hexagonal nuts could pin a wheel as tightly as a splined and machined hub fastener, and for pennies instead of pounds. It's an old, old story: The English longbowman was the terror of Europe because he was a deadly shot, childhood trained, with a sightless and subtle weapon that had to be aimed instinctively and could be handled only by a strong man. Technology produced the gun; 97-pound weaklings could master it in a month, and the longbow went for firewood.

The fabulous variety of custom coach-work beguiled one into thinking the older cars superior, too. Every Rolls-Royce today looks much like every other. Not so when there were more than 50 bespoke bodymakers at work and a man had his motorcar tailored to his taste exactly as he did his suit. He could order a tourer, a roadster, a coupe in any form, or a landaulet, a phaeton, a salamanca, a cabriolet, a sedanca de ville, a drophead sedanca, a two-door sedan with a blind rear quarter, a torpedo, a boat-decked sports tourer. And these were merely body shapes. It was interiors that offered individuality, or eccentricity, full rein. Choice of fabrics, leathers, cabinet timbers was limited solely by the world market. Gold or silver plating, Venetian blinds, running water, extra instrumentation, double-glazed windows, cocktail sets electrically lifted to lap level, miniature elevators built into the running boards--even toilets were not unknown. They were usually arranged to disappear into the trunk, and one lady of rank stipulated a seat of best ivory. The Nizam of Hyderabad liked foot-wide sterling-silver crests on his Royces; he was said to own 50. The Dowager Queen Mary was less demanding, requiring only a horn sounding like no other and a recording speedometer in the passenger compartment so she could be certain that her chauffeur never exceeded the dignified rate of travel she stipulated.

Although customer choice was so wide, I recall only two really ugly Rolls-Royces. One was a bulge-sided horror on a Silver Wraith chassis built for Nubar Gulbenkian, the other a fearsome streamlined thing with round doors done by Jonckheere, a Belgian coachmaker, for a party or parties unknown. I presume most Rolls-Royces were good-looking because British custom bodybuilders, like British custom tailors, would allow a client only so much latitude in taste before suggesting he might be happier elsewhere.

Many extraordinarily pretty bodies were erected on the 1929-1935 Phantom II chassis--the last car of Henry Royce's own design--perhaps because its 200- or 206-inch chassis lent itself to long and low coachwork. A two-seater roadster on a P-II was certainly a splendid example of conspicuous consumption. The P-II engine was a six-cylinder, Royce's favorite configuration, and big--7.6 liters. (It took eight quarts of oil and nearly seven gallons of water, two of the reasons RR engines didn't often overheat. One was run from England into Africa and back without water added.) The engine carried good things--overhead valves, a seven-bearing crankshaft, double ignition systems (coil and magneto, used together), a double-sequence silent starter and a constant-speed control of the kind that has lately been an option on some U. S. luxury cars. Brakes were powered on Rolls-Royce's well-tried system, based on Hispano-Suiza and Renault patents, the amount of pedal assistance increasing or decreasing precisely in ratio with the speed of the car. Chassis lubrication was with oil controlled by a driver's pedal, only the propeller-shaft universals needing rack lubrication; even Rolls-Royce ingenuity couldn't find a way to squirt oil into them while they were spinning. A slightly modified P-II, the Continental, used 23 seconds to accelerate its two and a half tons to 60 mph and would do 90-95 on top. The Continental was an ideal carriage for long-distance touring in the grand manner, and many were bodied with nested trunks and valises astern. It did not occur to anyone that they might be stolen--because they wouldn't be. What might be stolen was the mascot, the Flying Lady figure adorning the radiator; a plain cap was provided for use when the car had to be parked in dubious security. (Today the big prewar German-silver mascots bring SI00-S150.) Charles Sykes, a noted sculptor of the time, created the mascot in 1910 and titled it The Spirit of Ecstasy, the company likes to say, after a ride in a Silver Ghost--an unlikely story, indeed. That Sykes modeled the statuette from life is usually not mentioned; the lady was the mistress of a titled Rolls-Royce owner.

At the other end of the spectrum were the little 20-hp and 20/25 cars, sometimes inelegantly called Babies. They made lovely town carriages and were great favorites with doctors, combining, as they did, elegance with economy. Some thought their performance derisory--they were flat out at around 65 mph--but then, as now, 65 was adequate on most roads, and a 20/25 would do it silently and gracefully and practically forever. Rolls-Royce authorities Anthony Bird and Ian Hallows cite a 20-hp owned by a woman who could not, or would not, learn to shift gears. For 25 years she ran the car in fourth gear--starting, on the level, uphill and down. It ate clutch plates like popcorn, of course, but the engine imperturbably took the beating. The lady should have taken the course the factory offers for chauffeurs and the occasional owner-driver. It runs ten days (in the days when only the stick shift was available, three of them were given over to gearshifting). I have ridden with seasoned graduates of this instruction, and it is true that the automatic transmission that can shift as nearly imperceptibly as they did has yet to be devised, never mind such niceties as releasing the brakes completely about six inches before the car stopped, so that it would die without rippling the water in a hand-held glass.

Rolls-Royce believes in the survival principles established by the Vatican: among them, change when it's necessary--but not before, and not much. Postwar realities doomed the custom coach-builder, so the company began to deliver complete cars instead of chassis and engines only; they were smaller and more of them were made to be driven by their owners. Innovations such as the automatic transmission--a reworked GM HydraMatic--and twin headlights were taken on over screams of rage from the old guard, who saw in them nothing but transatlantic cheapening of the sacred vehicle. But the company had no intention of abandoning the thrust that had brought it greatness, and ultraluxurious carriages were still on the stocks: The Phantom IV limousine was available to heads of state only in a production run of 16 cars. The P-IV was the first Royce used in procession by the royal family, Daimlers previously having been preferred. The even bigger P-V had a run of 510 at around $31,000, and would do 110 mph, but British motoring journalists, usually gentle with the home product, and positively deferential to Rolls-Royce, suggested that for all its pasha's luxury, the road holding, steering and ride comfort in fast going were all short of the mark, and they suggested that it did seem extreme to have to take off the right front wheel to reach the spark-plugs on that side. As a processional carriage, rolling at ten mph along a boulevard, the P-V was a moving house of immense dignity, beauty and impressiveness. Mechanically, it had fallen behind the times.

Bemused by the purple prose in which Rolls-Royce has for so long been embedded, drivers new to the make are usually disappointed when they first try one of the Phantoms. Expecting an orgasmic magic-carpet sensation, they're surprised to find a firm ride, heavy steering, leisurely acceleration. They would be equally upset by other motorcars of the era--the legendary Duesenberg, for example. Fastest luxury vehicle of its day, it makes a distinctly trucky impression now.

The current RR is the Silver Shadow, a 412-cubic--inch V8 of around 275 horsepower. (For no apparent reason save snobbism, Rolls-Royce never discloses horsepower figures, but they have usually been modest, if steadily increasing since the postwar Silver Dawn's 125.) The company planned to make about 2500 motorcars in 1971 and to sell 610 of them in the United States, 110 over 1970's quota, in the range of $23,800-$34,600. Brakes are disk on all four wheels, with three systems available, and suspension is fully independent, a refinement the company resisted for longer than appeared to be justifiable. Few amenities have been omitted. Seat adjustment, door locks, gear selection, gasoline filler flap are electrically actuated. Ten cowhides are required for upholstery, each the survivor of hundreds rejected for insect bites, barbed-wire scars and the like. A cabinetmaker of formidable skill spends at least a week on the woodwork, and if the customer is not moved by Circassian walnut, he can command Persian burr, paldao, rosewood, coromandel, tola, bird's-eye maple, myrtle or sycamore. I remember a striking drophead coupe in which white leather had been happily combined with coromandel, a figured timber of the ebony family. Should the woodwork be marred in use, it can be replaced by precisely matching veneers cut from the same log, set aside in permanent storage.

There are two models of the Shadow, a standard sedan and a chauffeur-driven long-wheelbase sedan, and the Corniche coupe and convertible, all also available under the Bentley label at the minuscule discount. (When Rolls-Royce took over the Bentley in 1931, it was a hairy, powerful sports car, famous for having five times won at Le Mans. The current model, the Bentley T, is identical with the Silver Shadow, radiator shell excepted, and is made in small quantity. It appeals chiefly to buyers who are diffident about the view of Rolls-Royce ownership Zero Mostel laid down in The Producers: "If you've got it, flaunt it!")

The coupe and the convertible are type-named Corniche after the famous cliff roads of the French Riviera--the first Corniche prototype was bombed to bits as World War Two began--and they show three fairly stunning departures from Rolls-Royce tradition: The radiator shell has been deepened by five eighths of an inch, the only significant change in it since the name-plate enamel was changed from red to black with Sir Henry Royce's death; the instrument panel carries a tachometer, a suggestion of performance capability the company has not often wished to emphasize; and for the first time ever, the model name appears on the trunk lid, a similarity with such things as the Duster that has lifted eyebrows from one end of Pall Mall to the other. Detroit has decreed the ragtop as dead as the rumble seat, but the Corniche convertible is the top of the Rolls-Royce line at $34,600. Silver Shadow sedan bodies are standard steel stampings; the Corniche is coachbuilt by H. J. Mulliner, Park Ward Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary formed by combining two old houses. Panels are hand-formed, six weeks are occupied in painting the car, and the convertible top, a week's work, from a little distance defies detection as a folder.

The Corniche will do 120 mph in dignity, but like all postwar Rolls-Royces, it demonstrates more roll, tire squeal and understeer in hard corners than is acceptable under 1972 gran turismo standards. Still ... when the bankruptcy notice was posted a year ago, there were those who counseled that the company should abandon ship altogether, or sell out to one of the giants, or "rationalise" with a line of mass-produced cars. Instead, Rolls-Royce came up with the Corniche, a beau geste, indeed, and not the less so because the decision had been taken before the dam broke. Still, it represented justifiable optimism. After all, the car division's 5000 workers had made $19,000,000 on export sales alone in 1970, and the Congressional decision to bail out Lockheed's TriStar program, March-to-August cliff-hanger though it was, saved the RB-211 engine as well.

Is the Rolls-Royce still the best in the world? No. That pride of place has gone to Mercedes-Benz, with cars that are as comfortable, mechanically more advanced, more roadable by far, faster and, in the case of the 600 Pullman, even more massively sized.

Is the Rolls-Royce still unique, its hallowed name carrying an indefinable cachet born of stoutly maintained tradition and the endorsement of ownership by the world's eminences for nearly 70 years? Yes; and as nearly as one can tell, that will be true until they shut down the line and padlock the doors at Crewe.