On the way to get the paper this morning, passed a Rolls-Royce with its bonnet up, in the carriageway on the very tight bend leading onto a narrow stonewalled humpback bridge on the main road that passes through the two nearest towns. It couldn't possibly have stopped in a worse place. A lot of people won't dare cross that bridge if there's even another car coming the other way. The parked RR meant one had to cross the double whites on the sharp bend, with opposing traffic effectively hidden by the bridge and its walls.
There were some well-groomed, elderly folk sitting in the back of the Rolls which looked to me to be sixties or seventies in vintage. As I passed I wondered why they hadn't got out and, perhaps with help from passers-by, pushed the thing into a marginally less annoying position. But I didn't stop.
By the time I was on the way back its flashers were going and the RAC van had arrived. The lady sitting in the RR's driving seat, who appeared in her forties or thereabouts, looked more annoyed than embarrassed though.
Perhaps when they get home they will chuck their real Rolls-Royce away and get one of these BMW ones instead.
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Nice little vignette - there must be an interesting back story there...
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It's a scene from Downton Abbey. The fact that neither Rolls Royces nor the RAC existed then is consistent with the exacting attention to historical detail typical of the programme.
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As Sir Herbert Gusset had it in this week's Private Eye "at least they got the Jumbo Jet right in the 1912 gathering of the hunt"
AC,
what sort of Rolls was it ?
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Looked like a bog-standard 60s or early 70s one to me. Damned if I can remember the model designation. It had a V8 from the start and an extravagant version of Citroen hydro-pneumatic suspension, also from the start. Early examples needed a handling kit if they were going to be driven properly, otherwise they rolled and pitched like a barge in a gale.
This morning's broken-down one was apparently well-maintained, clean and unblemished. Not an East End breaker's-yard man's example, capisce?
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Silver Shadow.
Used to be known in the trade as Silver Shudder, so I'm told.
As with all more recent RRs, looked a bit tacky when new, but now nicely mellowed in the public perception.
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Reminds me of a now sadly departed old lady ( well she was no lady when she was younger apparently but that's another story ) An actress who married a Scottish gentleman of substance a social whirlwind of a woman. Seen in all the right places nobbed and hobbed with the best of society while remaining true to her friends of more humble origins. Delightfully outrageous to the end. Always drove Jaguars and was to be seen in the latest model at all times.
At any rate she fell upon hard times later in life, the husband tired of her and replaced her with a younger model, the acting work stumbled and faltered and she grew old while still managing at least in public to remain the life and soul of any gathering particularly among the jazz set.
Her last Jag crumbled with her. Gradually disintegrating around her, it stumbled on for some 15 years in the end, breaking down as often as as not until it and she finally decided enough was enough.
She would never have it that a younger more frugal car would have solved her transport needs so much more effectively. Only a Jag would do...
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>> She would never have it that a younger more frugal car would have solved her
>> transport needs so much more effectively. Only a Jag would do...
>>
Nothing wrong with that philosophy.
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Shadow 1 = shudder. Didn't that get sorted by shadow 2
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Jaguar - 'Grace, space, pace...a special kind of motoring that no other car in the world can offer'
Well, IRCC, that's what the ads used to say.
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Shadow 1 = shudder. Didn't that get sorted by shadow 2
Dunno. Never had sufficient reason to find out.
I've thought for a long time there should be a 'Silver Shadow Rescue' along the lines of 'Greyhound Rescue'.
Rather than finding good homes for Silver Shadows at the end of their lives, though, I would like to see enough funds raised to buy them out of the classifieds or eBay and take them away to be crushed, rather than see them subjected to a cheap white blow-over and the cruelties of the cut-price wedding trade.
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embarrassed? apparently not. - R.P.
