Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow I

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Launched in 1965, the Silver Shadow was the first 'modern' Rolls-Royce with a monocoque body, aluminium doors, boot and bonnet and no separate chassis.

Other innovations included a fully hydraulic braking system, based on Citroen patents, that included four wheel discs, twin circuits and rear self-levelling suspension. Squat and purposeful on the outside but still luxurious on the inside, it was perfectly timed to attract the nouveau gentry of the Swinging Sixties who were more likely to have made their money from business, pop or fashion than inheriting it from the ancestors.

Even today, to slip behind the wheel of a well-kept Shadow is to enter a different world where every journey is an occasion and the feelgood factor is off the scale. Beautifully crafted, technically advanced and good to drive, it sold like no Rolls-Royce before or since with 37,000 examples rolling from the Crewe production line before it was replaced by the Silver Spirit in 1980.

Over 2,000 improvements were made along the way, the most important being the introduction of the 6,750cc engine and GM three-speed box in 1970, radial tyres in 1972 and the launch of the Shadow II in 1977, though this rather lost the looks of the earlier car with chunky rubber bumpers in place of the more elegant chrome items.

This Shadow I dates from March 1973 and has been in the current ownership since 2000. We are told that the car did have a large history file and that fortunes have been spent on it over the years but unfortunately the file is now missing. When he purchased the car, the vendor was told that it had been formerly owned by the comic actor Norman Wisdom, although neither he nor we have been able to substantiate this.

In regular use when first acquired, the car has been in storage for the last six years and is being offered here as a recommissioning/restoration project. At the modest guide price suggested, it should leave plenty of spare change for the remedial works now required.