Rolls-Royce 25/30 Hooper Sports Saloon

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Among his many obsessions, Henry Royce had a real concern about the ever-increasing weight of the coachwork that customers chose to fit onto his beautifully engineered chassis.

The Rolls policy of selling ‘chassis only’ cars meant that the firm had little control over the bodies fitted to them, leaving the choice of coachbuilder up to an increasingly affluent (and often ostentatious) client base. It was a constant battle to keep up with the soaring weight of ever-more opulent body styles, a problem only solved through engineering more powerful engines and revised gear ratios.

The delightful and delicate Rolls 20 was succeeded in 1929 by the altogether more robust 20/25 for this very reason. Sharing many components with the similarly sized Bentley 3 1/2-litre, it too was further upgraded in 1936 when the bore of the engine was increased to 3 ½-inches giving 4,257cc and being renamed the 25/30.

Introduced in the same year as the hugely complex V12 Phantom III and built to the same exacting standards, the company certainly had its hands full. The new 25/30 was fitted with synchromesh on third and top and powerful mechanical servo brakes produced under license from Hispano-Suiza. Contemporary road tests commented on the exquisite precision of all the controls, the entire absence of mechanical noise and the uncanny smoothness of the ride – one saying that the car behaved so beautifully that it was difficult to drive badly.

Although designed with the owner/driver in mind, many 25/30s ended up with rather formal or overblown coachwork, thus it is nice to find a car such as this with a relatively restrained and sporting saloon body. As copies of the factory build sheets confirm, chassis GAN79 was delivered new on 21st September 1936 to Bennetts of Nottingham and was despatched to the Hooper coachworks on 9th December to be fitted with a Sports Saloon body as per the instructions of the first owner, W Dawson Esq of 29 Arboretum Street, Nottingham, who received the finished car three months later.

Not much is known of the subsequent history of the car but an American Certificate of Title shows that by 1984 it was owned by one John Crapps of Live Oak, Florida, returning to the UK in 1989 when it was acquired by Nigel Taylor of St Mellons, Cardiff, a qualified motor mechanic. Bills on file show that he promptly set about a thorough refurbishment, including a full engine rebuild, an overhaul of the front suspension and the fitment of a stainless steel exhaust system.

The original Nottingham registration number, CTV 996, was also recovered at this time. Such was the quality of the work carried out that the car won a Concours award at the 1992 Benson & Hedges Welsh Open Final.

Mr Taylor sold the car to a friend in 2008 and between them they continued to maintain it diligently. Bills and notes on file show that it was treated to a steering box overhaul in 2000, a water pump overhaul in 2010 and a set of five new tyres and tubes in 2013. A virtually unbroken run of old MOTs from 1990 to 2015 show that the car has always been in regular light use, clocking up some 11,000 miles since the engine rebuild 25 years ago.

Said to drive as it should, this beautiful motorcar remains in fine condition throughout and surely has decades of useful life ahead of it. It comes with the aforementioned documents and service history plus an original owner’s handbook and is only offered for sale due to the recent death of the owner.