SHADOWS, SPIRITS AND SERAPHS

The last third of the twentieth century brought new challenges for the Rolls-Royce car division. Serious new rivals appeared on the scene – not least the Mercedes-Benz 600 of 1963 and the same company’s S-class saloons from 1972 – while rapidly changing new technology robbed the company of its ability to remain ahead of the game all the time. Manufacturing costs also escalated, and these could only be amortised by long model runs and by sub-models that shared their fundamental engineering with the mainstream cars.

The Silver Shadow was a more square-rigged design than the Silver Cloud it replaced, but was very much in tune with its times. This is a 1974 ‘flared-arch’ model; the car once belonged to rock singer Freddie Mercury.

In addition, excessive costs in the Rolls-Royce aero engine division nearly ran the whole show off the rails in 1971 when the Rolls-Royce Group went bankrupt. Fortunately, cars and aero engines were separated; the company was first subsidised and then nationalised, and the car division thrived as Rolls-Royce Motors under new ownership by engineering giant Vickers after 1980.

The long-wheelbase variant of the Silver Shadow was known as the Silver Wraith II from 1977. This 1978 example shows the heavy black bumpers developed for the US market and standard across the range from 1977.

The major challenge came early on, as Rolls-Royce finally embraced a monocoque structure for its new Silver Shadow model. The car was a huge step forward: it was also the first Rolls-Royce with all-independent suspension and with disc brakes, and it used advanced high-pressure hydraulic systems for both of these new features. To minimise noise transmission, the two sub-frames that carried the running gear were insulated from the body by rubber bushes, but that same concern deterred the company from switching to modern radial tyres, at least initially.

Its shape was carefully conservative, rather slab-sided by comparison with the curvaceous Silver Cloud range but very much in tune with the trends of the mid-1960s. The wood-and-leather interior was as luxurious as ever, and 120mph performance was available from the 6.25-litre V8 engine, re-engineered from its Silver Cloud form and now with accessibly relocated spark plugs. Automatic was standard, the left-hand-drive cars having a new American-made three-speed gearbox although the right-hand-drive models retained the older four-speed until 1968. As was to be expected, there were near-identical Bentley versions as well (called T-series models), and from 1969 a long-wheelbase model with 4 extra inches in the wheelbase and the option of a division was introduced.

The two-door Silver Shadow was built by the Mulliner-Park Ward division from 1966, and this example was the company demonstrator, looking superb in Rolls-Royce Regal Red paint.

The major changes over the fifteen years of Silver Shadow production were driven by customer demand for better handling dynamics and the tightening safety and exhaust emissions requirements of the US market. Radial tyres finally arrived in 1972, accompanied by a new ‘compliant suspension’ that damped out road noise, and then wider tracks in 1974 were accompanied by discreetly flared wheel arches. To simplify manufacture, all Silver Shadows had the US Federal specification after May 1969, with safety-related interior changes and engine modifications to reduce exhaust emissions. When these modifications threatened to reduce power output unacceptably, Rolls-Royce engineers developed a 6.75-litre version of the V8 engine and made it standard from summer 1970. Further-developed versions of that same engine remained in production (latterly for Bentley models) until well into the twenty-first century.

American regulations also demanded impact-absorbing bumpers, and from 1977 the Silver Shadow II carried large black bumpers to suit. At the same time, the long-wheelbase model was renamed Silver Wraith II. These final models also had further revised suspension and – for California only, where emissions controls were tighter – fuel injection instead of carburettors.

With an enlarged engine, the two-door models were renamed Corniche in 1970. This is the Corniche convertible, a model that would go on to have a very long production life.

Moving to monocoque construction sounded the death-knell for the traditional coachbuilt Rolls-Royce. New bodies had to be engineered, as well as designed, so that they would cope with the stresses that a monocoque was designed to withstand, and the coachbuilders who had traditionally worked with Rolls-Royce and Bentley products were simply not equipped to deal with that. Although James Young built 50 two-door conversions of the standard four-door body in 1967, they had little to commend them except exclusivity, and Young’s went under soon afterwards.

Rolls-Royce, meanwhile, was determined to offer an alternative to the standard saloon that had the appeal of a traditional coachbuilt model. The solution it developed was what might be called a ‘standard coachbuilt’ car – a supremely elegant two-door design that would be hand finished by its Mulliner-Park Ward division.

The two-door Shadow appeared as a saloon (‘coupé’ in the USA) in 1966 and as a convertible in 1967. Both types were characterised by a gentle kick-up in the lines just ahead of the rear wheels, giving the body much more character than the nearly straight lines of the standard car. The first cars shared their mechanical specification with the standard saloons, but from early 1971 Rolls-Royce gave the two-door cars a clearer identity of their own. They were renamed Corniche models, gained a more powerful version of the latest 6.75-litre engine, and were visually distinguished by different wheel trims and a new dashboard.

The Camargue shared its underpinnings with the Corniche, but its Italian styling was always controversial. This was the Rolls-Royce flagship model of the time.

The Corniche had exactly the customer appeal that Rolls-Royce had intended. The closed versions remained in production (with both Rolls-Royce and Bentley badges) until 1981, but the convertibles lasted another thirteen years, finally going out of production in 1994 after a twenty-seven-year run. After 1979, they had been progressively updated with mechanical and other elements from the contemporary Silver Spirit saloons, and the last Rolls-Royce variants were known as Corniche IV types; the Bentley had meanwhile been re-named a Continental in 1984.

Although the Silver Spirit looked very different from the Silver Shadow, underneath it was a further-developed version of that car. This is an early example.

Yet even the Corniche was not enough to satisfy all the potential customers for a top-model Rolls-Royce, and so in 1975 the company introduced yet another special body on the Silver Shadow platform. The new car was called the Camargue, and its two-door body had been designed by leading Italian coachbuilder Pininfarina, although it was built in Britain. Originally intended to replace the Corniche, it became an additional model after a product review prompted by the 1971 break from Rolls-Royce Ltd.

For those who wanted a coachbuilt derivative of the Spirit, Hooper produced a number of these two-door models that were converted from the standard bodyshell. Some cars were made even more distinctive with wire wheels.

The Camargue’s appearance was always controversial, and a major element of its appeal was really its exclusivity. It did have a world-first automatic split-level climate control system, but many onlookers thought it looked like a big Fiat. With few mechanical differences from the Corniche, it nevertheless sold to the very wealthy customers Rolls-Royce had in mind and, like the Corniche, it outlived its Silver Shadow parent by several years. Just 530 were built between 1975 and 1986, a total of just under 50 a year. Though hardly pretty, the Camargue certainly did have presence – and that was what mattered to those who bought one.

American regulations demanded separate headlamps for main and dipped beams, and the light units had to conform to certain standards. This is a US-model Silver Spur, the long-wheelbase version of the Silver Spirit.

The huge cost of getting the Shadow into production ensured that much of its engineering would be carried over to the next generation of Rolls-Royce models, and so when the new Silver Spirit arrived in 1980 it brought an all-new body on what were really further evolved Shadow underpinnings. The body design was another in-house creation, and this time costs meant there would be no alternative ‘semi-coachbuilt’ derivatives: Rolls-Royce kept the Corniche and Camargue in production instead. From the start, the major effort went into improving ride quality, and a long-wheelbase model arrived a year into production. Known by the separate name of Silver Spur, this was now built with the usual extra 4 inches of wheelbase length rather than converted from a standard body.

Nevertheless, the Silver Spirit certainly did sire multiple offspring. Its evolutionary mechanical improvements were reflected on contemporary Corniche and Camargue models, too. There were Bentley derivatives, called Mulsanne, and from 1982 the high-performance Bentley Turbo initiated a new line of development that would give the Bentley marque a new and separate existence.

Quite clearly, the Rolls-Royce name still attracted wealthy buyers: in 1983, the Rolls-Royce dealer in Beverly Hills, California, sold 65 cars – and 61 customers paid in cash. Demand led to the creation of ultra-long-wheelbase derivatives, designed and initially built for Rolls-Royce by Robert Jankel, a custom building specialist. Two six-door Jankel limousines built for the Sultan of Brunei were the longest Rolls-Royce cars ever made when new in the early 1980s. One was for the Sultan, the other for his latest wife. The revived coachbuilder Hooper also built a number of two-door conversions from the late 1980s; one, for a Middle Eastern princess, had 24-carat gold-plated brightwork, including on the exhaust pipe.

The V8 engine first seen in 1959 powered all the Shadow and Spirit models, and their derivatives. This is a 6.75-litre version, pictured in a 1972 Silver Shadow.

Meanwhile, the Silver Spirit itself gradually evolved into Mk II (1989), Mk III (1993) and Mk IV (1995) models, although the latter was more usually known as the New Silver Spirit. There was a special Flying Spur turbocharged edition, too, in 1994. Production theoretically ended in 1997, but in practice Spirits were built into 1999, partly to help offset resistance to the new Silver Seraph in the USA.

The Silver Seraph arrived as the replacement for the Silver Spirit in 1998 – a most inconvenient time for Rolls-Royce because that was the year ownership of the company changed. The Seraph’s design had been compromised to a degree by limited resources: in the early 1990s, Rolls-Royce had recognised that they needed to modernise their manufacturing plant in order to keep ahead of the game, and the costs of building a new factory at Crewe impacted heavily on the development budget for the Seraph.

There were several ultra-long wheelbase models based on the Silver Spirit. This is the Silver Spur Park Ward, dating from around 1998.

The main casualty was that the company could not afford to design the new engine it needed to replace the long-serving V8. So, after evaluating several options, they concluded a deal with BMW in Germany for the supply of that company’s 5.4-litre V12 for the Silver Seraph, and for a twin-turbocharged V8 to power its Bentley Arnage equivalent. BMW would also supply some of the switchgear and the air conditioning system for the new car. Several engineering consultancies helped out on the design, too: Lotus, for example, designed the suspension, while Mayflower did the body engineering. At least Rolls-Royce was able to construct the entire bodyshell itself for the first time, in the new plant at Crewe.

Longer still is this Touring Limousine, again by Park Ward. Note the longer side windows, which give a better balance to the design than the short intermediate window on the Silver Spur Park Ward.

The Seraph was designed to look smaller than it really was, partly to counter growing environmental concerns about pollution from large cars. Some criticised it as bland. There was only a standard-wheelbase car at launch in March 1998, and a long-wheelbase model (called the Park Ward after the in-house coachbuilder) did not arrive until early 2001 with an extra 10 inches of length.

The Silver Seraph was a more rounded design, and its designer, Graham Hull, took inspiration from the Silver Cloud of the 1950s. This is a US-market example, dating from 1999 and pictured at a marque enthusiasts’ gathering.

The new V12 engine, an exemplary piece of engineering, delivered 140mph performance, but the Silver Seraph was deliberately designed as a car to cosset its owners. Buyers who wanted blistering acceleration were gently steered towards the Bentley Arnage. Engine and differential had been mounted directly to the body shell so that the sub-frame mountings could be tuned for optimum comfort, and a sophisticated active ride control system was standard.

The name on the acoustic engine cover reads ‘Silver Seraph’, but underneath is a BMW 5.4-litre V12 engine, bought in because Rolls-Royce could not afford to design their own new engine in the mid-1990s.

Yet the Silver Seraph was never really able to fulfil its promise, and customer concerns over the protracted sale of Rolls-Royce in 1998 must have hurt sales. Just 1,570 cars were built in four years – an average of less than 400 a year – before the Seraph was taken out of production in 2002. Its Bentley equivalent, by contrast, remained in production under new ownership until 2009.

Wood, leather and a general aura of well-being: this was the dashboard of a Silver Seraph, which followed in the great Rolls-Royce tradition.