Fit for royalty

THERE ARE some phrases that those of us in the motoring press like to throw around like confetti. ‘Kingof the hot hatches’is a good one, and has traditionally meant other cars wresting it from the grasp of the Golf GTi or the Peugeot 205 GTi.

Best 4x4x far is another one. But the one that motoring journalists have rarely questioned is the title of ‘The Best Carin the World’ – and back in the Seventies, that trophy was one which satfirmly in the cabinet sat Crewe. Whether it was your thing or not, the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow had, in the eyes of the motoring press, earned that accolade.

That’s not to say, however, that there were no challengers to the title. The Mercedes 300SEL 6.3, for instance, a colossalV8 in the standard S-class shell. The Cadillac Fleet wood, colossalin every sense and truly the Cadillac of automobiles. And–from the Rolls-Royce’s home turf–the Jaguar XJ12. Jaguar’s first serious entry in to the luxury saloon market since the demise of the 420G, the XJ12–especially in long-wheel base form–took the talented XJ saloon and turned it in to a world-class limousine, with more grace, more space and more pace than ever before. But was the XJ12 ever good enough to beat the Rolls-Royce at its own game? Was it ever, even briefly, the best car in the world?

Encompassing many technical innovations, the 1965 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow was also