In 1945, Winston Churchill, our inspirational wartime leader, suddenly found himself out of a job. The Conservative who had been so pivotal in guiding the nation through the darkest days of the Second World War lost the July general election to Clement Atlee's Labour Party. It was a measure of changing social values and beliefs, and the conflict-weary population's desire for a more classless society, that Labour was propelled to a landslide victory, gaining 239 seats and its first ever outright majority.
With the end of hostilities, RollsRoyce was arguably in a similar position to its former customer (Churchill once owned a 1921 Silver Ghost Barker cabriolet). While the entire British car industry had made Herculean contributions to the war effort, Rolls-Royce had emerged as first among equals; after all, it was its aero engines that had powered the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters and Lancaster bombers that had been so instrumental in vanquishing the Nazis. Conflict had made the company famous for much more than just prestige motoring. But what role might Rolls-Royce play in a fresh era where military production was vastly scaled back, and austerity was necessary as a newly socialist Britain struggled to rebuild itself after six years of fighting? Would the marque's luxury cars be regarded as, like Churchill, unwanted symbols of a more socially divided past that the country was now keen to put behind it? Was there a place for the pre-war decadence of the Spirit of Ecstasy in what some hoped
