This story concerns a car that has worn two different names, and it's a tale that reveals something about the respective history – and changing fortunes – of the two marques. But it's also the story of a press demonstrator, a car that Rolls-Royce used to show off the very best the company could offer in 1973.
Most car makers had a considerable press fleet with an ever-changing roster of cars covering every new and existing model, but for a firm like Rolls-Royce, there was so much value tied up in each vehicle and so much time taken to create it that one or two cars had to do the job of many. That's probably why this car appeared not only in an Autocar road test but as part of a wall chart on ‘The Changing Shape of the Rolls-Royce’ from the same magazine, and there may have been many other newspaper and magazine appearances long since lost. It was even the subject of a handsome front threequarter view reproduced on the box of Corgi Toys’ Rolls-Royce Corniche.
It was painted a fashionable (this is 1973, remember) Olive with a matching Everflex roof, and Dark Olive hide to the interior. As an antidote to the rather flash image some of Rolls-Royce's newer customers were creating (see box-out, page 79), it's a wise choice that suggests old money and restrained good taste. As with all Mulliner-Park Ward cars of the SYa Rolls-Royce no more, at least as far as identifying marks go. The car's owner is Guy Seymour, and he can tell us why.
