The original Silver Ghost

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If one car more than any other encapsulates the appeal of the Edwardian touring car and all its associated prosperity, it must be the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. It may be narrowed down further to not just any 40/50hp, but The Silver Ghost in italics – not quite the first of its breed but one of the earliest, possibly the most beautiful and undoubtedly the most important. Rolls-Royce itself felt no need for modesty; it was only ‘The Best Car in the World’.

Used as a factory trials car, the Silver Ghost broke cover with a majestic Rio-des-Belges body by Barker. With a new six-cylinder engine of seven litres running as smoothly and silently as a phantasm, when most sixes were troubled by severe crank vibrations, a good many observers were doubtless struck dumb by the Ghost, but those whose opinions mattered in the industry and the press launched into gushing torrents of praise.

After proving itself on several endurance runs, the Silver Ghost bowed out from its publicity duties at the opening of the new Rolls-Royce factory in July, 1908, and shortly after was sold to a private owner of 40 years, who used it regularly for driving back and forth between his homes in Hampshire and the Italian Riviera, before Rolls-Royce bought it back.

Fresh from recommissioning, the Silver Ghost’s story is told in full by David Burgess-Wise in the October issue of The Automobile, on sale now.

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