Curvaceous Cloud...

Now this is my idea of a car!

Why have a supercar you can barely get into and hardly enjoy, when you can have all the comforts of home in the car with you?

One of the last versions of the magnificent Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, this final incarnation, the Silver Cloud III, seeing the design through to 1966. By this time the Silver Shadow was starting to make its presence known on the road as one of the most radical Rolls Royces ever, but the Silver Cloud continued to keep the old world alive.

Entering production in 1955, the Rolls Royce Silver Cloud was built to replace a collection of earlier models, including the Silver Wraith and the Silver Dawn, whilst also being built alongside the Phantom series. A cross between the Flying Scotsman and a Stately Home, the Silver Cloud was built originally for a market that revolved around hereditary money, Royals, Soldiers, Mine and Factory owners, and other families that had made their money in the great Victorian era of Industry.

But unbeknownst to Rolls Royce, as the 50's were packed away, the world changed abruptly. Money was easier to come by, and the margins that had once separated the class system became blurred and distorted. People of lower class backgrounds found their way up the social ladder by way of music and television, and one of the first things they hankered for was a Rolls Royce, the ultimate symbol of success.

And it's not hard to see why, with a price tag of £5,000 the Cloud was the equivalent cost of 10 Morris Minors or a 7 bedroom house. To own a Silver Cloud in the early 1960's meant you had to be someone very very special.

However, the Silver Cloud's old world design kept it very much in the past. Unlike modern Rollers where the body and chassis are built together, the Cloud was built as a chassis first, and then it was up to the owner to decide who constructed the coachwork, be they Hoopers, H.J. Muliner Park Ward or James Young.

This antiquated system meant that Rolls were losing their market, and thus they had to adapt in order to survive. In 1965 the highly advanced and radically designed Silver Shadow entered production, and a year later the last Silver Cloud rolled off the production line, bringing an end to the era of the classic Rolls.

This particular version, the Cloud III, was the first noticeable facelift of the model, with the inclusion of new four light clusters that would eventually be carried over onto the Shadow, a reduction in weight by 220lbs and the fitting of 2-inch SU  carburettors in place of the 1¾ inch units used on the Series II Silver Cloud. Although Rolls Royce always kept the power output of their engines a secret, they did disclose that it provided and improvement of 'perhaps 7%'.

Today they're a real rarity, the 1970's showed that rust was no respecter of pedigree and many redundant rollers simply whittled away under the rain. But even so, immaculate examples such as this continue to be found, and this one was certainly a real treat for me and the many tourists who stopped to admire the lines of yesteryear.