Britain: Rolls Goes Mod

To auto fanciers the world over, the Rolls-Royce has long been an inviolate classic, almost completely unchanged in appearance since 1906. The Rolls has been not so much a car as a symbol of stability. The idea of altering it seemed to many fully as alarming as abandoning the monarchy. While other classical profiles—such as that of West Germany’s Mercedes—succumbed reluctantly to the times, the Rolls rolled haughtily on, confident that it could not improved upon.

Or so it seemed. Actually, in deepest secrecy, Rolls has been working on a new model for ten years. After spending $7,000,000 and employing 270 technicians, the firm displayed the result at ast week’s Paris Auto Show: a new Rolls so thoroughly restyled that only the classic radiator grille, though lower and squarer, remains to recall the car’s lineage. Rolls designers have chopped off 7 in. in length, 5 in. in height and 31 in. in width from the dimensions of the car’s proud predecessor, the Silver Cloud. They have abandoned the old boxy profile in favor of a more streamlined look, redesigned the side slabs so that they extend in an unbroken line from front to rear.

Quiet Touches. The new Rolls, called the Silver Shadow, has been changed in other respects. Somehow, the designers have been able to increase the interior room while decreasing the outer dimensions. The car is built in the latest “monocoque” principle—already used in the Jaguar and the Rambler—which combines the chassis and body into a single unit of construction. It also incorporates a number of engineering advances that have long been standard on some lower-priced cars, including independent suspension for all four wheels, power steering and hydraulic disk brakes—to which Rolls added its own quiet touch by specially grooving them to cut down squeal. Another quiet touch may not cut down squeal: priced at $18,356 including tax in Britain, the car will cost a full $2,000 more than its predecessor.

From Realms Remote. In a dubious compliment, London’s Daily Mirror described the new Rolls as having a “Mod look,” and the Daily Telegraph exulted that the car “has stepped down from some realm remote from ordinary things and is now ‘with it.’ ” But the style changes shocked and saddened traditionalists. The magazine Auto-Journal observed that by bringing the car “into the classic line of everyman’s car, Rolls no longer strikes the eye and thus loses a great part of its singularity and originality.” Paris’ Le Monde regretted that “Rolls is losing little by little its character of collector’s item by making sacrifices to progress.”

The Rolls people insist that they know what their customers want. They did no formal market research, found out about owners’—and chauffeurs’—feelings through Rolls dealers. “After all,” says Chief Designer Harry Grylls, who supervised the design revolution, “we know most of our customers by their Christian names.”