The Sunday Gentleman (42 page)

Under pressure, and in almost no time at all, a single dazzling Rolls-Royce was produced, assembled entirely by hand and under the severest handicaps. Veteran Rolls-Royce experts were pulled off airplane engines to produce the chassis, while designers at Hooper and Company, which works with Rolls-Royce, turned out the body. The result was a touring limousine model, which retailed at $18,787 (purchase tax included), and it was a Sunday driver’s dream, customed to a king’s taste.

The body was painted metallic green, with contrasting darker green fenders. The running board was very wide, so that three of Ibn Saud’s slave-bodyguards could stand erect on either side of him while the car was in motion. There were also a siren and a searchlight for the bodyguards to operate. Inside, the leather upholstery and the cabinetwork were in metallic green. Dominating the rear was a sterling silver bowl that could be filled from a copper water tank, equipment for Ibn Saud’s Mohammedan ceremonial ablutions. After use, the water could be emptied out through a drain in the car floor. Other back-seat accessories included an electric fan to combat the desert heat, a super radio set, three built-in alabaster thermos flasks, and a chest containing three brushes and a comb. “We were careful,” explained a Rolls-Royce designer, “to have the brush bristles made of Nylon, since the king, being a Moslem, would not use hog bristles.” The entire rear seat of the car was built like a spacious royal throne, for one person, sufficiently broad so that Ibn Saud could sit on it cross-legged Ln Arab fashion.

Now, when Ibn Saud makes his annual journey to Mecca, he orders out his entire caravan of five hundred automobiles. Most of them—since they are transporting his three Moslem wives, many of his 150 divorced wives, and his vast harem of non-Moslem Armenian, Sudanese, and refugee Russian girls—have window shades drawn to hide the veiled women. At the head of the caravan rides the only Rolls-Royce England produced during its six war years, and in the rear seat, alone, sits Ibn Saud with no window shades to hide his obvious pleasure and pride.

“And he darn well ought to be pleased,” one Rolls-Royce director told me. “Because even if he doesn’t know that Winnie interrupted our war effort to make the automobile for him, he should know by now that he has the best car in the whole world.”

This boast—“the best car in the world”—which the Rolls-Royce people use in all their chaste literature, has very little absolute meaning. Being the best car in the world implies being better than one’s competitors, but the Rolls-Royce is not meant to be compared with ordinary mass-produced vehicles. It stands by itself, in a special field of its own making, offered at a price that makes no pretense of competing economically with other cars. Its very name has become a part of the language, and is used by every business from vacuum-cleaning concerns to Yo-Yo manufacturers as a synonym for the word “luxury.” It is to other cars as a yacht is to a rowboat.

To Englishmen, the Rolls-Royce is not a crass piece of merchandise; it is an institution, wrapped in a carefully constructed tradition. Next to the royal family, next to the liner
Queen Elizabeth
, it is the fabulous Rolls-Royce and the list of international celebrities (ranging from maharajas and presidents to captains of industry and spiritual prophets) who own the car, that give most Englishmen their greatest feeling of national pride.

Englishmen will tell you, and there are few who would disagree, that with his green Rolls-Royce, Ibn Saud became a member of one of the world’s most exclusive fraternities. It is a matter of fact that very few persons have ever owned new Rolls-Royces who were not famous or wealthy or both. Czar Nicholas II of Russia, whose income was about a million dollars a month, was one of the early buyers. In May, 1914, he purchased two seven-passenger Rolls-Royces, both upholstered in silk, from the company’s Paris salesroom and had them shipped to Moscow. The czar used one for himself, and gave the other to his wife and Rasputin. About the same time, Hirohito’s insane father. Emperor Yoshihito of Japan, regained just enough sanity to purchase a Rolls-Royce for his state limousine. It was painted cherry-red and black, with the imperial chrysanthemum hand-painted in gold on either door, and when it rolled down the streets of various Japanese cities, attendants sprinkled fresh sand before it.

But the most famous Rolls-Royce, during World War I years, was driven by a commoner. He was Colonel T. E. Lawrence, the enigmatic Lawrence of Arabia. The British government loaned him nine Rolls-Royces for his Arabian guerrilla campaign against the Turks. In a single day, using three of them, Lawrence wiped out a Kurdish cavalry regiment, captured two Turkish outposts, and blew up two bridges.

Once after the war, Lowell Thomas asked Lawrence, “Is there anything on earth to be bought with money that you can’t afford but would like to have?” Lawrence smiled. “Perhaps it is childish,” he replied wistfully, “but I should like my own Rolls-Royce car with enough tires and petrol to last me all my life.”

It was this kind of postwar reverence for the luxury vehicle that inspired the friends of Woodrow Wilson to chip in and buy him a new Rolls-Royce as a get-well gift, when the tired ex-President was suffering his last illness in the house on S Street.

The Rolls-Royce is possessed by rulers and millionaires in almost every comer of the globe. On the Riviera, the Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the ten million Moslems known as Ismailis, owns an ornate Sedanca model Rolls. In Siam, the royal family possesses a pale blue, chromium-plated, community Rolls-Royce. It was purchased originally by King Rama VI, whose love for Things English also extended to his translating Shakespeare into Siamese. In Japan, Hirohito, like his father before him, has a Rolls-Royce to go with his maroon German Mercedes. In Mexico, President Alemán bought one of a recent shipment of Rolls-Royces to the New World for $13,000, a bargain since the price was raised to $18,787 a few weeks later. In Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, the reigning shah, drives about in a spacious, elderly, completely bulletproof Rolls-Royce. The shah’s late father, an opium-smoking despot, bought the car when he took over the throne of Iran in 1925, always drove it at the head of a sixteen-car caravan—and, incidentally, upon staying overnight in a village had all the local dogs shot so that their barking might not disturb his sleep.

Even though the automobile is international, Englishmen, loyal to a home product, remain its best customers. King George VI, of course, has a Rolls-Royce. As a matter of fact, so do almost all other members of the royal family. Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India, has the most magnificent Rolls-Royce in the family. It is a $20,000 convertible, with a chauffeur enclosure that can be removed in London’s rare moments of balmy weather. When the car was built, Lord Louis hovered over it like an expectant father. He supervised the decision on every dimension, demanding extra room both for his outstretched legs when reclining and for sitting upright when he wore a top hat, and he insisted that map cases be installed in the walnut paneling in the rear.

Other Englishmen emulate the royal family. Sir Alexander Korda bought an all-silver-colored Sedanca model. Sir Malcolm Campbell purchased a complete Rolls-Royce merely so that he could remove its engine, install this in a racing car, and, flashing over the Bonneville salt beds in Utah, become the first person to drive more than five miles a minute. Lord Derby, an invalid, had a Rolls-Royce uniquely custom-built to suit his infirmity, by having the back seat cut in half, one part removed, and a chromium-fitted wheelchair slipped in. To disguise the wheelchair from passersby, its upholstery exactly matched that of the car. Today, when he must attend a public function, Lord Derby snaps his chair loose, and glides down a specially designed ramp which his chauffeur has extracted from the trunk.

Second only to the popularity of the Rolls-Royce in England is the demand for it in the United States. Even before World War I, the Rolls was selling mightily in America and the directors of the company looked with new eyes upon the old colonies. In 1919, Rolls-Royce decided to expedite the delivery of cars in the States by setting up the Rolls-Royce of America, Inc., plant in Springfield, Massachusetts. The company, using skilled United States mechanics in addition to three hundred Crewe veterans, started with a capital of $3,200,000. Customers were assured that they were getting a genuine Rolls-Royce (with only the gears and carburetor modified), while paying a smaller price, since it could now be sold duty-free. But American customers did not bite. They wanted the real McCoy imported from England. After a few years, the Rolls-Royce invaders folded their tents and stole back to the sceptered isle, where they have remained ever since.

A large portion of Manhattan’s high society crowd own, or have owned, the English car. Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt still rides in a 1913 model, painted in the traditional Vanderbilt maroon. The late J. P. Morgan had a Rolls-Royce, and now most of the Wall Street Morgan partners follow his lead and faithfully drive their own. Mrs. Otto Kahn gets about in an antique one that resembles a fugitive from a family album, a 1911 edition. One of the Woolworth girls has a Rolls-Royce discreetly furnished with a $3,000 vanity case and a $1,200 electric clock.

In Hollywood, the senior Douglas Fairbanks was one of the first Rolls-Royce owners. After him, the deluge. In the filming of Moss Hart’s lush
Lady in the Dark
, a technicolor dream sequence resembling a cross between Mohammedan Heaven and Santa’s Workshop required an appropriate dream automobile. The Countess di Frasso, a movieland butterfly, promptly loaned Paramount her Rolls-Royce at a rental of $240 a day. This chariot, which had cost around $28,000, had an all-aluminum body welded into a single unit. Another Hollywood figure, Constance Bennett, often picked up pin money renting studios her equally sumptuous but older Rolls-Royce, a $40,000 beauty. Before the war, Norma Shearer, Marlene Dietrich, Jack Warner, and Joseph Schenck all bought themselves $24,000 Rolls-Royces in New York or Paris.

Sundry other Americans have similarly indulged their automotive whims. The Smith brothers, kings of the coughdrop, long had an ancient Rolls-Royce in their garage. George Baker, once tried for lunacy in Georgia, better known to the faithful as Father Divine, had a $22,500 Rolls-Royce limousine that he had purchased secondhand in 1933 for $150.

Among the most fabulous Rolls-Royces ever owned by an American were the two town cars that eighty-four-year-old William Randolph Hearst purchased in Paris to join his Rembrandts, zebras, Egyptian mummies, private three-coach railway train, and million-dollar swimming pool at San Simeon. Each Rolls-Royce possessed, proportionately, as many mirrors as Versailles. In the rear, for the passenger, was a duplicate dashboard inlaid in walnut, several built-in thermos bottles, gold vanity cases filled with compacts and combs, a tiny wooden rolltop desk, a miniature table to be pulled out at mealtime, and a portable bar.

But such pleasures pale beside the automobile luxuries regarded as necessities by the princes of India. In their incredible toylands, these modern monarchs drive in Rolls-Royces that might have been designed for the tastes of a Midas or a Haroun al Raschid. The most majestic Rolls-Royce owner in India is the seventh Nizam of Hyderabad, richest man in the world with an estimated two and a half billion dollars in rubies, diamonds, and gold. Instead of a herd of elephants, the Nizam has fifty Rolls-Royces. His favorite is a canary-yellow model, furnished with elevated throne instead of a rear seat. It is thirty-six years old, which is impressive since the first Rolls-Royce was brought out only forty-three years ago. Despite its longevity, this Rolls-Royce has been driven only 400 miles. The Nizam’s enemies say its owner is too stingy to drive it, since learning it consumes a gallon of gas every eight miles; the Nizam’s friends say that he just has no place to go. According to the Rolls-Royce people, the most luxurious car they’ve sold the Nizam is “a London-Edinburgh chassis fitted with a special body for state drives.” The special body is made of solid silver. The top of the car consists of a domed roof. The interior is decorated with old-gold brocade upholstery and lace curtains. The seats fold back into daybeds. And there are special drawers in the rear for shoes. The price paid for this mobile palace is unknown, but it is the most incredible Rolls-Royce, and probably the most expensive four-wheeled vehicle, on earth.

A good share of India’s remaining 661 princes have Rolls-Royces custom-made to fit their own eccentricities. According to the Rolls-Royce company, the greatest quantity purchaser has been the thirty-four-year-old Maharaja of Patiala, a black-bearded giant who heads the ferocious Sikhs. While one maharaja bought five Rolls-Royces at once (presenting his used one to his favorite jockey), and while another maharaja bought six at one time (and sent them all back to be redecorated), the Maharaja of Patiala recently purchased thirty-five new Rolls-Royces. The maharaja, who owns a kennel of four hundred dogs, a private racetrack, and by budgeting keeps his household expenses down to $500,000 a year, has his Rolls-Royces furnished with handmade Swiss clocks, built-in medicine chests, gold-plated dashboards, seats upholstered in costly broadcloths and floors covered with lush beaver rugs. One car is used exclusively for hunting. It has special headlights designed to dazzle tigers, a sliding roof that allows the maharaja to stand and aim his gun, and steel-mesh windows to keep out attacking big game.

That the Rolls-Royce has become a standard plaything of the world’s rulers, celebrities, and wealthy citizens is plain enough. But what are the characteristics that distinguish it and contribute to its popularity among the so-called upper classes?

A paramount factor behind its success is a carefully nurtured exclusiveness. From the very beginning, the founders of Rolls-Royce realized that, since almost anyone making a decent livelihood could afford an attractive mass-produced car, there must be a yearning among the landed gentry for exotic vehicles that would set them apart from the mobile peasantry. Toward this end, only 22,800 Rolls-Royces were produced between 1904 and 1939. Today, a mere 20 Rolls-Royces are made each week. The Detroit-style assembly line and mass production are unknown in Crewe. When American mechanics visited the Rolls factory before the war, they were amazed to find no conveyor belts. The chief engineer of one great American automotive company, after studying the Rolls-Royce motor, exclaimed, “Why, it’s made like a wristwatch!” The Rolls is as close to being handmade as a car sold to the public can be.