Finding Bob

I had always like the Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn, and I knew that the Dawn had the same shape as the Bentley (Mk.VI and) R-Type. So once I had decided to look for an R-Type I already had a good idea what it would look like.

The first R-Type that I looked in this period (June 1997) was dull dark maroon in colour and was on sale by Tony C. for just £ 9,000. As I was at his place to look at Silver Cloud's, I did not take a lot of interest in it. Later, I used it as my first example of condition v price (even though it actually sold for £ 12,000 at the auction the next day).

While there, Tony told me of an auction the very next day. I went to the auction and had a chance to see other examples of R-Types and study them in more detail. Since then I have looked at quite a few.

The first one I actually 'viewed' was one that had been stored for a number of years. It was cheep and looked OK in the photo. When I saw the car, it was quite straight and complete but required too much work to make it worth while at any price. The only sad thing was that it already had air-conditioning and power-steering fitted !

The next one I viewed was on sale by John B., however I thought it was over-priced for it's condition and had no problem deciding to leave it.

Finally on Saturday 9th August, we made the effort to travel from Southampton up to North Wales so that we could visit The Real Car Company the next day. They had three R-Types for us to view. We had already received some beautiful photos of the two R-Types they had ready to sell (one Silver and one Black over Silver), the more expensive one (off course!) looked particularly nice as Black over Silver was one of my preferred colour schemes.

We had taken two days to visit North Wales, so the viewing was first thing Sunday morning (10th August 1997), it was a bright, sunny and warm day.

As the photos of the car had been so complimentary, our first reaction on seeing the car was disappointment, it was not near-mint and there were dozens of tiny (some not so tiny!) marks, chips, pings, cracks etc. on the body work. However a closer inspection showed the car to be very sound, straight with undamaged leather, and lots of original features. We re-adjusted our expectations and soon decided that even at the price asked, it would suit us well. The blemishes actually working it our favour in some ways as I wanted to use the car daily and didn't want it to look too grand.

We did spend some time, while we were there looking at the other R-Type's that they had, they all looked to me to be in a similar condition. The only other one that we even considered was all Silver and a little cheaper. There were pro's and con's against each. Ray took us for a drive around the area in the Silver one, and then let me have my first ever drive of an R-Type, quite a shock after a modern Silver Shadow.

As we had explained to Ray, we would not be willing to buy a car unless they took our Silver Shadow in part exchange. So, while we had been looking at their cars, Ray had been evaluating the trade-in value of our Shadow.

Coincidence !

I am also a member of the Rolls-Royce Owners Club (USA) and while looking back through an old R-ROC magazine (Sept 1996), surprise, surprise, I came across the original for-sale add for the car !