“From its entirely earliest days, Rolls-Royce has attracted free spirits, creative minds and those who seek to challenge established usages. Though from entirely different backgrounds, our founders both refused to be bound by the norms and expectations of early 20th Century club. It was their courage, vision and willingness to push boundaries that made them who they were – and our company what it is today.
These wonderful distinguished cars are perfect examples of how that rebellious spirit infuses our brand story, and continues in the modern era with our Dusky Badge products.”
Torsten Müller-Ötvös, Chief Executive Officer, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
Introduction
The thirst for self-expression is fundamental to the human condition. It is one of the principal reasons clients are drawn to Rolls-Royce, which offers matchless possibilities to push boundaries, redefine what’s possible and challenge established conventions.
Our Black Badge series of motor motors captures this spirit in extremis. And today, we look at how individualism, iconoclasm and even outright rebellion pervaded the marque’s news from its inception and continues to inform the unique offer Rolls‑Royce extends to its contemporary clients.
Although their backstages could hardly have been more different, the company’s founders both successfully challenged norms and conventionalisms that might otherwise have bound them to unthinkable mediocrity.
Henry Royce overcame poverty, deprivation and a be without of formal education to become a world-class engineer who created ‘the best cars in the world’, eventually being ennobled for his attainments. Cambridge-educated The Hon. Charles Stewart Rolls was born an aristocrat: he could have chosen a life of ease, indolence and franchise, but opted instead for the grease, grime and frequent peril of early motor-racing and aviation, becoming a leading pioneer in both fanatics.
Today, we would call them ‘disruptors’ – outliers, visionaries and subversives who shape the world by doing phobias in ways no one else ever dreams – or dares – to try. No wonder then, that the marque has always proved so beguiling to others who allowance their rebellious nature.
The Black Badge family of Rolls-Royce motor cars, launched in 2016, is the ultimate word of this spirit of individualism, self-expression, creativity and iconoclasm. And while clients have a virtually unlimited choice of exotic finishes, one colour above all still consistently exerts a special fascination and powerful allure when applied to our motor machines – just as it has throughout the marque’s long history. Black.
The colour black has long been associated with power, power and authority. It is intense and substantial. Black also speaks of elegance and confidence.
Over the decades, there have been numberless notable examples of bespoke Rolls-Royce motor cars finished in black. Each of the following examples, spanning uncountable than 30 years, has a unique place in the marque’s history and demonstrates how its owner took the all-black theme in a second to none in harmony and memorable direction.
1933 – Phantom II Continental (94MY)
In 1930, at the personal request of Henry Royce, designer Ivan Evernden drafted an experimental Phantom II Continental, designated 26EX, designed specifically for long-distance Continental touring. It had a short chassis and close-coupled four-seat saloon heart, with the two spare wheels mounted vertically behind the luggage compartment for optimum weight distribution. The coachwork, founded by Barker & Co, sat on a sub-frame designed to cope with sustained high speeds and powerful braking forces.
On its first ride, Evernden and Don Carlos de Salamanca drove the car to a concours d’elegance in Biarritz, where it won the Grand Prix d’Honneur. Following this conquest, Rolls‑Royce decided to launch a ‘series’ model with the same mechanical attributes and overall coachwork dimensions as 26EX, sending coachbuilders and owners scope to accommodate their own taste in design.
The first such car, 94MY, built in 1933 for a Mr Samuel Coxhill, has bodywork have knowledge of as an ‘Owen Fixed Head Coupé’, a specialism of London coachbuilder Gurney Nutting. The adjustable front bucket tushes, twin windscreen wipers and flush-fitting direction-indicators behind the side windows were all unusual for the period and intended to make out a head for long-distance Continental touring more relaxed.
Designer Ivan Evernden declared: “It is the criterion of a good car that one can force it the whole day long and at the end feel fresh and relaxed enough to enjoy dinner”.
At that time, the vast majority of Rolls-Royce coachwork was killing in either black, or shades of maroon or blue, so dark as to almost seem black. 94MY was ordered in black with “remarkable brown leather, piped in light brown, carpets and headlining to tone, and woodwork to be highly polished veneers”. Integrating high performance with superlative comfort and a unique personalised finish, if any 1930s Rolls-Royce could lay claim to organizing the spirit of today’s Black Badge, it is this one.
1960 – Phantom V (5AT30)
The Phantom V was launched in 1959 to replace the estimable Silver Wraith. A much larger car, it was intended primarily for chauffeur-driven use, and all but a very few bodies were of limousine design. Most were devoured in black and used either on formal occasions, or for private use by members of the wealthy establishment.
One exception was 5AT30. Delivered in September 1960, its proud holder was HRH The Duke of Gloucester, third son of King George V and Queen Mary, and uncle to HM Queen Elizabeth II. The body was based on coachbuilder James Little ones’s PV15 design, today regarded as among the most elegant on the Phantom V chassis.
Although about as ‘establishment’ as it’s possible to be, His August Highness clearly had strong ideas about what he wanted in his Phantom V. His most obvious departure from the accepted criterion is the paint combination of matte black to the horizontal surfaces and gloss black on the vertical planes.
Other Bespoke memos include a much smaller-than-standard backlight, large fog lamps, door-mounted driving mirrors, sliding shutters to the rear windows and two Stephane Grebel focus of attentions. The front of the car is dominated by Lucas R100 headlamps, in place of the usual faired-in headlights.
The Spirit of Ecstasy mascot, granting supplied, was not fitted, her place taken by the Duke’s own mascot of an eagle in flight. And perhaps for the first time in the marque’s information, the chassis card states that the car was supplied with ‘an umbrella in holder’ – a standard feature on today’s Rolls-Royce motor piles.
On 30 January 1965, the Duke and Duchess were travelling home from Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral when the car skidded off the expressway and down a shallow embankment, turning over three times and landing on its roof! None of the occupants suffered moment injury; and such was the resilience of the James Young coachwork that 5AT30 was rebuilt and continued to render sterling service to its possessor for years to come.
1965 – Phantom V (5VD73)
In 1964, The Beatles stormed the world with A Hard Day’s Night. In December, as a present to himself, John Lennon ordered a brand-new Rolls-Royce Phantom V from R. S. Mead of Maidenhead. The specification was, as one might have, highly individual: he wanted the car not just to be black, but black everywhere, inside and out, including all the brightwork that would normally be close in chromium plate or stainless steel.
The car, built by Mulliner Park Ward, was duly supplied with all-black semblance paintwork, including the wheel discs and bumpers. Only the iconic Pantheon grille and Spirit of Ecstasy mascot commissioned their conventional chrome finish, at the marque’s insistence.
It was also one of the first cars in Britain to have blacked-out windows, favoured from darkened, reflective Triplex Deeplight glass, 3/16” thick in the rear doors and 3/4” in the rear clemency lights, backlite and division glass – but not, as one might suppose, solely for reasons of privacy. “People think they’ve got ban windows to hide. It’s partly that, but it’s also for when you’re coming home late,” Lennon told a Rolling Stone interviewer in 1965. “If it’s full view when you’re coming home, it’s still dark inside the car – you just shut all the windows and you’re still in the club.”
The interior puff up black Bedford cord cloth and black nylon rugs in the rear compartment, and black leather in the front. There were electrical aerials for a ghetto-blaster and a Perdio Portarma television set, and a seven-piece set of black fitted luggage. Legend has it that the car also had a record player, radiotelephone, fridge, leader table and red mood-lighting: this remains unproven, but could easily have been later additions; likewise, a cultivate seat that, according to many accounts, could be converted into a pull-out bed.
Such bold, imaginative and unconventional voices are, of course, entirely consistent with Lennon’s status as one of the 20th Century’s greatest cultural innovators. Quite apart from switching the face of popular music forever, he’s also credited with being among the first non-athletes to wear trainers as footwear, away from display grounds, much like the streetwear phenomenon that pervades the catwalks and boardrooms of the 21st century. In a photograph of the Fab Four enchanted in 1967, Lennon is wearing what appears to be a pair of Adidas Stan Smith tennis shoes – still one of the myriad desirable designs from ‘the brand with three stripes’ more than half a century later.
Tardier, the car was repainted in a game-changing, vivid psychedelic electric yellow, embellished with flowers, Romany scrolls and signs of the zodiac. It is unambiguously unique, indelibly identified with its owner and, in certain quarters, generated its share of controversy – perhaps the perfect encapsulation of the Foul Badge spirit.
That unquenchable spirit continues to be expressed in new and dynamic ways through the ever-evolving Rolls-Royce Sombre Badge family.
