1950 SILVER WRAITH ROADSTER ..see TEST DRIVE and BENTLEY, DELAHAYE, BUGATTI

Description

Boca Raton Concours d'Elegance...
Double Award winning Best in Class plus
Most Elegant Open Car.Shown at Pebble Beach 2016
The World's Rarest of all Rolls Royces.
One off Silver Wraith Roadster with handsome French Styling
SUBJECT OF ARTISTS WORLDWIDE
from photographers to oil paintings, posters
and model makers
Well over 8000 hours of a nut and bolt restoration to Pebble Beach standards.We started with a very solid 'driver' but had to make this rare and elegant car perfect.
Hundreds of photos. It just completed a 500 mile break in
...............................
Numerous National Concours d'Elegance Awards
This wonderful vehicle is being offered solely to generate funds for the owner's family charity a 501 C 3.
(please do not request donations and be advised that we have been informed that in the event of a completed sale the purchaser is not entitled to any tax deduction)
The following is only part of an article featuring this car in Car Collector Magazine plus a Rolls Royce book Featuring this car on the cover and great details in the chapter about it.
This one-off example was designed and bodied by H. J. Mulliner for Mrs. Sybil Rhodes, an American married to British industrialist Frank E. Rhodes. In the prewar years, and for many years after, Rhodes made his fortune in concrete, paving the motorways crisscrossing Great Britain. It is believed that Sybil owned a French sports car when she lived in the United States; however, it was never shipped to the Rhodes estate in England. One person suggested that Frank Rhodes was not happy with the French after the war and would not permit anything French on his property (thus we would assume his wine cellar was stocked with bottles from the White Cliffs of Dover). With Sybil’s affection for French styling one can see the influence of esteemed Paris salons such as Franay and Saoutchik in the H. J. Mulliner design, particularly the rear deck (boot) with its beautiful chrome fin. The entire body is aluminum under which is the early, whisper-silent, Rolls-Royce straight six coupled to a four-speed manual transmission. A close-coupled design, the rear is taken up by a wonderfully British traveling cocktail bar. The Long Road to Restoration Owned today by a renowned Pennsylvania collecto, the car has been restored to its original H. J. Mulliner design and color scheme. The owner, who is known for his meticulous restorations had spent years and over 5000 hours producing a most magnificent car to it glory, admitted that he had not intended this car to be quite such a project. “I got it from Florida and started working on it, cleaning it up; I figured I would just turn it into a nice driver,” he recalls. But as is often the case with a restoration, one thing led to another. There was more to this car than originally met the eye. “Along the way, I acquired original plans and other documents that made me more and more interested in this new project. A lot of times with coach built cars changes are made that never get noted in the original plans. This car was originally supposed to have a dickey seat (rumble seat) behind the passenger compartment. At some point this was changed and a full length trunk was put in its place. Also, they had designed the spare tire to be inserted through the license plate door, but that would never have worked based on the size of the spare, so that design was changed as well. But the most significant factors about the car were masked under years of old paint and restoration work.” As the restoration team began prepping the car they discovered original details that may have been covered over for as long as 30 years. While stripping the paint (many layers including the visible coats of blue, yellow and then the original black) they found holes running down the center of the trunk, as well as along the trailing edges of the rear fenders. “These were details that had been removed and the holes filled,” says the owner. “At about the same time we discovered a few rusty pieces of metal in a box in the trunk. We didn’t even know that there was a built in box in the trunk, but found it recessed far forward of the rear axle and covered over. It was then that we started to realize maybe we had something even more special than we already knew.” Those rusty pieces of metal turned out to be parts of an original deck lid fin. There were also a couple of threaded bolts that matched the uncovered holes. By placing advertisements on the Internet, and in British newspapers both in and around the area of the old Rhodes Estate, letters started coming in. “During our research we found out that there were more than the one set of plans at Hunt House (storage of Rolls-Royce records). The second plan showed the elimination of the Dickey seat and a different arrangement of the refreshment (liquor and wine) cabinet. Later there was a note that was in conflict with the original plans. The note called for the placement of the spare tire forward in the boot behind the passenger seat. The prior plan shows its placement to the aft of the trunk, in a well. The measurement for the opening to house the spare was actually several inches shorter than the spare tire!” The owner managed to contact the son of the Rhodes family chauffeur who had lived at Thorpe Underwood Hall, the Rhodes’ palatial country estate. Further letters and calls noted that sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s Mrs. Rhodes had an accident with WGC48 that damaged the left front fender, left rear fender and rear of the boot. The car was disposed of shortly thereafter. It is believe that the damaged Silver Wraith was sold to Myers- Brunell, which handled Rolls-Royces and had an extensive fabricating shop. The car was repaired; however, the side trim and center boot molding were not replaced. The holes were filled in and the sections sprayed in black. It was shipped to the United States where it found a new owner. Since then this French influenced Silver Wraith has remained in the U.S., the country where its original owner was born.
MAJOR AWARDS
2015 Boca Raton
Best in Class
Most Elegant Auto
Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance
'Best in Class'
Greenwich Concours European
‘Most Distinguished Rolls Royce’
Eastern United States Concours
'Best Open Car' plus Poster car
New Hope Auto Show 50th
' Best in Show '
Wm.Vanderbilt Concours
‘Chairman’s Major Award
plus
Best in Class
Radnor Hunt Concours
Best in Class
Buckingham Concours d'Elegance
' Best in Show '
also
POSTER CAR
AACA National
First Place
Plus; Major National AACA Presentation “Foo Dog” Grand National Award
2012 Rolls Royce Regional Meet NHAS
‘ Best in Show ’
plus
Queen Elizabeth 11 Trophy
‘ Best in Show'
2013 Bratwyn Concours
'Best in Show'