Would you want your wife or servants to see you in a car like this?
Would you like to see it parked outside your club? As Lord Charteris said in a different context “vulgar, vulgar, vulgar”. But I’m aware men of a certain age like to bring a bit of excitement into their lives without paying alimony. Pink polo shirts and red chinos, not worn together, are the first signs of becoming a teenager again. Next is buying cool wheels. My own brother went into Dunleer to buy bread and milk and came back with an E Type Jag. It cost only a little more than his groceries, probably because the passenger door wouldn’t open. This is advantageous to men of a certain age as passengers have to sit on the driver’s lap to get in and out.
Now let’s suppose you have £30,000 in Premium Bonds and want to make a splash, a classy splash. (Don’t drive into the swimming pool.) You couldn’t buy a Tesla or a top-of-the-range Mini but you could buy a Larkspur Blue (isn’t that a lovely colour) Roller. In May this year David Connor wrote about a vintage Mustang: an American Dream. Keeping, vaguely, to his equine theme he is in the Camargue.
“With only 531 ever made, and only around 150 in RHD guise, the Rolls Royce Camargue was from the outset a particularly rare car in an exceptionally rarefied market.
At its launch it was the world’s most expensive production car and, even by Rolls Royce standards, an asking price of over £400,000 in today’s money was too rich for all but the most ostentatiously over-stuffed of celebrity wallets. So, it should come as no surprise to learn that Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra bought each other a Camargue on their respective birthdays.
The Camargue is a two-door coupé, based on the Silver Shadow platform and running gear. Some say it is a thing of beauty, an aesthetic icon redolent of a particularly weird 1970s design zeitgeist. Some would have you believe that its split-level air con qualifies it as an innovative, ground-breaking car. Others think it’s probably the love child of an Aston Martin Lagonda and Lady Penelope’s FAB 1 …
By most conventional metrics the Camargue is a bit bonkers. Each one took six months to build and was the price of about 3 perfectly acceptable houses in the Home Counties or 7 if you went shopping slightly north of Watford Gap. It’s heavy and ridiculously long. If you park it on the street the boot badge and the Spirit of Ecstasy will be in different post codes … It may have only two doors, but each one of them is considerably bigger than anything you’d find on an Amish barn … It’s an indulgence, an extravagance, an exorbitance, a profligacy.”
Going, going, gone. Yours, Sir, the man in in the red chinos. It could be you. It’s up for auction at The Market, Classic and Collectable Car Auctions; a subsidiary of Bonhams. Estimate £26,000 – £35,000.
Christopher
This may amuse you. When the Camargue was first produced, the Sultan of Brunei, an avid collector of the World’s most beautiful and expensive motorcars received early delivery of one. I was adjutant of one of HH’s (as he was then) battalions and we were furnishing the guard at the palace. I decided to drop in and took the opportunity to pop into the ‘mews’. There was this exquisite car parked up with all its doors wide open and batteries of standing fans pointing into the seated area. On asking what on earth was happening, I was informed that HH objected to the smell of the leather and that were attempting to blow it out!
That’s a great story. I shall use it if I ever need to write about a Camargue again.