Rolls-Royce is a brand that, for whatever reason, I’ve never spent much time thinking about. Any Rolls I see on the road usually falls into one of two camps; it’ll be a Phantom, full of somebody obnoxious who has made a lot of money and is exuberantly immodest in displaying it; or it’ll be a Silver Shadow, repainted in white from its original hue to enable it to be hired out cheaply as a wedding car.

Granted, there may be the odd few that sit somewhere in the middle, but those seem a rare sight. However; R.A-S.H for today covers the 1982 Silver Spirit; and it’s a brochure that has opened my eyes, just a tiny bit.

“No Rolls-Royce motor car stems from a single blinding flash of inspiration. It emerges- over a number of years-by a process of evolution

So it is with the Silver Spirit“

Rolls-Royce is one of the few brands who can get away with the term “motor-car” in their publicity material; British Leyland used to try and I think Cadillac might have too, to embarrassing effect. It’s also refreshing to see a brochure begin its sermon with words of truth.

Rolls-Royce rarely did anything revolutionary since the end of the ’60s when the unibody Silver Shadow was launched, a platform which lasted well into the ‘nineties and is found under the Spirit, too.

“From a line of distinguished predecessors it inherits much that is tried and good and true”

The engine was carried over from the Shadow, as was much of the suspension which, once again, featured an automatic ride-height control which would later become a fully fledged Girling adaptive system for those times when one really was in a hurry

“…a strikingly individual car- very obviously of today, yet timeless because its beauty of line springs from engineering truth rather than stylist pencil.”

 More truth. Gaze at the side view of the car from West to East and you notice an economy of line that is almost stingy. There are no flourishes (apart from the cheeky Hofmeister-style kink in the rear door) and there is nothing in the least showy about it, which seems strange when you think about what it is. It does, however, look strong, thanks to the front wheels projecting so far forwards, and the weight of that C-Pillar. See Range-Rover for another example of those proportions.

“The moment you slip into the contoured driving seat of a Silver Spirit you are perfectly at home, completely in control.”

At first glance time stood still in the Rolls-Royce driving compartment. The dinner-plate sized gauges could have come from any point in motoring history, the black bakelite steering wheel; not leather wrapped, could have been borrowed from Kenworth. Yet, visually, the datedness subsides into something that is resolutely fit-for-purpose. Those chrome rotary switches look like they could stay on switching duty for ever.

Then you look more closely and you realise that all the technology you could want is there, too. There were joysticks for the seats and more joysticks for the mirrors. The dashboard was home to a colony of warning lamps which were ranked by a colour code depending on seriousness. That vintage-looking speedometer was actually electronic, and you could rely on it to within “nine yards in every mile”.

The only slightly jarring thing in this spectators humble opinion is the strip of pale green vacuum-fluorescent digits embedded into the dashboard to inform of outside temperature, time and elapsed time. It seems one step from having a Terratrip rally computer installed, which you wouldn’t do in a Rolls-Royce, would you? Actually, I would, and I pledge to fit one when I get my first Roller.

“When you move away, response from the 6.75 litre, V-8 engine, with its hydraulically controlled automatic transmission, is swift and positive.”

Yes, this transmission was the  GM THM 400 3-speed, as seen in Cadillacs. And Ferrari 412s. Also familiar to all you interstate-travelling Unitedstatesians will be the foot-operated parking brake with its hand release under the dashboard, though Mercedes were also kind of keen on this arrangement.

Of course, beyond the vulgar talk of technology and the oily bits under the surface that should only be touched by your Maintenance Man, the brochure went on to speak of al the traditionally accepted Rolls-Roycenesses.

“Exquisite burr walnut veneers for the fascia are chosen by a cultivated eye and cut by hand. Up to eight invisibly joined slivers of veneer, polished to an amber lustre that looks like glass and is almost as hard, may go into a single panel. The right side will mirror the left and no other car will have an identical pattern”.

Yeah, to this day Rolls-Royce really has wood about wood. Then there’s the leather, of course, and the deep Wilton carpets, whose tough, practical utility com from “the fleece of particularly hardy sheep”.

And the paintwork, with sometimes more than ten coats, of which some were hand-rubbed, whatever that means. But it’s sure to be a laborious and exacting process, not unlike that involved in the photo depicting the cars’ wiring loom, which looks like it could facilitate life support on a good sized nuclear submarine.

“You will be neither too hot nor too cold”

Not with the exclusive Rolls-Royce two-level air-conditioning system, as seen before in the oft-maligned and terrifyingly expensive Camargue. The floor and face levels could be independently adjusted between 17 and 33 degrees, for warm feet, cold head on demand. Facilities extended to centralised door locking, door open warning and the modernist wonder of an antenna that rose automatically with the operation of the radio.

“Above all, the Silver Spirit is a superb example of a successful marriage of tradition and technology”

It was, truly. The thing is, if you read the reviews from when the Silver Spirit was released it wasn’t wholly appreciated for what it was. The commonly used tag “finest car in the world” was a difficult one to justify. Consider the price tag of the Spirit in 1982, (circa £52,000) a quantity of money that could entitle you to a couple of Ferraris, Porsche or complete set of Lotuses of your choice. And if a sedan was your goal in life, the W126 S-Class was fresh on the scene and presented a force to be reckoned with, and most people would willingly have settled for what the Jaguar XJ could offer, in either six or twelve cylinder formats, at a massively lower cost.

In truth, the Spirit was a very different proposition and had to regarded entirely separately from almost everything else on the market. When Rolls-Royce mention finest car in the world, they’re not talking sports car or exotic. They’re talking ordinary, workaday car, the sort that people use for, you know, transportation. A car that didn’t really do anything especially unique, but just did everything really well. In other words, imagine a bigger MkII Ford Granada Ghia, but with every single aspect divinely hand-crafted from the finest materials known to man. That, Rolls-Royce were telling us, was what constitutes the finest car in the world.

In Part Two we explore whether that title is deserved any more thirty years down the line.

(Disclaimer:- Yeah, I know the photos are terrible. I took them myself, and this poxy laptop I’m using only has Microsoft Paint as imaging software. It won’t even run Gimp. All copyright of the original material belongs to Rolls-Royce, who can probably afford decent computers)