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Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost : The Charkhari Alpine Eagle!
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A very special low mileage Silver Ghost sporting one of the most extravagant bodies ever to grace a Rolls-Royce of its period resurfaces after a long time. Adil Jal Darukhanawala has the story
So much has been written about Indian royalty and their extravagant tastes which many a time bordered on the garish and the idiosyncratic that many tomes could be written about them. However, on the positive side is the fact that a majority of Indian royalty displayed good taste in abundance and clear evidence of this was visible in the choice of grand automobiles with graceful coachwork which packed many garages in palaces all over the country.
The best thing about many an Indian raja, raj kumar or a full blown maharaja was that it didn’t matter whether his dominion was vast or small, the aesthete and the technically inclined among them were always known to go for the best and the most powerful automobiles. And for sure, every royal garage worth its name had to have at least one Rolls-Royce stabled for his or her Excellency’s use. It is in this context that the car featured here is significant because this car came from the principality of Charkhari located in the Central Indian province (now part of Uttar Pradesh) which we all know as Bundelkhand. Charkhari was an enlightened state and the rulers seemed to be well versed in the arts as well as the upliftment of their citizens. In fact Charkhari had its own postal system and a defined code of law which was pretty unique for this area in the India of near about a century ago.
The Silver Ghost was the car which made the Rolls-Royce reputation, especially the claim to being the best car in the world at that time. On any other occasion once could have dismissed such a claim as British jingoism but for once this wasn’t the case and the Rolls-Royce 40/50 HP was indeed one of the greatest cars ever built in its time. The 40/50 HP model as it was first known was truly a marvel of fine engineering coupled with a solid build and sporting top notch craftsmanship. While there were cars from other marques to rival it, notably Napier which also made top end prestige machines with more power than was thought needy at that point in time, the 40/50 HP Silver Ghost was a paragon of refinement, smooth power delivery, great quality and exceedingly high reliability.
It was Rolls-Royce policy in its formative years to champion the cause of their products by putting them through the red hot crucible of motor racing and the Silver Ghost was also subjected to such. Charles Rolls, the marketing genius who lent his name to the brand, was clear in his understanding that motor racing victories translated into commercial success. An adventurer at heart and one of the pioneer motorists in England, the Hon’ble Charles Stewart Rolls was also a consummate marketer who understood what the market wanted and his thoughts were quite lucidly delivered to the great Henry Royce who in turn conjured up a truly awe-inspiring automobile which was to create a legend which Rolls-Royce nurtures to this day.
The 40/50 HP Silver Ghost was a paragon of refinement, smooth powerdelivery,
great quality and exceedingly high reliability.
While the Silver Ghost was never actually put into a direct road race as in the 1906 Isle of Man Tourist Trophy race which was won by Rolls driving one of the early RR Twenty, the original Silver Ghost did make its mark with the virtually non-stop 15,000 mile reliability run where upon it was stripped and only a small number of parts seemed to feature the minutest of wear. From there on there was no looking back and the Silver Ghost had Rolls-Royce up and running. It was a time when not many had actually encountered an automobile, even in the major European urban areas but here was a car which was outstanding for its time and surely way ahead of cars which were built a decade and a half later! Charles Rolls, however knew that he had to underline the strength of the Silver Ghost and he found the right foil in one James Radley who was so enamoured of his Silver Ghost that he decided it was good enough to go and win the tough Austrian Alpenfahrt Trials.
Radley entered for the first time in 1912 and would have gone on to have a clean slate on this treacherous reliability trial but for stalling the car and incurring a solitary penalty point. This happened on the tough Katschberg pass which featured an average gradient of around 25 per cent for a majority of its near six kilometre length. Rolls-Royce couldn’t countenance such a result so they mounted an all out attack for 1913 with specially upgraded series of Silver Ghosts which later came to be termed, by enthusiasts and not the works, as the Alpine Eagle Silver Ghosts. These were revised in more ways than one, using modifications crafted for use in tropical lands such as India, a market which Rolls-Royce was eyeing for a long time. A total of five Alpine Eagle cars were made of which four were full works cars while a fifth was James Radley’s car which was a works-supported private entry.
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