Bargain Buy or Money Pit? Why The Silver Spirit is the Last "Proper" Rolls Royce

foreign hello everybody today we are bringing a bit of class to the Channel with this a 1989 Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit 2 but let's be honest about something shall we you all know that there are only two reasons why anybody would ever buy a used Rolls-Royce the first is that they don't have much money but they'd like to appear as if they do and the second is that they do have quite a bit of money but for whatever reason they think that's a problem and let's face it an old Rolls Royce is just about the most effective way to get rid of cash in the automotive world without sticking numbers on this idea car and popping down to Bran's hatch at the weekends all of us petrol heads know that every single old used Rolls-Royce is nothing but a living hell and even worse than that once you do get it going they're not particularly good to drive they're not actually that luxurious and they certainly aren't that far cost there really isn't a single reason why anybody in the right state of mind would actually want to buy an old Rolls-Royce or is there [Music] if you're like myself and you don't really know your rolls royces allow me to explain exactly what it is we're driving today if you're of a certain age you may have an image in your head of a Rolls-Royce as a wedding car and there's a good chance that may have been this car's predecessor the Silver Shadow which was in production from the 1960s until 1980 when this the Silver Spirit was introduced in typical Rolls-Royce fashion they told everybody this was an all-new and much different car but compared with the outgoing Silver Shadow it still had the same six and three quarter liter V8 with presumably more power but uh they didn't actually tell you what it was so you were never really sure it still has the same GM derived three-speed automatic gearbox it still has the same Citron derived Hydro pneumatic suspension with some tweaks which I'll get onto in a bit and the car even retained rolls-royce's traditional redundant braking system meaning you've got two calipers on a wheel as opposed to one the theory being if one fails you've still got one to slow you down the reality being that there's just twice as much to go wrong and it still feels quite cramped in here for a car that is very large about 1.9 meters wide and 5.3 meters long or to put it another way the same length as a sort of modern day long wheelbase 7 Series or S-Class in its defense were this still on sale today I think it might actually qualify as the smallest of the Rolls-Royce lineup you you may though be a little bit more familiar with this car's Bentley cousins you see it was produced at a time when Rolls-Royce and Bentley were essentially joined at the hip with the latter really being simply a trim level for Rolls-Royce and it was during this era really where Bentley experienced something of a Renaissance first off their equivalent to the spirit was the mole Zam but later that morphed into the mole Zan turbo and finally the mighty Bentley Turbo R that I have actually driven and rather enjoyed but the Rolls-Royce was always designed as the more luxury orientated of the two and so what sets it apart well it's kind of hard to say because both are rather opulent if anything I might say that the wood veneers in here seem a little bit better but honestly there's a good chance that's just my memory playing tricks there are however a few things to note about this car first off it's been brought to me by Channel fan and all-round Good Guy Brad who is currently by far top of the leaderboard for number of cars brought to me I think this is maybe his eighth or ninth most of them have actually been Japanese Imports real Oddball stuff like the Nissan Shimmer than the Toyota Century the Honda Elysium but uh of late he's gone very British so the other day I drove his Land Rover Discovery too and previously I also drove his Range Rover P38 this though is rather Mighty and Splendid and he bought it for just about the only reason anybody ever would buy an old Rolls-Royce because he wanted one and I think he's chosen very very well I previously mentioned the Silver Shadow and I think to many people that is the archetypal Rolls-Royce if for no other reason then that's probably the Rolls Royce that they or their mum had on their wedding day they're the slightly more curvaceous looking one and almost always white even if they didn't start that way on account of the fact doing the wedding bit was the way that many owners kept the things going generally speaking these were cars run on a shoestring budget and though they looked fine in photos once he got a little bit closer you did begin to see the brush Strokes in the paintwork however this is not like that at all first off it isn't white nor is it actually black it's blue and looks absolutely Sensational particularly with the gorgeous twin white Coach line down the side painted on of course and rather unusually the gold-plated Spirit of ecstasy up front which I'm told is Factory correct and um I've got to say is utterly marvelous I tip my sunglasses to whoever specked that from the factory this was also the first Rolls-Royce where the spirit of ecstasy will disappear into the Bodywork if she is not although it won't cover itself as in the later models it's really there I think to meet crash regulations but to protect against your gold-plated woman from being stolen Rolls-Royce actually created an official accessory which was essentially a little sort of cover so you can lock her away overnight so nobody can thieve her and Heaven helped me if a radical feminist watches that out of context inside it would appear as if nearly an entire bloodline of bulls have given their life to decorate the interior alongside half of a small to medium Forest I am also driving it with the sort of inch and a half thick lambswool carpet which is a little bit frustrating and does kind of get in the way and I understand why Brad doesn't like it but uh does also look and feel magnificent in the back you've then got a number of typical Rolls-Royce touches like the little mirrors so that you can check there's nothing in your teeth before you get out the car you've got a nice armrest that comes down in the middle that I didn't get a photograph of and if you were Jack the Lad who bought this car back in 1989 between the seats here you've got something a very special indeed which um I am legally required to pull over before I show you look at that yeah oh I can only imagine being here in 1990 Furniture broker now you mug I told you to sell what are you a plum and uh are there such pleasantries as I'm sure the original owner of this car would have done actually I'm sure they would have just told you to get the agar on the go ahead of your arrival but uh in any case I love stuff like that and I've got to say I really love driving this car too now I haven't rigged up an exhaust cam today because honestly it would have been nearly entirely pointless but second Lotus I've spotted on the road today and I drove a third this morning uh that video should be out already an Elan M100 anyway like I said put your foot down in the car will move though by the time you've got to about 40 it appears to have lost most of the interest in doing so however the steering is quite key in the car really really does turn in very well and though the tires will eventually be overloaded and actually there's a real weird joy in doing this kind of thing with the car of this size and stature it's not light as you might imagine officially about 2.4 tons there was also a long wheelbase variant which is the Silver Spur and as you might imagine all of them are fairly rare I think this the Silver Spirit 2 they made something like 11 or 1200 of foreign production for a very short space of time from about 1989 to 1992 and a few of the improvements brought to this over the original include abs and fuel injection as standard across the line but you also had something called automatic body control which today is fairly hum drum but in the 1980s and early 90s must have been space age in short it gave the car the ability to control Each corner of itself independently exactly by what means and how much it does I really really don't know but it does it it is also like just about everything with these Citron derived suspension self-leveling and over certainly decent pieces of Road fairly comfortable but it will shock you exactly how much you'll feel the little lumps and bumps in fact uh watch this little section here there's quite a bit going on really sometimes I feel as if it's the seat doing as much as the suspension in terms of isolating you from the worst of the road perhaps unsurprisingly for a car about to celebrate its 34th birthday there isn't all that much in here in the way of Technology car phone aside but what is here Works fairly well the windows are all pretty decent nice smooth lovely the gearbox actually is a little bit better than I'd give it credit for though it is worth noting a few years after towards the end of Series 2 production they introduced a four-speed GM box I've experienced that in a number of cars and it is a big Improvement the aircon though does blow icy cold and it's actually a very very easy car to drive it has often been said that rolls royces are configured for the person sitting in the back and the Bentleys were configured for the person sitting in the front and though there's certainly some truth to that this is still a very very pleasant thing you've got to Temp your speed of course you just cannot throw it around a Bend like a hot hatch but that really should be blindingly obvious there is still though a real sense of occasion about this car I absolutely love it it's old it's weird it is like driving a stately home but I kind of respect it and this example in particular is showing me just how nice these can be which is a shock because Brad actually bought it having previously been a cat C write-off but to judge the car on the basis of that you would be making a big mistake you see unfortunately or fortunately depending on your perspective for a very long time these cars were worth next to nothing and so to write a car off it wouldn't actually take all that much I've seen some which were written off because somebody threw paint at the car and the cost of redoing it was more than the value of the entire machine unfortunately that isn't what happened to this car instead it had a knock that required the replacement of a front Wing but it wasn't a big smash it wasn't a particularly nasty one it's just the fact that to put a new wing on a Rolls-Royce is expensive and the insurance company presumably didn't want the hassle all right on the drive home Brad did wonder if he'd made a terrible mistake because he said that the car was bouncing up and down left right and center and did really feel like something was fairly wrong with him it turns out that actually the problem was the Spheres at the rear they needed replacing man they weren't particularly expensive about 80 pounds each although the cost of fitting them was more than the cost of the part and this I'm told really set the precedent for his Rolls-Royce ownership experience in the time that he's had it which is about a year nothing major has really gone all that wrong most of what he's done has been small remedial staff on the odd bit of preventative maintenance for example the carrier for the spare wheel he had removed shot blasted and re-sprayed because it was looking a little crusty and that is a way for corrosion to get into the main body like just about everything else built in Britain in the 1980s these are known for corrosion and the best piece of advice I think anyone can give you when it comes to buying an old Rolls-Royce is get the best one you can possibly find and then when you do have it realize that as and when things do crop up you should deal with them it may on occasion feel like the death of a Thousand Cuts but if you don't tend to these things if you do ignore them you let the car sit and they don't like sitting it will not like you and it may then get to the point where you have a car that say worth ten thousand pounds but also requires ten thousand pounds worth of Maintenance and that is exactly what happened with the turbo are that I drove I bought it for 16 Grand spent 16 and a half fixing it although it does appear as if you need to spend a little bit more to get yourself into one of these at the moment all of the silver spirits that I could find for sale were asking between 20 and 25 000 pounds and I suppose that really is the big problem with the car isn't it because let's think about it for a second 20 to 25 000 pounds can get you a lot of just about anything it would get you into an S-Class 7 Series or Lexus LS which in terms of ride Comfort technology and to be honest in many ways luxury would wipe the floor with this old rolls they'd be better to drive they'd be better to live with they'd be certainly quite a bit faster and they'd have all the nice gimmicks and things you expect of a car from the 21st century then in terms of sports cars you could get yourself into a BMW Z4 Porsche Cayman Boxster 911 Nissan 350 370Z NISMO whatever you want really but uh a Rolls-Royce at 20 to 25 000 pounds which isn't going to be as quick as those isn't going to have the toys of those nor annoyingly the interior space I should give special mention to the boot that's massive you could easily get oh two to three bodies in the bag really depending on exactly how naughty they've been and how many pieces they're currently in um but otherwise for those who are inside the car and still breathing it's not massively spacious it is also going to cost you a fair bit to run first off fuel well anything with the six and three quarter liter Rolls-Royce engine is not going to be economical on a run oh it'll be bad around town it'll be terrible with this car they increase the size of the fuel tank to 107 liters meaning apparently that it could finally do more than 300 miles between Phillips I'm really struggling to put my finger on it and turn it into words which is a shame because that's my job but this certainly has an air of authority and stateliness about it that though present in the Bentley wasn't there in such great quantities perhaps it's because it's not even pretending to be sporty that I'm just not bothered about that aspect and instead you're pleased with just how well it does pull away from a line and the fact that it turns in quite keenly and actually is really really easy to place for something quite so large we've got an excellent view of that Bonnet out the front and the engine below is rather magnificent and actually the source of one reason why you might want to buy this car and that is because in a lot of ways you could consider this the last true Rolls-Royce now I'm one of these people that doesn't really subscribe often to the idea of certain cars made in certain areas being the correct or the proper one if it's got a Ferrari badge on it it's a Ferrari it's got a Porsche badge on it it's a Porsche I don't care where in the world it was assembled if the maker put their name to it it is what it says maybe you don't like that but that's how it is however when it comes to this it's a little bit different because at the end of this car's production in 1997 when it was replaced by the silver serif of which I have reviewed an example and was still weirdly quite cramped despite the fact that was also an all-new car this engine was supposed to be discontinued replaced in that vehicle with the BMW V12 however it was shortly after the arrival of that car that Rolls-Royce and BMW were sold and then separated but it was a rather unusual separation in the fact that BMW walked away with essentially the rights to make a Rolls-Royce and VW got just about everything else including Bentley and the Rolls-Royce engine so after this car Bentley went back to using the old Rolls Royce six and three quarter liter on account of the fact that one of their major suppliers BMW was now also their major competition whereas the Rolls-Royce naturally continued using the BMW V12 and so that leaves this the Silver Spirit in its many generations of which I think there were four or possibly even five as pretty much one of the last cars to wear not just the Rolls-Royce badge but also be supplied with the mighty fabled Rolls-Royce 6 and 3 4 liter engine which to some will mean absolutely nothing but to others mark it out as the last of an era and to be honest driving this car it does feel a little bit like it's out of time but it's actually still really Pleasant and I've got to say if what you're looking for in a car is noise speed or technology look elsewhere but if you want occasion then this really does have it in spades for twenty thousand pounds on the one hand that's a lot of money on the other hand this is a lot of car so there we go that's a look at a 1989 Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit 2. as ever I want to say a huge thanks to Brad for bringing it out and to you for watching don't forget to hit the like button comment down below and subscribe if you haven't already I'll see you at the next one bye-bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: JayEmm on Cars

Views: 167,747

Keywords: Diary, VLOG, Car, Sound, Test, video, Review, Comparison, JayEmm on Cars

Id: N_03jwHBzuQ

Length: 19min 0sec (1140 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 23 2023