Here's a Tour of the Most Expensive Rolls-Royce Sedan From 1973

this is a 1973 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow and it was the top-of-the-line 45 years ago the ultimate rolls-royce the rolls-royce phantom of its day but given that it was well forty five years ago it has a few differences compared to modern Rolls Royces today I'm gonna take you on a tour of this car and show you what life was like in the rolls-royce phantom of the 1970s now I say the rolls-royce phantom of the 1970s because this was the Phantom of its day the best rolls-royce sedan you could buy 45 years ago now I've borrowed this car from motorcars of the main line an excellent car dealership here in the Philadelphia suburbs that always has exciting and interesting and weird and unusual inventory and today I borrowed one of their most interesting cars and frankly one of the most interesting cars I've ever reviewed first a little history now if you trace the rolls-royce sedan lineage back you start with the Phantom then before that you had the Silver Seraph and before that there was the silver spirit and before that there was this car rolls-royce made these from 1965 all the way to 1980 used a 6.7 five liter v8 that made all of 189 horsepower and it used a four-speed automatic transmission that was manufactured by General Motors anyway today I'm gonna show you around the silver shadow and I'm going to show you all of the interesting quirks and features from the flagship rolls-royce sedan from 45 years ago then I'm gonna get it out on the road and then I'm gonna give it a dug score and for more of my thoughts on the Silver Shadow click the link below to visit autotrader.com slash oversteer where I've also compiled a list of the cheapest formerly great used luxury cars currently listed for sale on auto trader now in a start-up front with a couple of interesting items starting with the headlights now you know how modern luxury cars sort of integrate the brand name into the headlight housing and it looks really cool and sleek well rolls-royce couldn't do that back then they just use these circular headlights so instead they just put the RR in between the two bulbs the bulb for the normal beams and the high beams it was sort of an interesting precursor to sticking the actual brand name or logo inside the headlight housing next up we move on to our friend Rolls Royces Spirit of Ecstasy that's what they call their hood ornament their design it appears to be a woman with wings now the interesting thing about the Spirit of Ecstasy is it isn't fixed it looks like it is but you can actually move it around supposedly that was for pedestrian safety if you hit a pedestrian they wouldn't be impaled on the Spirit of Ecstasy maybe the most interesting thing is not only can you kind of move it back and forth but you can twist it so if you want you can have your Spirit of Ecstasy facing sideways which is sort of an unusual thing but maybe that's a feature that the eccentric rolls-royce owner would take advantage of next up we got to talk wheels now I've always found the wheels from this era of rolls-royce to be interesting obviously they cover the lug nuts so they don't expose any of that unpleasantness but the other interesting thing is just how many circles are involved obviously the whole thing is a circle and then if you look closer there's a circle inside the circle and then there's a red painted circle that goes around and then there's another chrome circle on another chrome circle just kind of to emphasize the point that this car is very luxurious and well round I guess also interesting you can see the valve stem cap has the rolls-royce logo on it a nice example of attention to detail even back in the 70s next up we got to talk roof now most of these silver Shanna has had this Landau top it was sort of a vinyl top to make the car look like sort of a faux convertible to add additional classiness compared to a regular sedan one of the interesting things I like about this one is it doesn't seem like Rolls Royce could find a supplier to cover the entire top in vinyl so instead there's like three panels and then they're these off-center seems sort of running down the roof of the car where they stitched it all together it isn't exactly the classiest look but it was the best they could do in the 70s next up one other exterior item before I climb inside you can see this car has this sort silver-trimmed stripe running down the side of it well rolls-royce decided to hide the door handles by integrating them into the silver trim stripe which is kind of a good idea and it looks nice although it's worth noting that they then kind of just sort of stuck in the keyhole outside the stripe and ruined the entire aesthetic of hiding the door entry system but regardless they're there now the interesting thing about the door handles is that you don't just pull him to get in you walk up to the car and push this button and then you pull on the door that was relatively common back in the day when this car was made but by modern standards nobody's doing that anymore and once we're inside we move on to the door panels and frankly I could go for quite a while on the door panels and so I'm going to I'm gonna start with the mirrors which are very unusual the mirror control for the driver side mirrors on the door panel it's this little lever you move it and the mirror moves in a corresponding direction that is unusual by modern standards but it was pretty common at the time of this car not common at the time of this car is the fact that the mirrors are different the driver's side mirror is a circle controlled on the inside the passenger side mirror is a rectangle and to control it you actually have to walk over there and move it around from the outside of the car why is this my guess is this silver shadow was only sold new with one driver side mirror like mini 1970s cars the owner proudly added the passenger side mirror lately mirror for better visibility and I'm not done with the door panel in fact far from it now you may be saying manual mirrors that's not that unusual this car is pretty old but here's the interesting thing it is power locks push this little button on the door panel and you can hear the locks going this cars power locks it must have been one of the first cars with that feature that was really advanced at the time so Rolls Royce can figure out power locks but they couldn't figure out power mirrors or even two mirrors seems like an odd decision another odd decision is the power windows take a look on the door panel you can see all the power windows except they're unlabeled and they're just in a row so it's hard to know which one is which I know which one is for the rear of the car for the driver side for the passenger side it's just sort of a guessing game every time you roll down the window until you commit the order of those switches to memory and speaking of the power windows which is I really like the fact that all of the switches in the door panel are sort of encased in a chrome over plate it's like rolls-royce types themselves we can't just place the switches in there we have to frame them in silver in order to get the appearance we're looking for them I have to admit it does look good or it would have looked good back in the 70s the other interesting thing in the door panel maybe the most interesting thing is that there is an armrest that's not all that unusual but in this car it's adjustable I've seen a lot of cars modern expensive luxury cars with door armrests and they're never adjust abut in this car you could adjust the door armrest until it fits your perfect height so you could rest your arm while you were driving down the road and speaking of the unusual armrest let's talk for a second about the unusual headrests this cars these giant wide overstuffed front seats and you look incredibly tiny thing it's like made for a child the headrest could be like three sizes wider and it would still not take up the entirety of the top of the seat I don't know why they decided to go with such a small headrest but I guess we should be lucky that we have headrests at all a lot of cars from this era didn't the next we move on to some of the unusual switches and dials and buttons in this car as you can imagine there are quite a few I'm gonna start with cruise control which rolls-royce called speed control because of course they did to turn it on there was this little button in switch set up to the right of the steering wheel it was very weird there was a switch to turn it on and off and then on the left of the on/off switch there was a button to engage it once you had it turned on and on the right that was the button to resume with you had changed your speed and you wanted to go back to your previous cruise control speed and that is how speed control worked and have 45 year old rolls-royce next up we move on to the turn signals down the turn signal lever is normal it's in a normal place it operates normally the interesting thing is the turn signal lights in the gauge cluster just look at how tiny they are these are the smallest reminders I've ever seen that your turn signals are on I also like the fact that when the turn signals are on you can see the little gauge that measures battery amps kind of dancing up and down depending on whether the turn signals are lit or whether they're unlit because it is that much of a draw on the electrical system just turning on the turn signals next we move on to the horn the horn is in the normal place the middle of the steering wheel now I often make fun of older cars because their horns aren't fitting of the vehicle they are Ferraris had sort of music note horns from this era for instance but the Rolls Royces horn is perfect for this vehicle take a listen [Music] next time moving just to the right of the horn we have the gear selector it came out of the column which was pretty standard at the time the interesting thing about the column shifter those if you actually move your head over and look at where it comes out of the column you can see it has a fairly traditional automatic transmission shift lever pattern like a lot of cars with floor shifters had except it has the pattern in the column it's like they just moved it up there and did the exact same thing probably because that's exactly what they did the interesting thing about the shift lever is it is incredibly easy to move it in between gears just incredibly easy it's like turning on the turn signals honestly once you move it into a gear however you can sort of feel the car lurched forward or backwards ready to do whatever gear you put it in next up we move on to the ignition now the ignition is over to the left of the steering wheel and it's pretty simple you just put the key in turn it turns the car on above the ignition you have the headlights off park and head you turn that dial and then that turned the lights on pretty simple not so simple is that little black button to the left of the ignition switch unlabeled you push that button and the fuel door opens who knew wouldn't have killed Rolls Royce to put a little fuel door icon there either way once you've figured out where that is it's pretty simple less simple is the other unlabeled button this one to the right of the steering wheel when you push that the coolant light comes on and the car makes a weird noise take a look I have no idea what that button is supposed to do although I'm sure some rolls-royce factory Assemblyman in 1973 will come on and let me know in very harsh language that button was brilliant it was designed properly now another interesting thing about the entry of this car is the steering wheel itself it is incredibly thin rimmed you can fit one entire finger around it if you want to that was pretty common back in the 70s no one was doing these thick steering wheels like we have now beyond the thin rimmed steering wheel we must talk about how to turn on the wipers it is not a stock coming the steering column like in most modern cars instead there is a little dial on the dashboard itself that says wipe and then you have several different options on how much you want it to wipe now the interesting thing is there is a windshield washer and that does come off the column it's in the turn signal stock you push it in and that washes the windshield another odd placement I showed you how to turn on the headlights before but the brights are not located there and they're also not located on the turn signal stock instead you turn on the brights in this car by pushing a little circular switch located in the floor next to the brake pedal this was common in cars in the 1970s but it's almost unconscionable today why didn't they just put a switch next to the speed control and make it easier to turn on the brights now another interesting switch in this car is the one next to the clock for the radio area you push that switch and it would automatically rise up the antenna so you've got better radio reception while you're listening to the radio this is one of the few things in this car that doesn't work probably because about 30 years ago someone got tired of it breaking next I'm moving on to the right of those dials and switches you have the glovebox now the glovebox is unusually small for a large car like this but that didn't stop rolls-royce for making the glovebox door this piece of solid wood not only is it heavy but it's like an inch thick so if there was something making noise in the glovebox you wouldn't be able to hear it the interesting thing you find in the glovebox of course is the owner's manual obviously this isn't the original owner's manual but it is a copy of it and there are some interesting items in here one interesting item happens on page 9 it's describing all the basic functions of the car and you can see that rolls-royce refers to the cigarette lighter not as a cigarette lighter but as a cigar lighter which is probably more accurate anyway a rolls-royce surely knows its customers and that's what they're lighting with the cigar lighter now one interesting item in the owners manual comes on page 57 when it talks about di and L now if you look at the transmission lever you'll see it says PR nd like a normal automatic and then there's an eye well it turns out that's for intermediate if you want better performance I limits the car to first and second for better acceleration and deceleration you're supposed to use this in heavy traffic and for hilly terrain one interesting item the main specifically says that if you're in AI there's no safety your change to get you from second to third meaning that if you leave in an eye and rev it to high you could actually over rev the engine and cause damage so probably best to leave it in D then the other interesting items come at the end of the owners manual I like the fact that on page 181 there is a conversion table inches to centimeters miles to kilometers just in case you know you're driving around your rolls-royce and you're just curious how to convert those items also interesting on page 180 it talks about the rolls-royce motors school of instruction this is like a driving school like you'd get if you sign for a Porsche and went to their driving school but for this it specifically says this course is intended primarily for chauffeurs who are undertaking the care of rolls-royce cars for the first time in other words it wasn't a rolls-royce motors school of instruction for you you sent your chauffeur and then he learned how to take care of your rolls-royce and to drive it properly but the owners manual isn't the only interesting thing inside the glove box another interesting item in there is the fact that the trunk release is inside the glove box you push that and that pops up in the trunk so you can walk back there and open it without using the key to unlock it now to the right of the glove box there is one more little switch over there and it says map you push that and that turns on the map light so the passenger can sit here and weave the map well the driver drives down the road other interesting items are in the middle sadly you can see the factory stereo has been removed I imagine that would have been a nice quirk fest but below that we have the climate controls and they are very odd there's one for upper and lower vents the upper is the vents up here on the dashboard lowers the ones at your feet now you can see it says in the middle pull four quantities so if you want more you just pull it and pull it until your desired quantity has been reached that's an odd thing you probably won't see a lot of other cars pull for quantity may you go below the climate controls and you can see some other interesting controls for example the control for the fan is this lever you move it from top to bottom to determine your desired fan speed there's also the rear window D missed lever and then my personal favorite the hazard warning to turn on your hazard lights you push that on and then that little light blinks to let you know that your hazards are on the it turns signal lights inside the gauge cluster don't blink like in modern cars only that little light blinks now below all those controls you have another interesting item you can see there are two little switches below all that and they look like power mirror controls actually those are seat controls this car has power seats although these only move the bottom part forward or backward or up and down to move the backrest there's still a little manual lever still power seats is pretty advanced for 1973 however lest you think you're in some car of the future you're reminded that this is the 70s when you look at the ashtray a lot of thought was given to this ashtray when it's closed it's just this nice silver lid with little black ridges on it you move the black ridges and then it reveals the actual ashtray which has more black ridges so you can close it again you will also notice the ashtray is quite large and that's because again this was the 70s and back then the larger your ashtray the more luxurious your automobile next we move on to the back seats now the back seats and these older roses aren't as insane as it has gotten in some of these modern models with all the crazy features but there are a couple of interesting noteworthy items back here one of which is the footrests this car has carpeted footrest that you can remove and place exactly in your desired spot with little piping on the side to match the seats and the other carpeting this is in the days before retractable power foot rests so instead you had to adjust your own footrest still it was better than most cars when there was no footrest at all also interesting back here is the fact that each individual rear passenger has their own ashtray and cigarettes I tur or should I say cigar lighter the ashtray and cigarette lighter are integrated into the door on both the driver and passenger side meaning there are more cigar lighters and ashtrays in the back then in the front another interesting item back here would be on the rear pillars there is a mirror so you can look at yourself in just in case you can't look at yourself enough there's a little switch next to the mirror that turns on the light directly above the mirror so you can look at yourself in more brightness and finally the other interesting thing back here is the rear center armrest which has sort of an interesting mechanism you're gonna fold it down like every other center armrest in every other car and has this odd piece of leather behind it that sort of moves up into place so it doesn't take away from the appearance of the central armrest when it's down the next time we move on to the trunk or should I say the boot and this is really an unusually large trunk even for a 70s car this was a large trunk especially given that this wasn't some massive car it's just a massive trunk it's like a pickup bed back here now there aren't that many interesting things in the trunk one item that's interesting is the fact that the entire trunk is sort of covered in this black carpeting with white piping to make it look really nice just like a modern-day luxury cars trunk would be the other interesting thing in the trunk is there's this little tab over on this side of the trunk and when you pull it it's a secondary release for the fuel door just in case that little button in front stops working next up moving under the hood first take a look at the famous rolls-royce 6.75 liter v8 it's not exactly as glorious today as it probably was 45 years ago before I actually get to the engine though I want to talk about the hood release which is very odd it's inside the car generally in the normal place it's underneath the steering column but to the right not to the left that's not all that weird the weird thing is it's this like very high-quality expensive heavy feeling lever it's very wide and large you pull it up and that releases the whole this has to be the nicest hood release I've ever seen perhaps because rolls-royce knew people would be going under here frequently anyway there are a couple of interesting things under here one of which is the brake fluid now this car had a very complicated hydraulic braking system that's too complex to explain in one of my videos but one of the things that results from that take a look at this a warning label on top of the brake fluid reservoir it says you have to top up the brake fluid after the car has been running for precisely four minutes obviously if it's only been three minutes or if it's been five minutes you will damage the car dramatically so you must count out a timer for four minutes or you have your chauffeur count out a timer after he's been to the school of instruction the other interesting item under the hood is the fact that on the firewall they have a label riveted to the firewall that says on it rolls-royce Silver Shadow just to end all arguments or bets you might be having with your friends so that's a tour of the flagship rolls-royce sedan from 45 years ago now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives driving the rolls now if it's a little shaky I apologize my normal camera mount I forgot today and so I'm using a backup and it's not as good and one of the first thing is you're on even drive this car is that the steering wheel is just ridiculous it's an incredibly thin makes no sense and it's just effortless to turn it the people talk about how you turn a steering wheel with your pinky in a luxury car this thing you could turn this steering wheel using your mind just looking at it's the it's the softest turning steering wheel I've ever felt in my life looking out over the Rolls emblem is always just hilarious even though you're driving this and these are worth I don't know 12 or something 15 you just still feel better than everybody and and I just had it in the dealership and the guy came in a detailer guy came in and he was like aw that's a beautiful car amazing with sort of no understanding that you know it's it's a $5,000 $10,000 $15,000 used car depending on the condition because people see Rolls Royce and they just assume that it's the most incredible thing the ride quality is absolutely excellent you know this car is the same sort of hydraulic type suspension is like those old Citroen's and so you go over bumps in it just it soaks them up it isn't as quiet as a modern one the whole the only sound you can hear is the ticking of the clock well when you floor it you can hear the motor now the question is you know it's been 45 years well what did it sound like at the time probably it was quieter back then the body roll around corners is just ridiculous there's no no car since this one was built could ever get away with that absurd degree of body roll in terms of performance I wouldn't call it fast and that's pretty much that the thing that blows me away though really is just how incredibly easy it is to turn the steering wheel there's just no desire to make it any sort of a sports car this was this is a luxury car in the days before every luxury car had to also be a sports bar in yada-yada it's reasonably comfortable certainly more comfortable than other cars in this era of driven it's like that 70s Cadillac I did a year ago but it's not so supple that you're just like completely soaking up the bumps and everything's totally wonderful it's it's a good ride but it's not amazing likewise the seats are nice and supportive but they're not incredibly the newest rules is and even the one after this the silver spirit was was an improvement no question but you could see in the 70s when most cars kind of weren't so good you could see how this would be considered like this standard of luxury so that's the 1973 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow the Phantom of its day it's hard to imagine a time when this was the best luxury you could buy a time before screens and retractable hood ornaments and automatic doors but back in the 1970s this was the luxury sedan and now it's time to give it a dug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the silver shadow is fine but clearly ageing and it gets a 4 out of 10 acceleration is leisurely and it gets a 1 out of 10 handling is laughably bad it doesn't feel dangerous but it's not even slightly sporty and it gets a 2 out of 10 fun factor is a bit higher though even though this car isn't hilariously fun to drive the experience of driving and it's kind of cool looking out over that long hood and the Spirit of Ecstasy and it gets a 4 out of 10 cool factor even though most car enthusiasts know it's not very cool regular people think it's a priceless collector's item and it deserves a 5 out of 10 and it up in the weekend score is 16 out of 50 next up are the daily categories and features and it just doesn't have all that much it gets a 2 out of 10 Comfort is fine but not as good as more modern rolls models and it gets a 7 out of ten quality is pretty bad the interior isn't really nice by modern standards in the hydraulic system and these is notoriously unreliable and it gets a four out of ten practicality it's reasonably roomy but this category now also considers whether you could actually use it every day and given the attention and reliability issues I think the answer is no it gets only a four out of ten finally there's value and here I must admit it does well this is one of the cheapest head-turning cars in existence and it gets a six out of ten bringing the total daily score to 23 out of 50 add it all up and the Doug score is a meager 39 out of 100 here it is compared to other rolls-royce models I've reviewed and the 1977 Cadillac Eldorado from the same era the Caddy is more comfortable cooler to look at and far more reliable and even it edges out the Silver Shadow [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 1,740,630

Rating: 4.8026323 out of 5

Keywords: rolls-royce review, classic rolls-royce, rolls-royce silver shadow, silver shadow, rolls silver shadow, rolls-royce, old rolls-royce, old rolls-royce review, rolls review, silver shadow review, 1970s rolls-royce, old luxury car, doug demuro, demuro

Id: 4vsMe5jDpNc

Length: 24min 36sec (1476 seconds)

Published: Tue May 15 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Raguvian]

For being 45 years old that interior still looks really amazing design wise. I wouldn't mind being driven around in that car.

[u/Obi-Wan_Kannabis]

My dad has a 1975 mercedes 240 D (which is the 300 D in the US) and it's incredible how you can tell these cars are from exactly the same time. Difference being the cost of course, while the 300 D is just a normal Mercedes and this would probably cost 5 times as much.

Stuff that is uncannily similar: Small glove box. One would figure an old sedan would have a big glove box but both cars have tiny glove boxes.

Central locking doors. It was a heck of a feature at the time now it's standard.

No passenger side mirror.

Hood ornament. Nowadays mercedes forgot the hood ornament. It makes them much more pedestrian imo.

Big ass trunk. This isn't really surprising.

The biggest difference is that the 300 D is one of the most reliable cars of all time and this one isn't reliable... At all.

[u/nukelauncher95]

I sometimes forget Doug is younger than he looks.

No way in hell were power locks, windows, seats, and mirrors a new thing in the 1970s. Packard was the first modern car company to come out with power locks and windows in the 1940s. They were actually quite common in the late 50s for luxury cars and most upscale regular cars had them as options in the late 60s. Rolls Royce was definitely behind when it came to amenities. I don't know when power mirrors came around. Power seats were around in the 40s. Ford had 4 way power seats in the mid 50s.

Intermediate gear was what a lot of people called 2nd gear in both automatics and manuals back in the day. Some people called it the passing gear, and 3rd was highway gear. An older guy I know has a Ford F100 with a column shift manual transmission and the factory service manual never actually says the words 2nd gear or 3rd gear anywhere in the entire book. This isn't just Rolls Royce trying to sound classy.

Having the trunk release in the glovebox was common. Since most cars had a sperate trunk and glovebox key back in the day, you could lock your valuables in the car. The ignition and door key wouldn't open the glovebox and trunk. Modern cars, especially Audi, put the valet mode button in the lockable glovebox, and valet mode prevents the trunk from opening. You give the valet the plastic fob and you keep the metal key portion since the metal key will unlock the glovebox and there is an emergency trunk keyhole in most Audis.

I'm younger than Doug, but I guess I've just been around more old cars.

[u/memphisraines]

That seat kind of reminds me of those aliens from the 5th Element.

[u/hoseja]

So, what does the button do?

[u/Tamaren]

Hey, I owned one of these. Don't buy one. It's crazy comfortable, But maintenance and the fuel system will kill you.

[u/Silverchaoz]

Hey /u/Doug-DeMuro , i see on the website of motorcarsmain that they have a RS7. So the question is, ARE YOU GOING TO REVIEW IT ASWELL? You loved the RS3 and wanted to test more RS models in the future if im correct?

[u/keep_slayin]

Hey Doug, I’ve watched a lot of your videos, probably all of them after the infamous H2 video, and I’ve only recently noticed you look like Kevin Love.

[u/bustacones]

Won't get a chance to watch until after work but I never get to these threads early so I've got to ask.

/u/doug-demuro How many Jimmy Eat World songs were played at your wedding?