1976 | Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow

 

For my 9th Cannonball, I was competing in this year’s US Express. The rules dictated that the cars be pre-1985. I was driving with John Ficarra and Trevin Hermosillo from SWAE. We didn’t care to take the event too seriously and so the perfect approach seemed to be to dress as Sheikhs and drive an old Rolls-Royce as an homage to Jamie Farr in Cannonball Run. I searched AutoTempest for several weeks and sent the Lemon Squad out to inspect a few of these. The others were extremely bad but this one had potential. It was bought by the second owner in 1979 and owned by the same family until I purchased the car in October. The grandfather drove the car in the UK and took it on tours with the Rolls-Royce owner’s club to Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. The father brought it to the US and his son had the car when I bought it. It was repainted about 20 years and had a lot of major service work done between 2015-2018 including some major spend on the troublesome hydraulics. Since then it had only been driven about 500 miles but was kept in a very clean garage near Charlotte, NC. It was parked on an area rug to preserve its dignity. 

 

I drove the car about 750 miles to shake it down and then took it to Cameron Davis at DC MotorWerks in Cumming, GA. He works on a lot of my cars and is excellent at sourcing obscure parts and solving strange problems. Over the course of the next 3 weeks he did the following at a cost of approximately $9,800. That was the “friend” price. 

• Changed all fluids
• Fully cleaned and flushed the hydraulic system (brakes and rear suspension) 
• Replaced the brakes
• Replaced the tires with correct Avon, speed rated tires
• Had the leaking radiator rebuilt, a replacement was not available 
• Cleaned the heater core and installed a manual switch
• Installed a tachometer, voltmeter, and coolant temp gauge
• Installed additional 12v power and auxiliary driving lights
• Replaced various bulbs
• 100 other things I forgot about or he forgot to bill me for 

The car did really well and never let us down. We went on to drive the car to Las Vegas and around during SEMA. It was shipped home and he went through it again. The car is ready to drive anywhere and that probably shouldn’t be said of any old Rolls. I promise it is the only Silver Shadow on Earth that has been driven 4,500 miles in the last 60 days. 

It leaks everything but that is to be expected. The constantly renewed undercoating is part of the rust prevention strategy. I have spare fluids that will be included with the sale. There are no error lights on or current needs. Here is the video about the car: https://youtu.be/TFoIYpiHohM