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

This is a

1973

Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow and was the top of the range 45 years ago. The definitive Rolls-Royce, the Rolls-Royce Phantom of its time, but since it was fine 45 years ago, it has some differences compared to modern Rolls. Royces today I will take you on a

tour

of this car and show you what life was like in the Rolls-Royce Phantom of the 1970s. I say the Rolls-Royce Phantom of the 1970s because this was the Phantom of its time. The best Rolls-Royce

sedan

you could buy 45 years ago. I borrowed this car from Mainline Autos, a great car dealership

here

in the Philadelphia suburbs that always has exciting, interesting, strange 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 lineage of the Rolls-Royce

sedan

, you start with the Phantom, before that it had the silver Syrah and before that. that t

here

was the silver spirit and before that there was this Rolls Royce car that made them from 1965 to 1980 it used a 6.75 liter v8 that made 189 horsepower and it used a four speed automatic transmission that was made by general motors anyway, today I'm going to show you the silver shade and show you all the cool quirks and features of the 45 year old Rolls-Royce flagship sedan and then post it. road and then I'll give it a dig score and for more of my thoughts on the silver shadow, click the link below to visit autotrader.com oversteer, where I've also compiled a list of used luxury cars​​ which used to be excellent and cheaper. currently for sale on autotrader now I'm going to start with a couple of interesting items starting with the headlights, now you know how modern luxury cars integrate the brand name into the headlight housing and it looks really cool and stylish.

Rolls Royce couldn't do that back then, they just used these circular headlights, so they just put the rr between the two bulbs, the bulb for the normal headlights and the high beams, it was kind of an interesting precursor to sticking the actual branding on . or logo inside the headlight housing, next we move on to the spirit of ecstasy of our friend Rolls Royce, that's what they call their hood ornament, its design seems to be a woman with wings, now the interesting thing about the spirit of ecstasy is that it doesn't is. It's fixed, it looks like it is, but you can actually move it.

That was supposed to be for pedestrian safety. If you hit a pedestrian, you will not be impaled by the spirit of ecstasy. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that you can't just move it backwards. and forward, but you can turn it so that, if you want, you can have your spirit of ecstasy facing sideways, which is somewhat unusual, but perhaps a feature that the eccentric owner of the Rolls-Royce would take advantage of next. Now we have to talk about wheels. I've always found the wheels from this era of Rolls-Royce interesting, they obviously cover the nuts so they don't expose any of that nasty stuff, but the other interesting thing is how many circles are involved, obviously the whole thing is a circle and then, if you look closer there is a circle inside the circle and then there is a red painted circle surrounding it and then there is another chrome circle and another chrome circle just to emphasize the point that this car is very luxurious and round.

I guess it's also interesting that you can see that the valve stem cover has the Rolls-Royce logo, a good example of attention to detail, even in the 70s. Next, we have to talk about the roof. Now most of these silver shadows had this dirt on top. a kind of vinyl top to make the car look like some kind of fake convertible to add extra class compared to a normal sedan. One of the interesting things I like about this one is that it doesn't look like Rolls-Royce can find a supplier to cover the entire top with vinyl, so there are like three panels and then there are these off-center seams that run across the roof of the car. where they sewed everything together, it's not exactly the most elegant look, but it was the best they had.

You could do it in the 70s. Next, another exterior element before going inside. You can see this car has this kind of silver accent stripe running down the side. Rolls-Royce decided to hide the door handles by integrating them into the silver trim. stripe, which is a good idea and looks nice, although it's worth noting that they then just stuck the keyhole outside the stripe and ruined the whole aesthetic of hiding the door entry system, but regardless now they're there, the interesting thing about door handles is that you don't just pull them to get in, you walk up to the car, press this button and then pull the door, which was relatively common at the time it was made this car, but currently. standards, no one does that anymore and once we're inside we move on to the door panels and frankly I could spend quite a bit of time on the door panels so I'm going to start with the mirrors which are Very unusual the control of the Driver's side mirrors on the door panel.

It's this little lever that you move it and the mirror moves in the corresponding direction, which is unusual by modern standards, but it was quite common at the time of this car, not common at the time. The good thing about this car is the fact that the mirrors are different the driver side mirror is a circle controlled on the inside the passenger side mirror is a rectangle and to control it you have to walk up to it and move it from the outside of the car, why is this? I'm guessing this silver shade was only sold new with a driver's side mirror like many 1970s cars.

The owner probably added the passenger side mirror later and opted for a rectangular mirror for better visibility and still didn't. I'm done with the door. in fact not even close to now, you may be saying manual mirrors, that's not that unusual, this car is quite old, but here's the interesting thing, it has electric locks, press this little button on the door panel and you can hear the locks working. it must have been one of the first cars with that feature that was really advanced at the time, so Rolls-Royce could figure out electric locks but couldn't figure out electric mirrors or even two mirrors seems like a strange decision and another strange decision.

They are the power windows, take a look at the door panel, you can see all the power windows except they are not labeled and they are in a row so it is hard to tell which is which, how do you know which one is for the rear? from the driver's side to the passenger's side it's just kind of a guessing game every time you roll down the window until you memorize the order of those switches and speaking of the power window switches, I really like the fact that that all the switches on the door panel are enclosed in a chrome plated silver plate, it's like the slides on a Rolls-Royce.

We can't just put the switches there, we have to frame them in silver to get the look we're going for. and I have to admit it looks good or would have looked good in the 70's. The other interesting thing on the door panel, perhaps the most interesting thing is that there is an armrest which is not that unusual but on this car it is adjustable. I've seen many modern,

expensive

, luxury cars with door armrests and they are never adjustable, but in this car you can adjust the door armrest until it fits your perfect height so you can rest your arm while driving down the road. and speaking of the unusual armrests, let's talk for a second about the unusual headrests, this car has these giant, wide, plush front seats and then you look at the headrest and it's an incredibly small thing, it's made for a child, the headrest could be like three.

It is much wider and would still not take up the entire upper part of the seat. I don't know why they decided to use such a small headrest, but I guess we should be lucky to have headrests in many cars of this era that didn't. Next we'll move on to some of the unusual switches, dials and buttons on this car and as you can imagine, there are quite a few. I'm going to start with cruise control, which Rolls Royce called cruise control because of course. they made it to turn it on there was a small button and a switch placed to the right of the steering wheel it was very strange there was a switch to turn it on and off and then to the left of the on and off switch there was a button to turn it on once you had it on and on On the right there was a resume button if you had changed your speed and wanted to go back to your previous cruise control speed and that's how the speed control worked on a 45 year old Rolls.

Royce next moved on to the turn signals. Now the turn signal lever is normal. It's in the normal place. It works normally. What's interesting are the turn signal lights in the gauge cluster. Just look how small they are. These are the smallest reminders. Have I ever seen the turn signals on? I also like the fact that when the turn signals are on you can see the little gauge that measures the battery amps dancing up and down depending on whether the turn signals are on or off. They are off because it is a big drain on the electrical system just turning on the turn signals, then we move on to the horn, the horn is in the normal place, in the middle of the steering wheel.

Now I often make fun of older cars because their speakers don't fit the type of vehicle they are. Ferrari had sort of musical note horns from this era, for example, but the Rolls-Royce horn is perfect for this vehicle. Listen to it below. I move just to the right of the horn. we have the gear selector that came off the column, which was pretty standard at the time. The interesting thing about the column shifter is that if you really move your head and look at where it comes out of the column, you can see that it has a fairly traditional automatic transmission shifter pattern, like many cars with shifters had. floor shifter, except it has the pattern on the column, it's like they just moved it there and did exactly the same thing, probably because that's exactly what they did, the interesting thing about the shifter is it's incredibly easy to move it between gears just incredibly Easy is like turning on the turn signals honestly once you shift it into gear, however, you can feel the car lurch forward or backward, ready to go into whatever gear you put it in.

In the next step, we move on to ignition. Now the ignition is to the left of the steering wheel and is quite simple: you just put the key in and turn it. Turn the car on over the ignition. You have your headlights off and you are heading. turn that dial and then turn on the lights pretty simple, not so simple is that little black button to the left of the ignition switch with no label, press that button and the fuel door opens, who would have known it would have killed Rolls- Royce to put a little? The fuel door icon is there anyway once you've figured out where it is, it's pretty simple, less simple is the other unlabeled button, this one to the right of the steering wheel, when you press it the coolant light comes on and the car makes a strange noise. take a look, I have no idea what that button is supposed to do, although I'm sure some assembler at the Rolls-Royce factory in

1973

will come and let me know in very harsh language that the button was brilliant, that was designed correctly, now another interesting thing. about the interior, this car is the steering wheel itself, it has an incredibly thin rim, you can put a whole finger around it if you want, that was pretty common in the 70's, no one made these thick steering wheels like we have now, beyond the thin ones. rimmed steering wheel we need to talk about how to turn on the wipers, it's not a stock thing that comes out of the steering column like in most modern cars but there is a little dial on the dash that says wipe and then you have several different options about how How much do you want it to be cleaned now, the interesting thing is that there is a windshield washer that comes out of the column, it's on the turn signal, you push it in and it washes the windshield.

Another strange location. I showed you how to turn on the headlights. before, but the lights are not located there and they are not located on the turn signals either, instead you turn on the car's brightness by pressing a small circular switch located on the floor next to the brake pedal, this was common on the cars from the 1970s. but today it is almost inconceivable why they didn't put a switch next to the speed control and make it easier to turn on the lights. Now another interesting switch on this car is the one next to the radio antenna clock.

You press that switch. and it would automatically raise the antenna so you have aBetter radio reception while listening to the radio. This is one of the few things on this car that doesn't work, probably because about 30 years ago someone got tired of braking next. Next, to the right of those dials and switches, you have the glove box. Now the glove box is unusually small for a large car like this, but that didn't stop Rolls Royce from making the glove box door out of this piece of solid wood, not only. It's heavy but it's about an inch thick so if something made noise in the glove box you wouldn't be able to hear it?

The interesting thing you find in the glove box, of course, is the owner's manual, obviously this is not the original owner's manual, but it is a copy of it and there are some interesting items in here. An interesting element occurs on page nine and describes 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 than Anyway, Rolls-Royce surely knows its customers and that's what they're lighting up with the lighter. Now it's interesting. The article in the owner's manual comes on page 57 when he talks about d i and l.

Now if you look at the transmission lever you'll see it says p r and d like a normal automatic and then there's an i, well it turns out it's for intermediate si. You want better performance. I limit the car to first and second gear for better acceleration and deceleration. You are supposed to use this in heavy traffic and on hilly terrain. An interesting element: the manual specifically says that if you are attentive there is no change in safety equipment. to take you from second to third, meaning if you leave it on one eye and rev it too much you could rev the engine too much and cause damage, so it's probably best to leave it on d, then the other interesting items appear at the end of the owner report. manual I like the fact that on page 181 there is a conversion table from inches to centimeters to miles to kilometers in case you know you're driving your Rolls-Royce and are just curious how to convert those things.

Also interesting on page 180. talks about the Rolls-Royce engine training school. This is like a driving school like you would get if you sign up for a Porsche and go to their driving school, but for this it specifically says that this course is intended primarily for chauffeurs undertaking Rolls-Royce car care for the first time. In other words, it was not a Rolls-Royce engine training school for you, you sent your chauffeur and then he learned how to take care of your Rolls-Royce and how to drive it. correctly, but the owner's manual isn't the only interesting thing inside the glove box.

Another interesting element is the fact that the trunk opening mechanism is inside the glove box. You push it and it opens the trunk so you can go 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 there and it says map press that and that turns on the map light so the passenger can sit here and read the map while the driver drives down the road road, other interesting elements are in the middle, unfortunately you can see that the factory stereo has been removed.

I imagine it would have been a nice quirk fest, but underneath we have the climate controls and they are very strange, there is one for the top and bottom. Lower vents, the upper ones are the vents up here on the dashboard, lower the ones at your feet. Now you can see that it says in the middle pull to get amount, so if you want more, just pull and pull until you reach the desired amount. Something strange: you probably won't see many other cars pulling the amount now you go under the climate controls and you can see other interesting controls, for example the fan control is this lever, you move it up and down to determine the speed desired fan, there's also the rear window defogging lever and then my favorite, the hazard warning to turn on the hazard lights, you press it and then that little light flashes to let you know that the hazards are at the turn signal .

The lights inside the gauge cluster don't flash like they do in modern cars, just that little light flashes now under all those controls. You have another interesting element. You can see there are two little switches underneath all of that and they look like power mirror controls. Actually, it's the seats. controls, this car has power seats, although these only move the bottom forward or backward or up and down to move the backrest, there is still a small manual lever, but the power seats are quite advanced for 1973. However , so you don't think you're in a car from the future it reminds you that we're in the 70's when you look at the ashtray a lot of thought went into this ashtray when it's closed it's just this pretty silver lid with little black ridges you move the black ridges and then The actual ashtray is revealed to have more black edges so you can close it again.

You'll also notice that the ashtray is quite large and that's because this was the '70s and back then, the bigger your ashtray was, the more luxurious your car was. Next, we move on to the back. The seats now, the back seats on these older

rolls

aren't as crazy as they have been on some of these modern models with all the crazy features, but there are a couple of interesting items worth mentioning back here, one of which are the footrests that this car has. Carpeted footrests that you can remove and place exactly where you want with small piping on the side to match the seats on the other rugs.

This is in the days before electric retractable footrests, so you had to adjust your own footrest. It was better than most cars when there was no footrest at all. Also interesting is the fact that each individual rear passenger has their own ashtray and lighter or should I say lighter, the ashtray and lighter are built into the door on both. On the driver and passenger side, which means there are more lighters and ashtrays in the rear than in the front. Another interesting element back here would be that on the rear pillars there is a mirror so you can look at yourself and in case you can't look.

To look at yourself enough, there is a small switch next to the mirror that turns on the light directly above the mirror so you can look at yourself more brightly and finally, the other interesting thing here is the rear center armrest which has some kind of interesting mechanism. I have to fold it down like every other center armrest and every other car and it has this weird piece of leather behind it that moves up so as not to take away from the appearance of the center armrest when it's down. We move on to the trunk or should I say the trunk and this is actually an unusually large trunk, even for a car from the 70s, it was a big trunk, especially considering it wasn't a huge car, it's just a huge trunk, it's like a truck.

Back here now there isn't much interesting stuff in the trunk. One element that is interesting is the fact that the entire trunk is covered in black carpet with white piping to make it look really nice, just like the trunk of a modern luxury car would. The other interesting thing in the trunk is that there is a little tab on this side of the trunk and when you pull it it is a secondary release for the fuel door in case that little button on the front stops working, then it moves under the hood first. Take a look at the famous 6.75 liter Rolls Royce V8.

It's not exactly as glorious today as it probably was 45 years ago before we got to the engine, although I do want to talk about the bonnet opening, which is very strange, it's usually inside the car. the normal place is under the steering column, but on the right, not the left, that's not so strange, the strange thing is that it is a very high quality,

expensive

, heavy feeling lever, which is very wide and large, you lift it and release the hood. It has to be the most beautiful bonnet opening I have ever seen, perhaps because Rolls-Royce knew people would pass by often.

Anyway, there are a couple of interesting things down here, one of which is brake fluid. Now this car had a very complicated hydraulic system. brake system that is too complex to explain in one of my videos, but one of the things that comes out of that, take a look at this warning label on the top of the brake fluid reservoir that says to refill the fluid after the car has been running for exactly four minutes, obviously if only three minutes have passed or if five minutes have passed, it will drastically damage the car, so you should count a stopwatch for four minutes or ask your driver have a stopwatch count after you've been to drill school The other interesting item under the hood is the fact that on the firewall they have a label riveted to the firewall that says Rolls Royce Silver Shadow just to end any arguing or betting that you can have with your friends, so that's a

tour

. of the

rolls

-

royce

flagship sedan from 45 years ago, now it's time to take it out on the road and see how it handles driving the rolls now, if it shakes a little, I apologize to my normal camera mount that I forgot today and that's why I'm using it. a backrest and now it's not so good one of the first things you realize when you drive this car is that the steering wheel is just ridiculous it's incredibly thin it makes no sense and it's easy to turn it people talk about how it turns the steering wheel. with your little finger in a luxury car, this thing you can turn this steering wheel using your mind just by looking at it, it is the smoothest turning steering wheel I have ever felt in my life, looking at the Rolls emblem is always very funny even though I'm driving this and these are worth, I don't know, 12 grand or something. 15 uh you still feel better than everyone and I just had it at the dealership and this guy came in, a detailer came in and said, oh.

It's a beautiful, incredible car, without understanding that you know it's a five thousand dollar, ten thousand dollar, fifteen thousand dollar used car, depending on the condition, because people see a Rolls Royce and just assume that it's the most incredible thing ever. It's the ride quality. absolutely excellent you know this car has the same type of hydraulic suspension as those old citrons so you go over the bumps and it just soaks them up its not as quiet as a modern one eh overall the only sound you can hear is take a watch, but when you step on it you can hear the engine now the question is, you know, it's been 45 years, how did it sound at the time, it was probably quieter back then, the body roll in the corners is just ridiculous, There is no Since this car was built, you could get away with that absurd degree of body roll in terms of performance.

I wouldn't call it fast, so that's pretty much what blows my mind, although it's actually how incredibly easy it is to spin. the steering wheel there is simply no desire to turn it into some kind of sports car. This was a luxury car in the days before every luxury car had to also be a sports car and yada yada, it's reasonably comfortable, certainly more comfortable than other cars. this air i have driven is like that 70's cadillac i did a year ago but it's not flexible enough to completely absorb the bumps and everything is totally wonderful it's a good ride but it's not amazing plus the seats are pretty and supportive, but they're not amazing like the newer rolls are, and even the next one, the silver spirit, was an improvement, no doubt, but you could see it in the '70s, when most cars weren't as well, you could see how this. would be considered the standard of luxury, so that's the 1973 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, the ghost of its time.

It's hard to imagine a time when this was the best luxury money could buy, before screens, retractable hood ornaments and automatic doors, but back. In the 1970s, this was the luxury sedan and now it's time to give it an excellent score, starting with the weekend and styling categories. The silver shade is fine but clearly aged and gets a 4 out of 10. Acceleration is leisurely and gets a one. The handling out of ten is ridiculously bad, it doesn't feel dangerous but it's not even mildly sporty and it gets a fun factor of two out of ten, although even though this car isn't very fun to drive, the experience of driving it is cool to look over that long hood with a spirit of ecstasy and it gets a 4 out of 10.

A cool factor, although most car enthusiasts know it's not very cool, the common people think it's a collector's item invaluable and deserves a 5 out of 10. The total score over the weekend is 16 out of 50. The following are the daily categories and features and it just doesn't have much, it gets a 2 out of 10. The comfort is fine, but not as good as others. modern pink models and gets a 7 out of 10. The qualityIt's pretty bad, the interior isn't very nice by modern standards and the hydraulics in these are notoriously unreliable and gets a 4 out of 10. Practicality gets reasonably spacious, but this category now also considers whether you could actually use it all. days and given the care and reliability issues I think the answer is no, it only gets a 4 out of 10.

Finally there is value and I must admit it works well, this is one of the cheapest flashy cars out there and it gets a 6 out of 10, bringing the total daily score to 23 out of 50. Add it all up and Doug's score is a meager 39 out of 100 here, compared to other Rolls-Royces. models I've reviewed and the 1977 Cadillac Eldorado from the same era, the Caddy is more comfortable, cooler to look at, and much more reliable, and even brings out the silver shade that