1939 Rolls-Royce Wraith Special Saloon

Lot details
Registration No: FLW 7
Chassis No: WMB11
Mot Expiry: Exempt

- Built to special order with an upgraded engine and experimental features

- Bodied by Park Ward with alloy panels over a steel support frame

- Owned by various RR directors up until 1951 and numerous VIPs thereafter

Further Info:

To woefully misquote Shakespeare, `Some motorcars are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.' All three sentiments are arguably applicable to Rolls-Royce Wraith chassis WMB 11.

The Rolls was built in 1939 to the order of Sir Arthur Sidgreaves OBE and endowed with a special alloy Park Ward body that features a steel base attached directly to the chassis - ie unlike most similar vehicles of the period, it has no wooden frame. At that time Sidgreaves was the Managing Director of Rolls-Royce and specified the car should be equipped with the uprated engine from his outgoing Wraith, chassis WXA 1, and even ordered the transfer of the radio and clock from that car. The engine and other items of running gear are derivatives of the corresponding Bentley MKV units. However, chassis WMB 11 also became Sir Arthur's personal test bed for the developments of the moment and, according to the vendor, the related chassis card notes added by the departmental managers suggest he was not always the easiest of people to please. And small wonder - this was the formidable businessman who purchased the assets of WO Bentley for Rolls-Royce from under the noses of Napier, and the man who had the foresight to join forces with Sir Robert McLean of Vickers over the manufacture of the Spitfire.

His right-hand man in those testing times was Baron Ernest Hives and it was to him that tenure of the chassis WMB 11 passed in 1945. The relationship was relatively short-lived, however, and a year later the motorcar moved to the then Chairman of the company, Captain Eric Smith, whose daughter Fortune was awarded the title of `Her Grace the Dowager Duchess of Grafton' by Her Majesty the Queen in 2011. The final Rolls-Royce director to be placed in charge of this unique Wraith was A G Elliott who, like Sidgreaves joined the company from Napier, rising from Chief Engineer of the Aero Division to overall Executive Vice Chairman. This very important car would have played host to many of the United Kingdom's most influential VIPs at one time or another all of whom could have sat in comfort and enjoyed the near silent engine that the Wraith is renowned for.

It was in 1951 that the Wraith finally left the clutches of its mother company and was purchased by Sir Frederick Arthur Montague `Boy' Browning, whose address was given as Buckingham Palace, London SW1 for at the time he serves as comptroller and treasurer to her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth. A man of many talents in his own right, he was also the husband or the famed novelist Daphne du Maurier. Between 1954 and 1961 chassis WMB 11 was the property of Sir Brian Warren of Chester Square, London - a man who was responsible for the health of Sir Winston Churchill during his Downing Street years and then became the personal physician to Ted Heath. Between 1961 and 1963 tenure passed to Dame Josephine Barnes, also of Chester Square, who became the first female President of the British Medical Association. It was then owned by a Mr L Scull of Nottingham and Professor Ken Britten (among other things, the inventor of the heated windscreen) prior to its acquisition by the vendor. At that stage the car was in need of extensive recommissioning. The body has since been stripped and repainted in Maroon and the brightwork rechromed, the interior re-trimmed, and the unique Perspex sunroof renewed. Chassis WMB 11 now looks stunning inside and out can proceed with haste in silence

Not only is it a fine motorcar but, as can be seen from the foregoing, for many years played a notable role in the history of Rolls-Royce itself.