The Spirit of Auction
In November, a good customer of ours, whose Bentley Brooklands we look after, kindly recommended us to undertake some work on a Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit. The car had been purchased at Mathewsons – a family-run classic car auction business – by the Bangers & Cash: Restoring Classics team. After meeting the team and discussing the car, we agreed to get it serviced, prepared and ready for auction.
We weren’t really sure what we were getting into as all we’d been told was that the car was a 1981 Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit with very low mileage. Low mileage can mean one of two things: neglect or a potential gem. When the car arrived, we were stunned to find that it was in amazing condition as it was clearly very sparingly used and had evidently been properly garaged.
The overall condition was very good but the car needed some work – mainly recommissioning and servicing. We undertook a 24,000-mile service, replaced the hydraulic system accumulators, replaced the brake hoses and brake pads, fitted new tyres, replaced the exhaust balance pipe and sorted a host of minor age-related electrical issues as well as upgrading the air conditioning system.
After the work, the car drove and performed well. “It felt eery driving it as it reminded me of how these cars drove when they were new… a definite time warp experience.” says founder Ray Hillier.
The car had been the victim of a car wash over the years and the paint was consequently swirly. We suspected that the paint was original and, in conjunction with GM Detailing, undertook a patch test. This polish test confirmed that the paint was indeed original and we took it upon ourselves to see if we could get the car back to showroom condition.
The body was polished, the coachlines hand-painted and the interior had some very minor Connolising repairs undertaken. Suffice to say, the outcome exceeded our expectations.
The Silver Spirit was collected from us and delivered back up to Mathewsons in readiness for their December auction. These guys see hundreds of cars through their auctions and we were hopeful that they would be relatively positive about our efforts.
The reaction from Dave at Mathewsons was beyond anything we’d hoped for. He was incredibly complimentary and appreciated the care we’d taken in preserving the originality and integrity of the car without over-restoring it. A real testament to the team we have here at Hillier Hill.
The car is now live on Mathewsons’ website and will be auctioned at the December Classic Vehicles & Memorabilia Auction on 15th December 2023. If you’d like to place a bid or read more about the car, you can do so here.
And if you’d like to find out how it performs at auction, the entire process – from purchase to auction – was filmed by the Air TV crew and will be available to watch live on Bangers & Cash: Restoring Classics on Yesterday Channel next year.
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