It’s December 1973 and I’m 8 years old, bursting through the door of my grandparents’ home for Christmas dinner. Tucked under my arm is the greatest present I’d ever received, a model of a 1931 Rolls-Royce Phantom II. This wasn’t just any model—it was also an AM radio. One of the dual-mounted spare tires was the on/off/volume switch, and the other was the tuner. Was it a radio that was a Rolls, or was it a Rolls that was a radio? Dear reader, it was both. The hood ornament, the classic grille, the elegant design. My love for Rolls-Royce was born.
I would have to cultivate my enthusiasm from a distance. In the small, mid-Michigan farming town where I grew up, the most exotic pieces of machinery on the roads were John Deere combines. I learned about the storied British marque from books I checked out of the county bookmobile and from random copies of Car and Driver or Road & Track. I learned that the gorgeously flowing hood ornament, the “Spirit of Ecstasy,” was designed by famed English sculptor Charles Robinson Sykes. The grille’s design and proportions were inspired by the Pantheon in Rome. The same could not be said of my family’s ’76 Chevette.
I didn’t see my first Rolls out on the road until 1979 during a visit to Los Angeles, and I didn’t ride in one until 40 years after that. Then in 2022, I spent part of the winter in Palm Springs, the desert playground of the rich, where Rolls-Royce sightings are common. A friend (we have changed his name to “Bob,” but judge for yourself later his innocence) owned a 1990s-vintage Rolls and ferried me to dinner in it on a few occasions. For fun, I would search the local listings for Rolls-Royces and share them with Bob. “What you should do,” he counseled, “is buy a rust-free California car, fix it here where there are shops that know how to work on it, and then ship it home.”
Back home to reality in Michigan, my enthusiasm for such a scheme waned. My personal fleet already consisted of six vintage cars, plus my daily driver. I needed fewer cars, not more. Fate had other ideas when the internet served up a 1982 Silver Spirit in Fountain Valley, California, for $10,000, in a fetching shade of brown. The ad read thusly:
“For sale: 1982 Silver Spirit. Always garaged and in very nice condition. Recently easily passed California’s stringent emissions test. Current CA registration. Nutmeg in color. Maintained for past several years by very well-known RROC member/mechanic. 65,802 miles. Originally sold by Beverly Hills RR, and always a SoCal car.”
I would learn the hard way that basically all of this was inaccurate. To paraphrase the old saying, there are lies, damned lies, and used-car listings. A few days later, Bob sent me the same ad and offered to check out the car. Maybe fate wanted me to have a Rolls after all, so I agreed. Note to self: Next time, tell fate to take a hike. Bob made the trip to see the Rolls. He liked the car, negotiated the price down to $5000, and got it back to Palm Springs to make the promised repairs.
We traded texts and chatted by phone over the course of the summer, but by September, I was having doubts. I had recently sold my 1965 Imperial and was enjoying the sensation of a positive bank balance. I needed to bow out. It seemed like a win for both of us. If it were indeed such a great car, then Bob could easily sell it in Palm Springs, and at a profit, right?
Wrong. Bob was not happy about rescinding the deal. He had done so much for me, he texted, spent so much time and money, all for a friend who had given his word to buy the car. My first ride in the Rolls would be a guilt trip.
I sucked up my pride and the dregs of my finances, sent him $16,000 ($5K for his purchase price and $11K for repairs he supposedly made), and prepared for Rolls ownership. Eight-year-old me was thrilled. Fifty-seven-year-old me, not so much.
The car arrived in mid-October. I slid behind the wheel for the first time, only to be greeted by the warning lights for brake pressure and brake fluid levels glowing a persistent, gentle red. I called Bob for guidance. His first words were tellingly defensive. “That car was in perfect running order when it left here! Just top off the fluid and you’ll be fine.” Also telling: There were several bottles of brake fluid already in the trunk.
That weekend, I went for a drive and experienced an unexpected sensation: I felt like a phony. Turns out that riding shotgun in a vintage Rolls in Palm Springs, where it’s merely another old car, is much different than driving a Rolls where it is probably the only one on the road that day and likely the first ever seen by most folks, who likely assume the driver is rich. That might, for some, be the fun part of owning a cheap Rolls-Royce. More power to them. For me, a Midwesterner with a blue-collar background, I found it to be an uncomfortable feeling.
I felt even less comfortable the next day when I found an enormous pool of fluid on the garage floor. I drove to my local quick-lube place, where I already had established myself as the old guy who drives old cars, so they could assess the underside of the car. The photos they showed me told the story: Every imaginable fluid leaked from every imaginable source. Power steering fluid, fluid from the brake and suspension system, transmission fluid, engine oil—you name it, it was dripping vigorously. Buckets of fluid poured forth, and, based on the long greasy streaks that plumed from front to rear, this was not a recent situation. The car had been leaking for a while.
A Gallery of Horrors
It was time to send this purported “nice, inexpensive Rolls-Royce” to a shop. Ah, but where? It was almost impossible to find a place in southeast Michigan willing to work on an ’82 Rolls. I finally found a place in metro Detroit where the techs looked at the car and declared they wanted no part of it. More pleading ensued. The techs eventually took pity on me and consented.
While the car sat awaiting surgery at the shop, I phoned my friend Richard Vaughan for a consult. Vaughan is a contributor to this magazine and a noted collector of British iron, including several Rolls-Royces and a lovely 1984 Aston Martin Lagonda. He literally wrote the book(s), having authored both The Complete Guide to the Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph and Bentley Arnage and Rolls-Royce and Bentley in the 80s and 90s. The shop was walking distance from Vaughan’s home, so he kindly agreed to take a look.
“You could tell that somebody had cared about it but had given up when the deferred maintenance became overwhelming,” he reported. “The issue with these cars is, if people don’t stay on top of them, the problems snowball. The only way you can fix it is to throw a bunch of money at it. The amount of money is always around $25,000 to $30,000 to end up with a car that’s worth $15,000. You’re gonna be upside down with this Rolls. Forever.”
Thus enlightened, I decided to get rid of the car as soon as sufficient repairs were finished to make it sales-worthy. That meant shelling out $6000 to address the main problem, the leaking power steering rack. Then, in December 2022, I sent the Rolls to a local consignment outfit. Out of sight, out of mind, and, most important, out of my garage.
After a year with nary an offer, however, I finally checked in with the consignment folks. They told me they had shown the car to a couple interested parties who, after witnessing its awfulness, quickly exited the scene. I asked if they knew any shops that would look at it. In fact, they had already called two places, and both declined. I hadn’t heard of the first place, but when they told me the name of the second place, Munk’s Motors, I knew there was a glimmer of hope.
Chris Braden, the owner of Munk’s, is an old friend of mine as well as of HDC magazine’s editor-in-chief, Larry Webster. Munk’s had worked on several of Webster’s cars and on my Imperial. One of Braden’s employees, Dan Sauve, owned a 1973 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow and was willing to take on my car as a fellow Rolls masochist—er, owner.
The estimate to fix everything—wiring, hydraulic system (including brakes), front and rear suspension, reseal the engine and transmission—was a synapse-frying $45,000–$50,000. To recap, I’d already spent $22,000 for a Rolls-Royce grille and hood ornament. The rest of the car was worthless. Actually, worse than worthless: It was worth negative money, since it was going to cost a substantial amount to get it roadworthy.
I let that realization marinate, then called to see if there was a bare minimum I might spend. Sauve proposed this: “We are going to attempt to minimize the hemorrhaging of brake fluid. We will not attempt to fix or repair any leaks in the calipers, suspension, or any other strange places that Rolls decided its cars needed hydraulic fluid.” Total estimate: $7954.67. That would get me precisely to Vaughan’s forecast: spend $30,000 to wind up with a car worth $15,000. I refer to this as “Rolls-Royce math.” I gave Sauve the go-ahead.
A few days later, the Rolls rolled up to my driveway on a flatbed, just in time to celebrate my birthday. Its present to me: It ran like crap. Right into the garage it went, with a large piece of cardboard shoved underneath the front end like an automotive Depends.
The next day, said cardboard was completely soaked.
Older and poorer but definitely none the wiser, I finally connected with Aaron Stroud, whom I would dub the Rolls-Royce Whisperer. Stroud had ample experience working on this generation of Rolls as well as the bravery to take on this disaster. It would only take time. And money, of course. Lots of money. Stroud had a family and a full-time job as a tech at a local shop and would only be able to work on the Rolls as his busy schedule allowed. At the end of June, the Rolls-Royce Whisperer (henceforth “TRRW”) picked up the car to take back to his shop for his assessment.
It was not good.
The first round of vital repairs: Reseal the front brake pump, replace all caliper hoses, replace the distribution valve hoses, replace the front accumulator spheres for the suspension, and repair the exhaust gas recirculation pipe. Expected cost: $4800. Sure, why not?
Next up: TRRW advised replacing the fuel distributor and fuel injectors, the catalytic converter, then tune and test, the goal being to get the engine running properly. It had taken to filling my garage with a thick black fog upon startup, like a World War II destroyer laying down a smoke screen. Another $1000 went to a muffler shop, since it sounded like a destroyer, too.
The Rolls returned to its natural habitat: not running and stuck in my garage. Back the car went to TRRW’s shop, where $6000 went toward overhauling the fuel distributor, replacing all the fuel injectors, resealing the thermostat/cover, replacing the catalytic converter, and adjusting ignition timing, idle speed, and fuel mixture.
I am writing this in January 2025. Ring in the New Year and wring out my wallet. TRRW informed me that both rear suspension accumulators, which had been fine back in August, were now slowly leaking and eventually would turn into larger leaks if ignored. This, it is apparent, is the normal state for a Rolls: small leaks perpetually turning into larger leaks, infinitely forever. At night, when sleep eludes me, I stare at the ceiling and ponder how much fluid has ever leaked from every Rolls that ever existed. Surely it rivals the Exxon Valdez.
By early March, my patience and, more crucially, my funds were exhausted. Time to end the insanity. I had TRRW bring the Rolls home. It felt like the reverse of the prodigal son, where there is no celebration and the fatted calf that gets slain is me.
In early June, in preparation for this story’s photo shoot, TRRW checked out the Rolls to see if it was drivable. The hydraulic system was full and just a bit of power steering fluid had leaked. The Rolls fired up and settled into an easy, hushed idle. The hydraulic system held pressure. TRRW was pleased. “Maybe we’re almost done?” I ventured hopefully. “Done?” he said with a chortle. “You’ll never be done with this car.”
What lessons, then, have I learned after almost three years and a grand total of $28,616 in repairs—and no end in sight? First, always always always get a pre-purchase inspection, even if buying from a friend—and maybe don’t buy a car from a friend at all. Second, and maybe most important, don’t buy a car that you aren’t in love with completely. You’ll need that love to see you through the dark days when it feels as if all you’re doing is writing checks and draining your finances. I have owned great cars, including a 1947 Packard Custom Super Clipper by Henney, a 1965 Imperial Crown convertible, and a 1972 Mercedes-Benz 450SLC. These cars occasionally cost me money, but it felt worth it for the enjoyment they gave back. I just don’t feel the same about the Rolls. Which isn’t to say it can’t be a great car for someone. The ideal owner, I imagine, has deeper pockets and comes into the purchase with a better understanding of and appreciation for what a Thatcher-era Rolls requires. They enjoy the attention this beauty attracts on the road and see its complexity as a sign of British sophistication, as opposed to a list of things that go wrong.
As for the third lesson: I’m sure there is one, but I’m too broke to afford it.
This story first appeared in the November/December 2025 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine.
Report by Kirk Seaman for hagerty.com
