A mint-condition 1920 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost suffered devastating damages yesterday morning when the trailer it was being transported on passed under a viaduct on the A1 at Póvoa de Santa Iria, near Lisbon.
Other cars on the trailer remained intact, but this ‘last one’ appears to have been perhaps slightly higher on the loader, and as a result, literally lost its top half.
The property of the Museu de Caramulo, reports put a value on the vehicle of “around a million euros”. Tabloid Correio da Manhã, for instance, says a similar model sold at auction by Sotheby’s a few years ago, went for “almost a million euros”.
This will have been a real setback for the museum, which loans its vehicles out to various events.
This one was en-route for a Classic rally in Porto, having only just taken part in the ‘Corrida dos Fundadores’ which saw pre-1939 vehicles travel between Figueira da Foz and Lisbon last weekend, and be admired by hundreds if not thousands of enthusiasts.
Everything points to the disaster being down to “an error of calculation by the driver”, who will no doubt be feeling very down in the mouth today.
No reports mention insurance, but one can only hope the Museu has it.
As CM points out, it’s not clear whether the wonderful vehicle can be repaired. On the basis that the top half was literally sliced from the bottom – and does not involve anything particularly mechanical – it may just be possible that it can.
Manufactured in late 1920, the car was originally bodied in Belgium, in Brougham, by the company D’Ieteren-Frères-Bruxelles. With a six-cylinder, 7.5-litre engine and rear-wheel drive, the Silver Ghost weighed 2330 kg and reached speeds of up to 100 km/h, with brakes only on the rear axle.
The main image shows how she looked last weekend, before this unfortunate turn of events.
Sources: Correio da Manhã/ specialist motoring press
Image taken from Facebook
