My girlfriend and I celebrated it's purchase by driving to Bristol and going to a punk rock concert in a back street pub. The car looked magnificently moody in the rain under the street lights - evidently not the treatment it was accustomed to.

Compared to the Jaguar XJ-S and Fiat Cinquecento I already had, the Rolls did nothing very well. Apart from the initial surge away from the lights it accelerated in a, well, relaxed fashion. It drank fuel at 14-15mpg on a long run. The ride was absurdly soft and bouncy. I loved it regardless. We managed to find some dark green over rugs, a set of rear headrests to replace the missing originals, and I scoured the local flea markets for eight track cassettes. Even the air conditioning was coaxed into life.

I delighted in the way everything worked. The sheer weight of the doors, the rapid electric windows. The ergonomic perfection of the electric column change and scattered switches - once learnt, so simple. And every journey became an event. On more than one occasion, a tramp lay in the road in front of the car and asked to be run over. Such is life in Scotland. People would stop me to say what a beautiful car it was.

In fact, I enjoyed the car so much that I ended up using it far more than I had ever intended. Business trips, carrying four people and luggage at 90mph down the M6; and this was a 30 year old car. In fact, whenever I drove anything else, I missed the Rolls. The time came when I decided it simply wasn't fair to the car to use it quite so hard, and thought about retiring or replacing her.

I discussed the options. I needed a big, fast, comfortable car. I was driving about 20,000 miles a year. Economy didn't matter much but reliability, comfort and pace did. An Audi A8? A Mercedes 500? A Jaguar XJ-R? All available secondhand, at the time, for around 9,000£. The XJ-S was rusting fast in the Scottish climate and would be sold.

Or... perhaps a newer Rolls or Bentley might do the job...

I ended up part exchanging the Shadow for a 1984 Silver Spirit. The car looked terrific. Paintwork the colour of Ribena, RR alloy wheels and several later updates. Registered in France, which I thought (wrongly) would confuse the traffic wardens (they simply towed it away), it looked dramatic and worth about ten times the ridiculous asking price. £ 4,000 plus my Shadow and I drove away from the smart and courteous specialist dealer a very happy man.

The Spirit was a charming car. Slightly faster than the Shadow, but with dramatically sharper handling and a better ride. Economy was still awful, but then it's a big car with a huge engine. In fact, anyone who has owned a petrol Range Rover won't be shocked by the fuel bills.

I discovered that the longer Spirit really wasn't going to fit in my rather awkward garage. So it sat on the street in Edinburgh's town centre. I would often find the Spirit of Ecstasy in a different position in the morning. If I left it up, it would have retracted by morning. If I took the trouble to retract it, it would have reappeared in the morning. No harm ever came to it, and it evidently gave one or more people some pleasure.

The car was my main transport and fulfilled every task. It carted rubbish to the dump, shot down motorways at 120mph and never failed to start or nor broke down. My only concern was with it's incredible appearance; I was always worried about parking it, lest someone should suffer an attack of jealously. If only everyone knew how cheap these tremendous cars were.

Wonderful though the Spirit was, it was obvious to me from the RREC and the period roadtests that the ultimate affordable expression of these cars was the Bentley Turbo R. Here, I thought, was a car that would give me the RR driving experience, run less of a risk if left unattended on the street, and give me some of the speed of the Jaguars that I had previously run.

Scouring the small ads of the autotrader website eventually turned up an early Turbo R Efi. The car was a subtle Balmoral green with cream leather, reminiscent of the Shadow. It seemed unmolested, and a chat with the owner revealed that it was his only car - so it was used daily, just as I would use it.

At this point I should reveal that the owner dealt in scrap, and the picture showed the car sitting in a muddy pool, against a graffiti covered corrugated iron fence. This must have put a few people off, but to me both the car and owner sounded honest.

A trip to Nottingham and a test drive followed, but I had the car inspected by a local specialist who confirmed my thoughts. A sound car. Muddy carpets but no rust; it had been run on petrol pumped out of the crashed cars brought to the yard, but had survived. The boot was full of plants and more mud, as the owner was an enthusiastic gardener. Some of the wood veneer was cracked, some of the leather scuffed, but nothing was actually broken.

I put the 'Spirit up for sale and a garage owner from Glasgow bought it for the same price as the scrap dealer wanted for the Bentley. He wanted a car for his wedding hire business, and I have to say that the Rolls would have looked magnificent in ribbons. I hastened to Nottingham, paid up and had the all the fluids and belts changed (including the tiny rubber belt that turns the twin distributors on Turbo R's of this vintage).

The night drive back to Edinburgh was a revelation. The combination of cool night air and light traffic proved incredible. I set the cruise control at 75mph up the motorway; it was a new car to me and unproven. Filling up with petrol revealed the car was doing far more to the gallon than either Rolls had managed, thanks to the very high gearing. My 'Bentley only' tachometer revealed 70mph required only a shade more than 2,000rpm. Over 17mpg was the result, and even when you heard more of that deep V8 rumble, 15 mpg could be relied upon on a run.

The real surprise, though, was the old single carriageway stretch of the A1, north of Newcastle. The occasional truck provided some overtaking entertainment. I was very used to the 'Spirit. Gently move the selector to 'I' for Intermediate (2nd in most cars), and push the beautifully balanced, slim alloy throttle pedal into the lambswool rug. The huge bonnet would tilt slightly, and the car would flow past the obstruction.

The same approach in the Turbo R was, well, exciting. The throttle was stiffer; just as well. The books say 300bhp for this engine; not that much for the weight, and I had been very used to the same power in lighter V12 Jaguars. But you tend to forget torque. The Bentley's bonnet would lift under the immense surge of power, the exhaust beat would harden into an amazing V8 growl, and the huge car would almost throw itself past the truck. A brief glimpse of straight was enough to pass even an articulated truck in safety.

I was grinning like a idiot by the time we reached the last stretch of dual carriageway into Edinburgh, where I found out that it changed into top gear at 120mph, and was still accelerating with much the same urgency as the speedo wound itself off the end of the scale. I should add that we were now in the very small hours of the morning.

I kept the Bentley for just a year and 20,000 miles, and often wish I still had her. We travelled all over the UK, across France, and even followed the route of Keith Richard's Flying Spur, Blue Lena, to Marrakech and back. The car tackled unmade roads until 3000 metres up in the Atlas mountains, and proved excellent for getting through the innumerable police road blocks quickly; it turned out that the King had a similar car. A half-witted mopedist managed to drop his bike at 40mph and slid into the sill; the dent was just perceptible. The 40 degree heat made no difference to the running of the car. The air conditioning maintained the drivers cool. We scraped our way through ancient medinas, and put up with the awful petrol - the car must have wondered if it was back on scrap yard fuel.

Leaving Morocco, the car gave me my fastest ever time home to the UK. Leaving Fes at a civilised 11am, we reached London at 6pm the next but one evening. 1,830 miles in fifty-five hours. This includes sleep, meals, filling up with fuel, being taken to pieces by customs, and two lengthy ferry crossings. There could be no finer memory of a fine car.

I decided I would sell my interests in the UK and move permanently to Morocco, beautiful and fascinating country that it is. I wanted to explore the desert and that meant a return to a four wheel drive. No income meant a diesel, and a Discovery Tdi was acquired. I advertised the Bentley for £8,000 but no body wanted it. I offered to trade it in, but dealers shied away. Eventually I bought a trailer, and towed it to my family's home in France. It could share the barn in retirement with my Range Rover Monteverdi, several geriatric Jaguars and my mothers dead Mercedes.

Just before we were due to leave, an Australian called me, having seen the advert. I apologised and told him he was too late; the car was in France. A day later he was too, and the car departed for the UK, another ship, and is now on a farm in the Australian outback. The Silver Shadow now belongs to a hotelier in Kuala Lumpur. I feel almost sorry for the Spirit, stuck in Glasgow.

My advice to anyone contemplating the purchase of one of these cars is, buy it, and use it. They cost no more to run than a petrol 4x4. Maintenance is expensive (£4,000 during a year and 20,000 very hard miles for the Turbo R) but off set by the lack of depreciation. They are strong, reliable and beautiful. Enjoy them while you can, as such extravagance will surely be impossible with future laws on emissions and taxation.

www.madaboutmorocco.com
www.madaboutfes.com