This car, the first of the last batch of forty 25/30 cars, left Derby by LMS goods train on 31 March 1938 for Lillie Hall in west London. It was bodied by H J Mulliner at Chiswick as dealer stock for The Car Mart on Park Lane and was sold to Captain William Smith Grant, proprietor of The Glenlivet, his family distillery in the Scottish Highlands. Known neither for generosity nor profligacy, he hammered the price down to £1690 complete. Rolls-Royce was in the process of dumping these 25/30 cars because the succeeding, and much more refined, model, the Wraith, was already on the production line. GZR 1 was registered on 9 July.

Throughout the war the car was hidden in a barn at the distillery farm but after hostilities ceased was used extensively for trips south to London, Goodwood and Bournemouth. At Goodwood racecourse the car had a special (and hugely expensive) reserved parking place by the finishing post, from whence the canny Scot dispensed his whiskies to appreciative clients. In 1951 the division was removed from the car by Claud Hamilton (an R-R distributor at the time) in Aberdeen, and the touring limousine became an owner-driver. Thrupp & Maberly had supplied this unit, with occasional seats and cocktail cabinet, to H J Mulliner for £60 when the car was built. (If only a replacement could be found today!) After 16 years and 50,000 miles GZR 1 was part-exchanged in 1955 through Jack Barclay, for Silver Dawn SPG 91 (now in Germany). In his life Smith-Grant had four Rolls-Royces but GZR 1 was the only one he bought new.

The eclectic subsequent keepers of this car were Harry Milner-Gulland, a Sussex prep-school headmaster; Dowager Lady Bicester, Oxford-based widow of banking mega-tycoon Vivian Smith of Morgan Grenfell; Norman Suttcliffe, northern demolition contractor extraordinaire; and –for 30 years- the Woodhead family, seed merchants in Yorkshire for more than two centuries

I bought it in 1995 from The Real Car Co (where else?). It is ordinary, will never win a prize, but is in well-maintained original condition. A new cylinder head was fitted in 1991 and in 1996 the engine was completely overhauled. In 1973 the original Docker Bros. grey-green paint was removed and the car comprehensively resprayed in a 1959 Ford colour (Lichen green), not the most appropriate choice perhaps, as RREC great and good never tire of telling me, but I do not have the £14,000 necessary to revert to original livery (please give generously).