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Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow SRX-17910 owned by Olavi TUPAMÄKI

Twenty years ago I was working in Saudi Arabia for three years running a major building material manufacturing company. Life in Riyadh was fine and easy. Also my wife Ulla enjoyed everything, although women were prohibited from the newly opened ice skating rink.


Cars in Finland were very expensive due to the 125 % import/registration tax (plus VAT on top of everything); they still are today. After working abroad and earning some money we were allowed to bring along a car without tax. So, in 1985 I found a Silver Shadow in the souk, bough it and gave it as a Christmas present to my wife.

This car was originally purchased by HH Prince Khaled al Faisal bin Abdulaziz, a grandson of King Abdulaziz al Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia. He was the Governor of Asir, the south-western province of Saudi Arabia (and the mountain, where King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba had some good time). It was claimed in a television film that Prince Khaled owns the world's largest hunting falcon breeding farm, located in Scotland.


The car was in a very good shape. The car had not been used, the mileage was 2002 kilometres only, which is exactly the distance from Jeddah to Abha, the capital of Asir, to Riyadh. Full documentation came along. Later, we also got the build history of the car from RREC. The details of the car read as follows: delivered 21 March 1974, chassis number SRX 17910, engine number 17910, colour Caribbean blue on shell grey, upholstery dark blue.

The too soft suspension we replaced with the HBE Engineering's handling kit. Now the car is much better and behaves very well in cornering, no roll or sway any more. And we just love the dashboard design of the earlier Silver Shadows.

It is generally known that in Saudi Arabia women cannot have a driving licence. Yet, while moving back home 1987 my wife applied for an international driving licence. And the Saudi authorities were flexible enough to give it, based on her Finnish driving licence!

We have used the car as one of our daily transport, also for a period in Brussels. Now the clock shows near 70,000 kilometres. Only the aircon has caused some major problems. Today the car is the best Silver Shadow in Finland, visually perfect in and out, and operatively all ok.

The photo with some people inside shows myself and my wife Ulla, some five years back