A fortnight after the date of sale, and in the same week that Mallard set the world speed record for a steam locomotive, Rolls-Royce 25/30 chassis number GZR 1 was registered with London County Council, on Saturday 9 July 1938, at the Public Control Department (Road Fund Licences), in County Hall on the city's south bank. At the time, the published annual rate of duty was £22-10s and the quarterly rate was £6-3s-9d. The car was taxed for six months until the end of the year, at a cost of £11-16s-3d. The log book was stamped by the L.C.C. again on 16 July. Presumably the registration document was then sent to Scotland, where first owner Captain William Smith Grant lived, at the family distillery, The Glenlivet. His name was signed as registered keeper and the book was stamped on 5 August, at Banffshire Taxation Department, Sandyhill Road, Banff.

Despite the car being laid up and not taxed from 1st January 1940 until 6 September 1945, for the duration of the war, the log book was filled up by 1948, seven of the fourteen entries being petrol ration issues. A new book was issued by Banff County Council on 6 January 1949, this time signed by a minion under a rubber stamp of Smith Grant's name. The car was not taxed for the first six months of 1948 nor for the first three months of 1950, perhaps for fuel rationing reasons, possibly in 1948 because of the recent death of the first Mrs Smith Grant. Thereafter it was continuously licenced until the early 1980s, when it was off the road for several years owing to then owner David Woodhead's acquisition of a rival Rolls-Royce. Actual details at this time are unclear since the abolition in 1974 of the VE60 (log book issued by the local licencing authority) and the establishment of a central database and authority at the DVLA in Swansea, meant the end of date stamps, except on the tax discs hemselves. With the dead hand of data protection hysteria today impressing on every aspect of public life and record, information is often difficult to prise from the DVLA.

Tax Discs

The displayed circular tax disc in its modern form was introduced in 1923, with colour changes to depict each year, allowing police officers to see at a glance if the vehicle was legally taxed. In 1938 perforation was added to the disc and in the same year the title "Road Fund Licence" was changed to "Mechanically Propelled Vehicle Licence". Perforation was dropped from 1943 but re-instituted from 1952. That year the thistle, shamrock, daffodil and rose motifs, so beloved of His Majesty¹s Stationery Office, were removed from the face of the disc and a bolder expiry date was inserted. From 1957 solid colour bands appeared and since then the design has not changed markedly, with minor adjustments being made as advances in security printing have rendered forgery and counterfeiting fractionally more difficult.

Copyright of obsolete tax disc designs has been acquired from the privatised successor to HMSO by Earlswood Reproductions in Surrey, who can supply authentic facsimile discs for any vehicle back to 1923.

The tax discs for GZR 1 have largely gone the way of all flesh: only two of the older ones survive, one from 1960 and one from 1973 although, since 1995, all discs have been retained.

The "Horsepower Tax"

By 1920 mass produced American cars were popular in the UK due to their low purchase prices. As a protectionist measure to offset some of the effects of the depression which followed the end of the first world war, the so-called "horsepower tax" was introduced by the British government in 1921. Based on an arcane formula calculated in 1906 by the Royal Automobile Club (RAC), the rating was determined by multiplying the square of the cylinder diameter in inches by the number of cylinders and dividing the product by 21/2. The annual tax was set in 1921 at £1 per horsepower, making American cars suddenly less attractive propositions as their big bore engines were heavily penalised under this dubious formula. The annual Road Fund Licence fee for a Ford Model T had previously been £6 6s but its horsepower rating of 22.5 increased this to £23, while the home-grown Morris Cowley of the day attracted a levy of only £12 for its puny 11.9 hp engine.

The six cylinder Rolls-Royce 25/30 has a bore of 3.5 inches and a stroke of
4.5, thus

3.5squared = 12.25 x 6 ÷ 2.5 = 29.4 hp

The RAC rating system was used to calculate the Treasury Horsepower Tax until 1947 when it was replaced by a flat rate system, although Scotland may have operated differently as GZR 1 was taxed annually at the rate of £37 10s from that year until 1953 when the rate dropped to £12 10s. The narrow bore/long stroke engines, now encouraged by the duty formula, went out of fashion. The rating system had been largely discredited years before it was abandoned, manufacturers could manipulate outputs by a variety of mechanical means and accurate testing was almost impossible. Rolls-Royce, almost alone among car makers, has never published output figures (quoted for fifty years as brake horsepower: not quite the same thing).

Horsepower was a concept developed originally by James Watt (1736-1819) as a marketing tool to sell his steam engines. He expressed their power capabilities in terms of the amount of work offered by a single horse, which animal his machines were replacing. Watt defined one horsepower as 33,000 lb ft/minute. This was based on the premise that a typical horse averaged 2.4 circuits per minute of a 24 ft diameter treadmill, pulling with a force of 180 lb.

Fuel Rationing
Fuel rationing was introduced on 22 September 1939, almost three weeks after the outbreak of war. Brand name petrol was stopped and replaced by a national petrol pool. Fuel available for commercial vehicles was dyed red to prevent it from being used in private cars but enforcement inspections met only limited success as ways were devised of trying to neutralise the dye, one of them being to filter the petrol through the charcoal in a gas mask. There was also a very strong and expensive black market. However, by the summer of 1942, when the Japanese Army had occupied Malaya and U-boat attacks on Atlantic convoys had become more successful, the supply of rationed petrol was terminated. Only emergency services were given an allowance and on 31st August private motoring for pleasure was banned.

Petrol ration coupon issued during the Suez Crisis

GAF 55, a 20/25 from 1936 which Novello bought second hand and had Hooper 'modernise' the body by fitting fuller wings. This Rolls-Royce is today beautifully maintained in Ohio by George Reifenberg (picture kindly supplied by him after the recent respray to Novello¹s original colour scheme). After the musician's death the car was acquired at auction by a friend of his and went on to enjoy a lengthy adventure in southern Africa, which journey did not begin auspiciously when the car was dropped on the quay while being unloaded at Durban.

The same car in 1963

For the next four years drivers could be sure, once more, of Shell and the Esso sign again meant happy motoring, at least until prime minister Anthony Eden's disastrous foray into middle east politics precipitated the Suez Crisis. On 17 December 1956, petrol for private cars was back on ration, the restrictions this time lasting until May 1957.

Since then, despite a brief blip in 1973 when OPEC flexed its muscles after the last Arab-Israeli war, availability of petrol supplies for the private motorist in the UK has been comparatively consistent. The price has notfrom 2/- per gallon in 1938 to 3/6d in 1955, 4/5d in 1961, and 6/8d for 3 star in 1969. In 2005 an imperial gallon of LRP (=lead replacement petrol, the forced alternative to 4 star, after withdrawal of leaded fuel from the UK market on dubious environmental grounds), retails at around five guineas ..... Sir Gerald Nabarro would be spinning in his grave.