Rolls-Royce Phantom V: last of the line

By Martin Buckley

| 1 Oct 2024

Classic & Sports Car – Rolls-Royce Phantom V: last of the line

The age of the elegant, formal carriage-trade limousine has long since passed in the world of modern cars.

The art of building such vehicles was only truly practised in Britain, and it faded with the demise of the Rolls-Royce Phantom VI in ’92 and, to a lesser degree, the Daimler DS420 at around the same time.

The reasons were manifold but hard – and expensive – to ignore: safety legislation, type-approval irritations, and the cost of skilled labour able to form aluminium and hard woods into the graceful forms these traditional bodies required.

The famous Spirit of Ecstasy on this Rolls-Royce Phantom V

Too low-volume to justify production-line tooling, these specialised limousines – vehicles that had more in common with the horse-drawn broughams and landaulettes of 150 years previously than the modern ‘stretched’ equivalents – took months to build.

They were always created to order, never for stock, and by necessity hugely expensive, which further reduced their potential audience.

It was a market that was dwindling anyway.

As ordinary large cars became easier to drive and handle generally, the need for chauffeur transport even among the very wealthy was in decline.

‘The Rolls-Royce Phantom V’s shutlines are so tight and even that you have to get quite close to see them’

Why employ a driver when it was such a pleasure to take the wheel of your Silver Shadow?

Who really needed massive amounts of legroom and seven seats in a 20ft-long car to travel a world in which such decadence might, increasingly, be frowned upon?

Most Phantom Vs had Park Ward or Mulliner Park Ward bodies.

The 1959 Phantom V – the first Rolls-Royce to use the name since the demise of the ‘Royalty only’ straight-eight Phantom IV – had been under development as Project Siam since 1955.

The Rolls-Royce Phantom V’s rear cabin offers opulent privacy

It was a well-judged extrapolation of the new Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II technology, which still meant massive drum brakes (with gearbox-driven servo assistance) and a live rear axle, but now with the new, all-aluminium 6.2-litre V8 of undisclosed, but ‘adequate’ outputs.

It replaced the Wraith as Crewe’s formal limousine offering.

The earlier chassis was not quite long enough to give the combination of rear legroom and luggage space with truly balanced lines.

The boot usually came off worst in this equation, but the shorter V8 engine gave Rolls-Royce’s designers a free hand to satisfy all three requirements in the new Phantom.

The Rolls-Royce Phantom V’s deep sidewalls augment wafting

The stiff, box-section frame was the same as that of the Cloud, but with an additional crossmember and 21in let into the wheelbase to make it 12ft 1in, as on the Phantom IV.

There was no tie-rod for the slightly lower-ratio back axle, but otherwise the specification was as per the Cloud II/Bentley S2: a 6.2-litre V8 using two 1¾in SU HD6 carburettors, standard power steering and automatic transmission.

Alongside the design number 980 Park Ward seven-passenger limousines, James Young of Bromley offered a Touring Limousine version from the beginning, in a style that is widely considered today to be the zenith of post-war elegance.

The James Young PV16 body gives the Rolls-Royce Phantom V a classic, near-timeless elegance

No Cadillac Fleetwood or Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman – never mind any of the Eastern Bloc limos – can match the graceful, imposing dignity of this car.

HJ Mulliner Park Ward, whose seven-passenger creation was a handsome thing in its own right, attempted an in-house Touring Limousine design, but gave up after only six had been produced.

With the demise of both Freestone & Webb and Hooper, plus the merging of HJ Mulliner and Park Ward as the in-house Rolls-Royce coachbuilder, these James Young-bodied Phantoms would be the last independently coachbuilt bodies on the Crewe chassis.

Rolls-Royce’s whispering 6.2-litre V8 makes around 220bhp

As well as the PV15 Limousines and PV22 Touring Limousine (with a lower roofline), James Young produced owner-driver saloon versions – with or without a fitted division and sideways-facing occasional seats – and a pair of extravagant two-door saloons on this massive, near-20ft-long chassis.

There were 10 PV22 SD Sedanca de Villes, the final two with the Hooper-style quarterlights that were also available on the closed cars.

James Young had to pay Hooper a commission of £25 on each one, and this style was standard by the end of 1965, when the PV15 and PV22 became the PV16 and PV23.

The Rolls-Royce Phantom V’s signature square-button doorhandles

With razor-thin shutlines, superb internal cabinetwork and handsome, square-button doorhandles, these cars have always been coveted – both in original two-headlight and later quad-headlight VA-chassis form, the latter with the uprated Cloud III engine complete with 2in SU carbs, higher compression and improved power steering.

James Young bodied 71 of the single-headlight AC-CG series of Phantom Vs between 1959 and 1962, and 125 of the later version from a total of 516 Phantom Vs.

At £9752 in 1966, the James Young Phantom V cost £250 more than the Mulliner Park Ward car, and was then the most expensive offering in the entire Rolls-Royce range.

A year earlier the Ferrari 500 Superfast had boasted a price-tag £2000 in excess of that, so the Phantom was much better value, at least on a cost-for-weight basis, tipping the scales at 6000lb.

A chauffeur’s workstation, but the Rolls-Royce Phantom V is a pleasure to drive

Like most of the great English coachbuilding names, James Young of Bromley started out as a builder of bodies for horse-drawn vehicles and made its name with the lightweight Bromley Brougham.

The firm bodied its first motor car – a Wolseley – in 1908, then during WW1 it concentrated on commercial chassis for the war effort, and later built runs of standardised bodies for Sunbeams and Talbots.

James Young listed ‘firsts’ such as an interior headliner that helped reduce drumming, and a patent for a sliding door that was later sold to Volkswagen for use on its Kombi vans.

Expert cabinetry in the Rolls-Royce Phantom V’s rear

On becoming part of the Jack Barclay group in 1937 (and merging with Gurney Nutting), James Young became exclusively aligned with Rolls-Royce products, although it had already bodied a variety of exotic cars from Continental makes; it was even the official Alfa Romeo coachbuilder for the British market.

The Bromley premises were destroyed twice in WW2, but the firm bounced back rapidly.

With 120 employees building 60 or so bodies a year (with about 60% for export), James Young was second only to Mulliner when it came to producing coachbuilt MkVIs and R-types in the 1940s and ’50s.

The Rolls-Royce Phantom V’s cigarette-paper shutlines almost disappear from certain angles

In the 1960s, working to full-size drawings pinned to the workshop walls, James Young struggled to adapt to the methods required for the new monocoque technology.

The company was probably also feeling the loss of its gifted stylist, AF McNeil, after his premature death in 1965.

The Scotsman had joined the Bromley concern from Cunard and, as mentor to John Blatchley, his light touch and instinct for proportion had kept the firm competitive with the in-house HJ Mulliner and Park Ward designs.

Sadly, the end of the Cloud and S-series as mainstream, separate-chassis offerings closed down the company’s options in the field of traditional coachbuilding.

The Rolls-Royce Phantom V by James Young is large, but doesn’t feel so on the move

James Young Ltd disappeared with a whimper in 1968, after 105 years’ trading, with a plain-Jane interpretation on the two-door Silver Shadow/T1 theme, of which just 50 were sold.

Many of its highly skilled employees ended their working lives as milkmen, postmen and window cleaners.

This PV16 Phantom V was delivered new to its first owner, a Mayfair businessman, in 1968 and must be one of the last James Young Phantoms – the PV16 designation denotes the Hooper-style quarterlights.

It is one of just five PV16s built.

Fine veneers in this Rolls-Royce Phantom V

Finished in midnight blue with beige leather, 858 HUW (its index number) was supplied, naturally, through Jack Barclay.

It was evidently a working car because the odometer showed 90,000 miles 10 years later, when it was treated to a factory replacement engine.

A man from Notting Hill owned the car in the early ’80s; then, in 1988, it passed to the filmmaker Colin Clark.

Mayfair land agents bought the Rolls-Royce the following year.

In 1993 it was sold to a Hong Kong businessman who splashed out £45,000 on a top-half repaint, a full retrim and dual air-conditioning systems.

The Rolls-Royce Phantom V’s polished switchgear

This huge yet beautifully proportioned Rolls-Royce limousine is no chore to drive.

It is highly manoeuvrable, with a tight lock, and lively, with a particularly crisp engine that provides assertive acceleration both from a standstill and when travelling at 60-70mph.

The smooth throttle action and well-damped controls convey feelings of deep satisfaction.

The air-con is effective, the power windows and division quiet, fast and smooth in operation.

‘The James Young-bodied Rolls-Royce Phantom Vs would be the last independently coachbuilt bodies on the Crewe chassis’

It is wider than a Silver Cloud but with a more commanding driving position, and it conforms to the old cliché by quickly shrinking around you.

Its huge length is not a problem, and the Phantom will waft through long, open rural curves with no qualms or drama.

The silken smoothness of the gearchanges shows that a well set up Rolls-Royce four-speed Hydramatic is 90% as seamless as the later three-speed – only more versatile – and the drum brakes are magnificently powerful, balanced and progressive, at least at speed.

They need to be jammed on firmly at lower velocities when the servo action is less effective.

This Rolls-Royce’s set of dials includes a barometer

True to form, the shutlines are so tight and even that you have to get quite close to see them.

The rear compartment is a magnificently furnished mobile drawing room or office, with wide, sweeping rear pillars giving a feeling of privacy lacking in the Mulliner Park Ward Phantoms.

The occupants are not so obviously on display in this car.

With its lavish lambswool over-rugs, forward-facing occasional seats and beautifully integrated radio controls in the garnish rails, it is a very nice place to be, with the various radio and window/division controls just as elegantly placed in those same rails.

This Rolls-Royce’s dual-zone air-con was retrofitted

It could still be put to work as a mobile workspace to serve the buyer for whom every second counts, although modern working practices have made the physical presence of the table-thumping tycoons of yesteryear much less essential.

It is a pleasure to drive or simply be in, and I can’t think of another really large working car with the elegance, dignity and presence of this fine machine.

If the ‘best car in the world’ halo was starting to slip with the failure of the Silver Cloud and Silver Shadow to match the standards of lesser, cheaper rivals by some measures, I think it’s safe to say the Phantom V, particularly in James Young form, was probably the best limousine in the world.

Perhaps it still is.

Images: Jack Harrison

Thanks to: Classic Automobiles Worldwide

Factfile

Rolls-Royce Phantom V

Sold/number built 1959-’68/196
Construction steel chassis, aluminium body
Engine all-alloy, ohv 6230cc V8, two 2in SU HD8 carburettors
Max power 220bhp (est)
Max torque 340lb ft (est)
Transmission four-speed automatic, RWD
Suspension independent at front by wishbones, coil springs, anti-roll bar rear live axle, semi-elliptic leaf springs; telescopic dampers f/r
Steering power-assisted cam and roller
Brakes power-assisted drums
Length 19ft 10in (6045mm)
Width 6ft 7in (2007mm)
Height 5ft 9½in (1765mm)
Wheelbase 12ft 1½in (3696mm)
Weight 6000lb (2722kg)
Mpg 12.7
0-60mph 13.8 secs
Top speed 101mph
Price new £9700
Price now £200,000*