A PERSONAL SERVICE
It’s one of those cars that requires good hearing. If there’s any background noise, it can be tricky to tell whether it’s running. Here, on the hardstanding outside Marcus Dean’s home in Edinburgh, it’s largely drowned out by a few noisy garden birds but if I concentrate, I’m sure I can hear a gentle thrum.
After all, we saw Marcus start it. Key in, both switches to ‘on’, a press of the button and it’s going, after a polite throat-clearing noise, which must be the starter motor. We’re about to head off into the traffic, which for some cars of more than 80 years old would be a worry, but the Wraith already seems utterly unperturbable. This, after all, is what Rolls-Royce was aiming for.
The Wraith is a less well-known model than the first of the ‘small’ Rolls-Royces, the 20hp, or indeed its successors, the 20/25 and the 25/30hp. It lasted only a little over a year in production and the total number of chassis produced didn’t reach 500. There’s also the confusion of the name, as the post-war Silver Wraith is easy to mix up with this model, despite sharing little with the pre-war car. Yet the Wraith brought in some significant innovation, and to those who love it, has become much admired for its combination of prewar quality with post-war usability.
Part of the pre-war character is of course in the bodywork; Wraiths were sold as rolling chassis to be bodied by independent coachbuilders, as was the case with other pre-war Rolls-Royce and Bentley models. This allowed
